The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Catholic World, Vol. 01, April to September, 1865

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Title: The Catholic World, Vol. 01, April to September, 1865

Author: Various

Release date: April 4, 2012 [eBook #39367]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Don Kostuch

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CATHOLIC WORLD, VOL. 01, APRIL TO SEPTEMBER, 1865 ***

[Transcriber's notes]
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Several scanned pages are obscured by being too closely glued at the spine. I have interpolated the missing text where it seemed obvious and left "??" where it was in doubt.

A few cases of inaccurate typesetting such as misplaced words or lines have been corrected.

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This text includes Volume I;
Number 1—April 1865
Number 2—May 1865
Number 3—June 1865
Number 4—July 1865
Number 5—August 1865
Number 6—September 1865
[End Transcriber's notes]

Fine Binding

THE CARSWELL COMPANY LIMITED

THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

A Monthly Eclectic Magazine

of

GENERAL LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.

VOL. I.

APRIL TO SEPTEMBER, 1865.

NEW YORK:

LAWRENCE KEHOE, PUBLISHER,

7 BEEKMAN STREET.

1865.

CONTENTS.

  Ancient Saints of God, The, 19.
  Ars, A Pilgrimage to, 24.
  Alexandria, The Christian Schools of, 33, 721.
  Animal Kingdom, Unity of Type in the, 71.
  Art, 136, 286, 420.
  Art, Christian, 246.
  Authors, Royal and Imperial, 323.
  All-Hallow Eve, or the Test of Futurity, 500, 657, 785.
  Arks, Noah's, 513.

  Babou, Monsieur, 106.
  Blind Deaf Mute, History of a, 826.

  Church in the United States, Progress of the, 1.
  Constance Sherwood, 78, 163, 349, 482, 600, 748.
  Catholicism, The Two Sides of, 96, 669, 741.
  Cardinal Wiseman in Rome, 117
  Catacombs, Recent Discoveries in the, 129.
  Chastellux, The Marquis de, 181.
  Church of England, Workings of the Holy Spirit in the, 289.
  Cochin China, French, 369.
  Consalvi's Memoirs, 377.
  Church History, A Lost Chapter Recovered, 414.
  Canova, Antonio, 598.
  Cathedral Library, The, 679.
  Catholic Philosophy in the Thirteenth Century, 685.

  De Guérin, Eugénie and Maurice, 214.
  Divina Commedia, Dante's, 268.
  Dinner by Mistake, A, 535.
  Dramatic Mysteries of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, 577.
  Dublin May Morning, A, 825.

  Extinct Species, 526.
  Experience, Wisdom by, 851.

  Falconry, Modern, 493.
  Fifth Century, Civilization in the, 775.

  Guérin, Eugénie and Maurice de, 214.
  Glacier, A Night in a, 345.
  Grand Chartreuse, A Visit to the, 830.

  Hedwige, Queen of Poland, 145.
  Heart and the Brain, 623.

  Irish Poetry, Recent, 466.

  Jem McGowan's Wish, 56.

  Legends and Fables, The Truth of, 433.
  London, Catholic Progress in, 703.
  London, 836.
  Laborers Gone to their Reward, 855.

  Mont Cenis Tunnel, The, 60.
  Mongols, Monks among the, 158.
  Mourne, The Building of, 225.
  Memoirs, Consalvi's, 377.
  Maintenon, Madame de, 799.
  Miscellany, 134, 280, 420, 567, 712, 858.

  Nick of Time, The, 124.

  Perilous Journey, A, 198.
  Poucette, 260.
  Prayer, What came of a, 697.

  Russian Religious, A, 306.

  Saints of God, The Ancient, 19.
  Science, 134, 280, 712.
  Streams, The Modern Genius of, 233.
  Stolen Sketch, The, 314.
  Swetchine, Madame, and her Salon, 456.
  Shakespeare, William, 548.
  St. Sophia, The Church and Mosque of, 641.
  Species, The Origin and Mutability of, 845.

  Three Wishes, The, 31.
  Terrene Phosphorescence, 770.

  Upfield, Many Years Ago at, 393.

  Vanishing Race, A, 708.

  Wiseman, Cardinal in Rome, 117.
  Winds, The, 207.
  Women, A City of, 514.
  Wisdom by Experience, 851.

  Young's Narcissa, 797.

POETRY

  A Lie, 245.
  Avignon, The Bells of, 783.

  Domine Quo Vadis?76.
  Dream of Gerontius, The, 517, 630.
  Dorothea, Saint, 666.

  Ex Humo, 33.

  Gerontius, The Dream of, 517, 630.

  Hans Euler, 237.

  Limerick Bells, Legend of, 195.

  Mary, Queen of Scots, Hymn by, 337.
  Martin's Puzzle, 739.

  Saint Dorothea, 666.
  Speech, 829.

  Twilight in the North, 344.

  Unspiritual Civilization, 747.

{iv}

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

  Archbishop Spalding's Pastoral, 144.
  At Anchor, 287.
  American Annual Cyclopaedia, US.
  A Man without a Country, 720.

  Banim's Boyne Water, 286.
  Beatrice, Miss Kavanagh's, 574.

  Cardinal Wiseman's Sermons, 139.
  Cummings' Spiritual Progress, 140.
  Christian Examiner, Reply to the, 144.
  Correlation and Conservation of Forces, The, 288, 425.
  Confessors of Connaught, 574.
  Curé of Ars, Life of the, 575.
  Ceremonial of the Church, 720.

  Darras' History of the Church, 141, 575, 860.

  England, Froude's History of, 715.

  Faith, the Victory, Bishop McGill's, 428.

  Grace Morton, 574.

  Heylen's Progress of the Age, etc., 142.
  Household Poems, Longfellow's, 719.

  Irvington Stories, 143.
  Irish Street Ballads, 720.

  John Mary Decalogne, Life of, 576.

  Lamotte Fouqué's Undine, etc142.
  La Mère de Dieu, 432.
  Life of Cicero, 573.

  Moral Subjects, Card. Wiseman's Sermons on287.
  Mystical Rose, The, 288.
  Mater Admirabilis.429.
  Month of Mary, 720.
  Martyr's Monument, The, 860.

  New Path, The, 288, 576.

  Our Farm of Four Acres, 143.

  Protestant Reformation, Abp. Spalding's History of the, 719.

  Real and Ideal, 427.
  Religious Perfection, Bayma's, 431.
  Russo-Greek Church, The, 576.
  Retreat, Meditations and Considerations for a, 720.

  Songs for all Seasons, Tennyson's, 719.
  Sybil, A Tragedy, 860.

  Translation of the Iliad, Lord Derby's, 570.
  Trübner's American and Oriental Literature, 576.

  William Shakespeare, 860.
  Whittier's Poems;860.

  Young Catholic's Library, 432.
  Year of Mary, 719.

{1}

THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. I., NO. 1.—APRIL, 1865.

From Le Correspondant.

THE PROGRESS OF THE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES.

BY E. RAMEUR.

[The following article will no doubt be interesting to our readers, not only for its intrinsic merit and its store of valuable information, but also as a record of the impressions made upon an intelligent foreign Catholic, during a visit to this country. As might have been expected, the author has not escaped some errors in his historical and statistical statements—most of which we have noted in their appropriate places. It will also be observed that while exaggerating the importance of the early French settlements in the development of Catholicism in the United States, he has not given the Irish immigrants as much credit as they deserve. But despite these faults, which are such as a Frenchman might readily commit, the article will amply repay reading.—ED. CATHOLIC WORLD.]

After the Spaniards had discovered the New World, and while they were fighting against the Pagan civilization of the southern portions of the continent, the French made the first [permanent] European settlement on the shores of America. They founded Port Royal, in Acaclia, in 1604, and from that time their missionaries began to go forth among the savages of the North. It was not until 1620 that the first colony of English Puritans landed in Massachusetts, and it then seemed not improbable that Catholicism was destined to be the dominant religion of the New World; but subsequent Anglo-Saxon immigration and political vicissitudes so changed matters, that by the end of the last century one might well have believed that Protestantism was finally and completely established throughout North America. God, however, prepares his ways according to his own good pleasure; and he knows how to bring about secret and unforeseen changes, which set at naught all the calculations of man. The weakness and internal disorders of the Catholic nations, in the eighteenth century, retarded only for a moment the progress of the Catholic Church; and Providence, combining the despised efforts of those who seemed weak with the faults of those who seemed strong, confounded the superficial judgments of philosophers, and prepared the way for a speedy religious transformation of America.

This transformation is going on in our own times with a vigor which seems to increase every year. The {2} causes which have led to it were, at the outset, so trivial that no writer of the last century would have dreamed of making account of them. Yet, already at that time, Canada, where Catholicism is now more firmly established than in any other part of America, possessed that faithful and energetic population which has increased so wonderfully during the last half century; and even in the United States might have been found many an obscure, but a patient and stout-hearted little congregation—a relic of the old English Church, which after three centuries of oppression was to arise and spread itself with a new life. But no one set store by the poor French colonists; England and Protestantism, together, it was thought, would soon absorb them; and as for the Papists of the United States, the wise heads did not even suspect their existence. The writer who should have spoken of their future would only have been laughed at.

The English Catholics, like the Puritans, early learned to look toward America as a refuge from persecution, and in 1634, under the direction of Lord Baltimore, they founded the colony of Maryland. Despite persecution from Protestants whom they had freely admitted into their community, they prospered, increased, and became the germ of the Church of the United States, now so large and flourishing.

In the colonial archives of the Ministry of the Navy we have found a curious manuscript memoir upon Acadia, by Lamothe Cadillac, in which it is stated that in 1686 there were Catholic inhabitants in New York, and especially in Maryland, where they had seven or eight priests. Another paper preserved in the same archives mentions a Catholic priest residing in New York; and William Penn, who had established absolute toleration in the colony adjoining that of Maryland, speaks of an old Catholic priest who exercised the ministry in Pennsylvania.

The Catholics at this time are said to have composed a thirtieth part of the whole population of Maryland. This estimate seems to us too low. At all events, the increase of our unfortunate brethren in the faith was retarded by persecution and difficulties of all kinds which surrounded them. In the Puritan colonies of the North, they were absolutely proscribed. In the Southern colonies, of Virginia, Georgia, and Carolina, their condition was but little better; in New York they enjoyed a precarious toleration in the teeth of penal laws. In Maryland and Pennsylvania alone they were granted freedom of worship, and a legal status; though even in those colonies they were exposed to a thousand wrongs and vexations. Maryland persecuted them from time to time and banished their priests; and William Penn, in his tolerant conduct toward them, was bitterly opposed by his own people.

Nevertheless, despite difficulties and violence, the Anglo-American Catholics increased by little and little, wherever they got a foothold; the descendants of the old settlers multiplied; new ones came from England and Ireland; and a German immigration set in, especially in Pennsylvania, where several congregations of German Catholics were formed at a very early period. In the archives of this province we have found several valuable indications of the state of the Church in 1760. There were then two priests, one a Frenchman or an Englishman, named Robert Harding, the other a German of the name of Schneider. It seems probable that they were both Jesuits. [Footnote 1] In a letter to Governor Loudon, in 1757, Father Harding estimates the number of Catholics in Philadelphia and its immediate neighborhood at two thousand—English, Irish, and German; but in the absence of Father Schneider he could not be positive as to these figures. A letter from Gouverneur Morris in 1756 {3} speaks of the Catholics of Maryland and Pennsylvania as being very numerous and enjoying freedom of worship, and adds, that in Philadelphia there is a Jesuit who is a very able and talented man. The Abbé Robin, a chaplain in Rochambeau's army in 1781, informs us in his narrative that there were several Catholic churches at Fredericksburg, Va., and even a Catholic congregation at Charleston, S.C.

[Footnote 1: In De Courcy and Shea's "Catholic Church in the United States" pp. 211, 212, an account will be found of both these missionaries. The first mentioned was an Englishman. Both were— Jesuits. ED. C. W.]

The toleration accorded to the Jesuits in the United States was precarious, but it amounted in time to a pretty complete freedom; and as they were not disturbed when the order was suppressed in Europe, some of their brethren from abroad took refuge with them; so that in 1784, we find, according to Mr. C. Moreau, in his excellent work on the French emigrant priests in America, [Footnote 2] nineteen priests in Maryland, and five in Pennsylvania. To these we must add the priests of Detroit, Mich., Vincennes, Ind., and Kaskaskia and Cahokia, Ill., all four originally French-Canadian settlements which were ceded to England along with Canada, and after the American Revolution became parts of the United States. Counting, moreover, the missionaries scattered among the Indian tribes, we may safely say that the American Republic contained at the period of which we are speaking not fewer than thirty or forty ecclesiastics. The number of the faithful may be set down as 16,000 in Maryland, 7,000 or 8,000 in Pennsylvania, 3,000 at Detroit and Vincennes, and about 2,500 in southern Illinois; in all the other states together they hardly amounted to 1,500. In a total population therefore of 3,000,000 they numbered about 30,000, and of these 5,500 were of French origin. Such was the condition of the Church in the United States when it was regularly established in 1789 by the erection of an episcopal see at Baltimore, and the appointment, as bishop, of Mr. Carroll, an American priest, born of one of the oldest Catholic families of Maryland. The dispersion of the clergy of France, in 1790, soon afterward supplied America with numerous evangelical laborers, who gave a new impulse to the development which was just becoming apparent in the infant Church.

[Footnote 2: One vol. 12mo. Paris: Douniol.]

A few years before the French Revolution, Mr. Emery, superior of Saint Sulpice, guided by what we must term an extraordinary inspiration, came to the assistance of the American Church, and with the help of his brother Sulpitians and at the cost of the society, founded a theological seminary at Baltimore. His plans were already well matured when Bishop Carroll, soon after his appointment, entering heartily into the project, promised him a house and all the assistance he could give. Four Sulpitians accordingly set out from Paris in 1790, taking with them five Seminarians. They were supplied with 30,000 francs to defray the cost of their establishment, and to this modest sum the crisis which soon overtook the parent establishment allowed them to add but little; but this mite, bestowed by the Church of France in the last days of her wealth, was destined to become, like the widow's mite, the price of innumerable blessings.

Between 1791 and 1799 the storm of revolution drove twenty-three French priests to the United States. As the first apostles, when they set out from Rome, portioned out Germany and Gaul among themselves, so they divided this country, and most of them organized new communities of Christians, or by their zeal awakened communities that slept. Six of them, Flaget, Cheverus, Dubourg, Maréchal, Dubois, and David, became bishops.

The base of operations from which these peaceful but victorious invaders went forth was Baltimore, the episcopal see around which were gathered the old American clergy and the greater part of the Catholic population. It was here that the Sulpitians {4} had their seminary, and this establishment became a centre of attraction for a great many of these exiled priests who belonged to the Society of Saint Sulpice. Some (as MM. Ciquard, Matignon, and Cheverus) bent their steps from Baltimore toward the laborious missions among the intolerant and often fanatical Puritans of the North, where the Catholics—a mere handful—were found scattered far and wide; isolated in the midst of a Protestant population; deprived of priests and religious services, and in danger of totally forgetting the faith in which they had been baptized. Nothing discouraged these apostolic men. Aided by divine grace, they awakened the indifferent, converted heretics, gathered about them the few Catholics who immigrated from Europe, attracted all men by their affable and conciliating manners, their intelligence and education, and the disinterestedness of their lives. Soon on this apparently sterile soil Catholic parishes grew up and flourished in the midst of people who had never before seen a priest. Thus were founded the churches of Massachusetts, Maine, and Connecticut—so quickly that, in 1810 (that is to say, only eighteen years after the beginning of the missions), it was deemed advisable to erect for them another bishopric. Congregations had sprung up on every side as if by enchantment, and the venerable Abbé Cheverus was appointed their first bishop.

Others went westward. The Abbés Flaget, Badin, Barriere, Fournier, and Salmon carried the faith into Kentucky. There they found a few Catholic families who had emigrated from Maryland. With them they organized churches, which increased with prodigious rapidity, and were the origin of the present dioceses of Louisville, Covington, Nashville, and Alton.

The Abbés Richard, Levadour, Dilhiet, and several others, passed through the forest and the wilderness, and joined the old French colonies which still survived around the ruins of the French military posts in the Northwest and in the valley of the Mississippi. They found there a few missionaries, whom the Canadian Church still maintained in those distant countries; but their ranks were thin, and they were old and feeble. This precious reinforcement enabled them to give a fresh impetus to the French Catholic congregations over whom they kept watch in the forest. Detroit, Vincennes, Cahokia, Kaskaskia, and afterward St. Geneviève and St. Louis in Missouri, ceded to the United States in 1803, received the visits of these new apostles, and experienced the benefits of their intelligence and zeal. Nearly all the places where they fixed themselves have since given their names to large and flourishing bishoprics.

Several of the emigrant priests remained in Maryland and Virginia, and enabled the Sulpitians to complete the organization of their seminary, while at the same time they assisted Bishop Carroll in providing more perfectly and regularly for the wants of those central provinces which might be called the first home of American Catholicism. The number of the faithful everywhere increased remarkably. We can hardly estimate the extraordinary influence which these French missionaries exercised by their exemplary lives, their learning, their great qualities as men, and their virtues as saints; and the Anglo-Saxon inhabitants (who are thoroughly Protestant if you will, but for all that religious at bottom) were struck by their character all the more forcibly because it was so totally different from what their prejudices had led them to expect of the Catholic clergy.

There is something patriarchal and Homeric in the lives of these men, which read like the poetic legends in which nations have commemorated the history of their first establishment. We have seen the journal of one of these missionaries—the Abbé Bourg, {5} who labored further North, in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. His life was one long, perpetual Odyssey. In the spring he used to start from the Bay of Chaleur, traverse the northern coasts of New Brunswick, pass down the Bay of Fundy, make the entire circuit of the peninsula of Nova Scotia, and after a journey of five hundred leagues, performed in nine or ten months, visit the islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and so come back to his point of departure. From place to place, the news of his approach was sent forward by the settlers, so that whenever he stopped he found the faithful waiting for him, and whole families came fifteen or twenty leagues to meet him. Hardly had he arrived before he began the round of priestly labor, of confession and baptism, of burial and marriage. He was the arbiter of private quarrels, and often of public disputes. He found time withal to look after the education of the children—at least to make sure that they were well taught at home. Thus he would stay fifteen days perhaps in one place, a month in another, according to the number of the inhabitants. The first communion of the children crowned his visit. Then the man of God, with a last blessing on his weeping flock, disappeared for a whole year; and when the apparition so long desired, but so transitory, had passed, it left behind a halo of superhuman glory, which seemed to these pious people the glory rather of a prophet than of an ordinary man.

In such ways the marks of a messenger from God seemed more and more clearly and unmistakably stamped upon the Catholic missionary, and Protestants themselves began to yield to the subtle influence of so much real virtue and self-devotion. Conversions were frequent even among the descendants of the stern Puritans. Many of the most fervent Catholic families in the United States date from this period. A rich Presbyterian minister of Boston (Mr. John Thayer) was converted, and became a priest and an apostle. So God scattered the seed of grace behind the footsteps of his poor, persecuted children, who, despite their apparent misery, bore continually with them the wealth of the soul, the power of the Word, and the marvellous attraction of their sacrifices and virtues.

Providence, however, had not deployed so strong a force for no purpose beyond the capture of these converts. A very few missionaries might have sufficed for that; but it was now time to prepare the land for the great European immigration which was to cause the astonishing growth of the United States. Spreading themselves over the vast area of the Union, the emigrants found everywhere these veteran soldiers whom the French Revolution had sent forth into the New World as pioneers, tried both by the pains of persecution and the labors of apostleship. Before this great human tide the old emigrant priests were like the primitive rocks which arrest and fix geological deposits, The Catholic part of the tossing flood invariably settled around them and their disciples. All over the West the churches founded by the old French settlers increased, and new ones sprang up wherever a Catholic priest established himself. From that moment the grand progressive movement has never ceased. The blood of the martyrs of France, the spirit of her banished apostles, became fruitful of blessings, of which the American churches are daily sensible.

The first bishop in the United States had been appointed in 1789. Four years afterward another see was erected at New Orleans, La., which, ten years later, became a part of the United States; and in 1808, so rapid had been the Catholic development, that three new bishops were consecrated—one for Louisville, Ky., another for New York, and the third for Boston, Mass. Two of these sees were occupied by the French missionaries who had founded them—Bishop {6} Flaget at Louisville, and Bishop Cheverus at Boston. That of New York was entrusted to a venerable priest of English [Irish] origin—the Rev. Luke Concanen. In the whole United States there were then sixty-eight priests and about 100,000 Catholics. Lei us now glance at the rapid increase of the American Church up to our own day.

I.

From the States of Maryland and Pennsylvania the Church was not long in spreading into Virginia, New York, Kentucky, and Ohio. The establishment of sees at Louisville and New York was followed by the erection of others at Philadelphia in 1809, and Richmond and Cincinnati in 1821. The two Carolinas, in which the Catholics had hitherto been an obscure and rigorously proscribed class, received a bishop at Charleston in 1820. New Orleans, a diocese of French creation, was divided in 1824 by the erection of the bishopric of Mobile. The old French colonies in the far West were the nucleus around which were formed other churches. The dioceses of St. Louis, Mo. (organized in 1826), Detroit, Mich. (1832), and Vincennes, Ind. (1834), all took their names from ancient French settlements, and were peopled almost exclusively by descendants of the French Canadians who were their first inhabitants.

Thus, in the course of twenty-six years, we see eight new sees erected, making the number of bishops in the United States thirteen. The number of the clergy amounted in 1830 to 232, and in 1834 probably exceeded 300. At the date of the next official returns (1840) there were 482 priests and three more bishoprics—those of Natchez, Miss., and Nashville, Tenn., both established in 1837, and that of Monterey in California, a country of Spanish settlement which had recently been annexed to the United States. [Footnote 3]

[Footnote 3: Monterey was not a part of the United States until 1848, nor a bishop's see until 1850. In place of it we should substitute Dubuque, made a see in 1837.—ED. C. W.]

But this increase was not comparable to that which followed between 1840 and 1850. In ten years the number of bishops was doubled by the erection of fifteen [seventeen] new sees. In 1840 there were sixteen; in 1850 thirty-one [thirty-three]. The growth during this period was most perceptible in the North and West. Among the new sees were Hartford, Conn., Albany and Buffalo, N. Y., Pittsburg, Penn., Cleveland, O., Chicago, Ill., Milwaukee, Wis., St. Paul, Minn., Oregon City and Nesqualy, Oregon, and Wheeling in Northern Virginia. The others were Little Rock, Ark., Savannah, Ga., Galveston, Texas, and Santa Fé, New Mexico. [Footnote 4] The clergy in 1850 numbered 1,800, having considerably more than doubled [nearly quadrupled] their number in ten years.

[Footnote 4: And San Francisco and Monterey—ED C. W.]

Thus we see that the Church was pressing hard and fast upon the old New England Puritans. They soon began to feel uneasy, and to oppose sometimes a violent resistance to her progress. In some of the States, especially Connecticut and New Hampshire, there were laws against the Catholics yet unrepealed; so that the dominant party had more ways of showing their hatred of the Church than by mere petty vexations. In Boston things went so far that a nunnery was pillaged and burned by a mob. It is from this time that we must date the origin of the Know-Nothing movement, directed ostensibly against foreigners, but undoubtedly animated in the main by hatred of Catholicism and alarm at its progress. The fretting and fuming of this political party was the last effort of Puritan antipathy. The Church prospered in spite of it; so the Puritans resigned themselves to witness her gradual aggressions with the best grace they could assume.

{7}

Ten new sees were established between 1850 and 1860, and eight of these were in the North or West—viz., Erie, Newark, Burlington, Portland, Fort Wayne, Sault St. Marie, Alton, and Brooklyn. Two were in the South—Covington and Natchitoches. There were thus in the United States, in 1860, forty-three bishoprics, with 2,235 priests. Let us now see how many Catholics were embraced in these dioceses, and what proportion they bore to the total population.

The number of the faithful it is not easy to determine accurately; for a false delicacy prevents the Americans from including the statistics of religious belief in their census-tables. Estimates are very variable. A work printed at Philadelphia in 1858 by a Protestant author sets down the number of Catholics as 3,177,140. Dr. Baird, a Protestant minister, published at Paris in 1857 an essay on religion in the United States—an essay, be it remarked, which showed the Catholics no favor—in which he estimated their number at 3,500,000. But neither of these estimates rests upon trustworthy data. They were certainly below the truth when they were made, and are therefore far from large enough now, for the yearly increase is very great.

Our own calculations are drawn partly from our personal observation, and partly from official documents published by various ecclesiastical authorities. The best criterion is undoubtedly the rate of increase of the clergy.

It must be evident that in America, more than in any other country, there is a logical relation between the number of the faithful and the number of the priests. As the clergy depend entirely upon the voluntary contributions of their people, there must be a fixed ratio between the growth of the flocks and the multiplication of pastors. If the clergy increase too fast, they endanger their means of support. Now, if priests cannot live in America without a certain number of parishioners to support them, we may take this number as a basis for calculating the minimum of the Catholic population; and we may safely say that the population will be in reality much greater than this minimum; because, as we can testify from experience, the churches never lack congregations, and in most places the number of the clergy is insufficient to supply even the most pressing religious wants of the people. One never sees a priest in the United States seeking for employment. On the contrary, the cry of spiritual destitution daily goes up from parishes and communities which have no pastors.

Calculations founded upon the statistics of "church accommodations" given in the United States census—that is, of the number of persons the churches are capable of holding—are not applicable to our case; because the Catholic churches, especially in the large cities, are thronged two or three times every Sunday by as many distinct congregations, while the Protestant churches have only one service for all. The capacity of the churches therefore gives us neither the actual number of worshippers nor the proportion between our own people and those of other denominations. We have taken, then, as the basis of our estimate, the ratio between the number of priests and the number of the faithful, correcting the result according to the circumstances of particular places. The first point is to establish this ratio, and we are led by the concurrent results of careful estimates made in some of the States, and special or general calculations which we have had opportunity of making in person, to fix it at the average of one priest for every 2,000 Catholics. But we have a very trustworthy method of verifying this estimate, and that is by comparison between the United States and the contiguous British Provinces, in which the statistics of religious belief are included in the general census. Setting aside Lower Canada, where the Catholic population is as compact as it is in France, we find that in Upper {8} Canada, a country which resembles the Western United States, the ratio in 1860 was one priest for every 1,850 Catholics, and in New Brunswick, a territory very like New England, one for every 2,400. Our average ratio of one for every 2,000 cannot, therefore, be far from the truth. We have made due account of all data by which this ratio could be either raised or lowered in particular times and places. We have ourselves made investigations in certain districts, and persons well qualified to speak on the subject have given us information about others. The result of our corrected calculation gives us 4,400,000 as the Catholic population of the United States in 1860, the date of the last general census. We shall give presently the distribution of this total among the several states; but we wish first to call attention to another fact of great importance which appears from our figures. In 1808 the Catholics were 100,000 in a total population of 6,500,000, or 1/65th of the whole; in 1830 they were 450,000 in 13,000,000, or 1/29th of the whole; in 1840, 960,000 in 17,070,000, or 1/18th; in 1850, 2,150,000 in 23,191,000, or 1/11th; and finally, in 1860 they were over 4,400,000 in 31,000,000, or 1/7th of the total population. It thus appears that for fifty years the Catholics have increased much faster than the rest of the inhabitants, and especially during the last two decades. Between 1840 and 1850 their ratio of increase was 125 per cent., while that of the whole population was only 36; and from 1850 to 1860 their ratio of increase was 109 per cent., while that of the whole people was 35.59. These figures, to be sure, are not mathematically certain, for they are deduced partly from estimates; but we are confident that, considering the imperfect materials at our disposal, we have come as near the exact truth as possible, both in the ratio of increase and in the total population. Official returns in the British Provinces confirm our calculations in a most remarkable manner; and we believe that, estimating the future growth on the most moderate scale, the Catholics will number in 1870 one-fifth of the whole population, and in 1900 not far from one-third.

II.

Having traced the progress of the Church step by step in the United States, it will now be equally interesting and instructive to see how this progress has been made in different places. The Catholics are by no means uniformly dispersed over the country, and their increase has not been equally rapid in all the states. It will be worth our while to see in which quarters they are settled with the most compactness and in which they are widely dispersed; and thus we may predict without great risk which regions are destined to be the Catholic strongholds in the New World. We have already said that the proportion of the Catholics to the whole people in 1860 was as one to seven; but if we divide the country into two parts we shall find that in the Southern states there are only 1,200,000 Catholics in a population of 12,000,000—that is, they are 1/10th of the whole; while in the North they number 3,200,000 in 19,000,000, or more than 1/6th. Even these figures give but a very general idea of the distribution of the faithful. If we take the whole country, state by state, we shall find the proportions still more variable. In some places the Catholic element is already so strong that its ultimate preponderance can hardly be doubted, while its slow development in other quarters promises little for the future. The following tables will enable our readers to comprehend at once the distribution of the Catholics among the various states:

{9}

NORTHERN STATES.

SOUTHERN STATES.

{10}

These tables show at a glance the disproportion between the Catholics of the North and those of the South. In only one Northern state (that of Maine) is the proportion of Catholics as small as 5.45 per cent, of the whole population; while there are no fewer than five Southern states in which it is less than three per cent. If we leave out New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Missouri, and Maryland, where the preponderance of the faithful is due to special causes, we find that in the other Southern states the average proportion is not above four per cent. In other words, in these regions the Church has little better than a nominal existence. This is partly because the stream of European immigration has always flowed in other directions, and partly because the negroes generally adhere to the Baptist or Methodist sects in preference to the Church.

But when we examine the tables more in detail, we see that in both sections the ratio of Catholics varies greatly in different states. It is easy to account for this difference in the South. Six states only have any considerable number of Catholic inhabitants. Louisiana and Missouri owe them to the old French colonies around which the Catholic settlers clustered. In New Mexico, more than three-fourths of the people are of Spanish-Mexican origin. Texas derives a great number of her inhabitants from Mexico, and has received a large Catholic emigration both from Europe and from the United States. Maryland, the germ of the American Church, owes her religious prosperity to the first English Catholic settlers; and the Church in Kentucky is an offshoot of that in Maryland. Such are the special causes of the great differences between the churches of the various Southern states. In the North there is less disparity. European immigration has produced a much more decided effect in this section than in the preceding. From this source come most of the faithful of New York, Oregon, California, Ohio, and New Jersey. In Ohio the Germans have done the principal part, and they have done much also in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The effect of conversions is more perceptible in Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New York than elsewhere. In many of the states, however, and especially in Pennsylvania, we find numerous descendants of English Catholic settlers, while the old French colonies of the West have had their influence upon the population of Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Illinois, and also of the northern part of New York, where the French Canadians are daily spreading their ramifications across the frontier. If we look now at the localities in which the proportion of Catholics is greatest, we shall notice several interesting points touching the laws which have determined the direction of the principal development of the Church, and which will probably promote it in the future. In the South there are what we may call three groups of states in which the Catholic element is notably stronger than in the others. One belongs exclusively to the Southern section, and consists of Louisiana, Texas, and New Mexico, having an aggregate Catholic population of 380,000 in 1,363,800, or 28 per cent. The other groups (Missouri, that is to say, and Maryland and Kentucky) form parts of much larger groups belonging to the Northern states. The first of these latter, and that to which Maryland and Kentucky are attached, consists of Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and Ohio. Its aggregate population is 11,647,477, of whom the Catholics are 2,240,000, or nineteen per cent. This group contains the ancient establishments of Maryland and Pennsylvania—good old Catholic communities, in which the zeal and piety of the faithful possess that firm and decided character which comes of long practice and time-honored traditions. It contains, too, the magnificent seminary of Baltimore, founded and still directed by the Sulpitians. This is the largest and most complete {11} establishment of the kind in the United States, and derives from its connection with the Sulpitian house in Paris special advantages for superintending the education of young ecclesiastics, and training accomplished ministers for the sanctuary. Kentucky, likewise, has some important and noteworthy institutions, such as the seminary of St. Thomas and the college of St. Mary, both of which are in high repute at the West, and the magnificent Abbey of Our Lady of La Trappe at New Haven, with sixty-four religious, eighteen of whom are choir-monks. The Kentucky Catholics deserve a few words of special mention. The descendants, for the most part, of the first settlers of Maryland, who scattered, about a century ago, in order to people new countries, they partake in an eminent degree of the peculiar characteristics which have given to Kentuckians a reputation as the flower of the American people. They are more decidedly American than the Catholics of any other district, and they are remarkable for their homogeneousness, their education, and their attachment to the faith and traditions of the Church.

The most important and numerous Catholic population is found in the state of New York, where the faithful amount to no fewer than 800,000. They have here religious establishments of every kind. This condition of things is the result, in great measure, of the well-known ability of Archbishop Hughes, whose death has left a void which the American clergy will find it hard to fill. His reputation was not confined to the Empire City. He was as well known all over the Union as at his own see, and was everywhere regarded as one of the great men of the country. Although the progress of the faith in New York has been owing in a very great degree to immigration, it is in this city and in Boston that conversions have been most numerous; and in effecting these, Archbishop Hughes had a most important share. It is not surprising, then, that his death should have caused a profound sensation in the city, and that all religious denominations should have united in testifying respect for his memory.

It is difficult to apply a statistical table to the study of the question of conversions. These are mental operations of infinite variety, both in their origin and in their ways; for the methods of Providence are as many and as diverse as the shades of human thought upon which they act. It may be remarked, however, that the different Protestant sects furnish very unequal contingents to the little army of souls daily returning to the true faith; and it is a curious fact that the two sects which furnish the most are the Episcopalians, who, in their forms and traditions, approach nearest to the Catholic Church, and the Unitarians, who go to the very opposite extreme, and appear to push their philosophical and rationalistic principles almost beyond the pale of Christianity. These two sects generally comprise the most enlightened and intellectual people of North America. On the other hand, the denominations which embrace the more ignorant portions of the population (such as the Baptists, the Wesleyan Methodists, etc., etc.) furnish, in proportion to their numbers, but few converts. The principal Catholic review in the United States (Brownson's Review, published in New York) is edited by a well-known convert, whose name it bears, and who was formerly a Unitarian minister.

Further North—in New England—there is another Catholic group, of recent origin, formed of the Puritan states of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. The first see here was established by Bishop Cheverus only sixty years ago. These bishoprics, however, have already acquired importance; for in the diocese of Hartford the Catholics are now sixteen per cent, of the whole population, and the rapidity of their increase and the completeness of their church organization give us ground for bright hopes of their future progress. Immigration {12} here does much to promote conversions, and it will not be extravagant to anticipate that in the course of a few years the number of the faithful will be doubled. The Pilot, the most important Catholic journal in the country, is published in Boston.

The far West, only a few years ago, was a great wilderness, with only a few French posts scattered here and there in the Indian forest, like little islands in the midst of a great ocean. Now it is divided into several states, and counts millions of inhabitants. In this rapid transformation, Catholicism has not remained behind. Many dioceses have been established, and the quickness of their growth has already placed this group in the second rank so far as regards numerical importance, while all goes to show that Catholicism is destined here to preponderate greatly over all other denominations. The states of Missouri, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota contained, in 1860, 4,575,000 souls, of whom 890,000, or 19 per cent., were Catholics. This is as large a proportion as we find in the central group. It is, moreover, rapidly rising, and only one thing is necessary to make these states before long the principal seats of Catholicism in the Union—that is, an adequate supply of priests. It is of the utmost importance that the demand for missionaries in these diocese be supplied at whatever cost.

The principal causes of this remarkable increase are, first, the crowds of immigrants attracted by the great extent of fertile land thrown open to settlers; and, secondly, the fact that the Catholic immigrants on their arrival clustered, so to speak, around the old French settlements, where the missionaries still maintained the discipline and worship of the Church. At first, therefore, it was easy to direct this great influx of people, since they naturally tended toward the pre-existing centres of faith. The consequence was that the Church lost by apostacies fewer members than one might have supposed, and fewer than were lost in other places. But now the daily augmenting crowds of immigrants are dispersing themselves through less solitary regions. They are coming under more direct and various influences; and hence the necessity for increasing the number of churches and parish priests becomes daily more and more urgent. At the same time, the means at the disposal of the bishops become daily less and less adequate for supplying this want, especially since the people of the country, new and unsettled as they are, and absorbed in material cares, furnish but few candidates for the priesthood. Here we see a glorious field for the far-reaching benevolence of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith. Nowhere, we believe, will the sending forth of pious and devoted priests produce fruits comparable to those of which the past gives promise to the future in this part of the United States. We spoke just now of the old French colonies, and our readers will perhaps be surprised that we should have made so much account of those poor little villages, which numbered hardly more than from 500 to 1,500 souls each when the Yankees began to come into the country. Nevertheless, we have not exaggerated their importance. It is not only that they served as centres and rallying-points; but so rapid is the multiplication of families in America that this French population which, if brought together in one mass in 1800, would have counted at most 14,000 souls, now numbers, including both the original settlements and the swarms of emigrants who have gone from them to the West, not fewer than 80,000. Their descendants are always easily recognized. Detroit, and its neighborhood in Michigan, Vincennes (Ind.), Cahokia and Kaskaskia (Ill.), St. Louis, St. Geneviève, Carondelet, etc. (Mo.), Green Bay and Prairie du Chien (Wis.), St. Paul (Minn.)—all these old settlements have preserved the deep imprint of our race. Even in the new colonies which were afterward drawn from them, the French population have uniformly kept up the practice of their religion, {13} the use of their mother tongue, and a lively recollection of their origin. Of this fact we have obtained proof in several instances from careful personal observation. Small and poor, therefore, as these settlements were, they had a powerful moral influence upon the great immigration of the nineteenth century. The Catholic immigrants felt drawn toward them by the attraction of a community of thought and customs; and God, whose Providence rules our lives, directed the movement by his own inscrutable methods.

III.

While the Catholic element was increasing at the rate of 80, 125, and 109 per cent, every ten years, other religious denominations showed an increase of only twenty or twenty-five per cent. Some remained stationary, and a few even lost ground. Whence comes this continued and increasing disparity in the development of different portions of the same people? The principal reason assigned for it is the immense emigration from Ireland to America. As the number of Catholics in the United States when the emigration began was very small, every swarm of fresh settlers added much more to their ratio of increase than to that of other denominations. Ten added to ten gives an increase of 100 per cent.; but the same number added to 100 gives only ten per cent. At first sight, this seems a sufficient explanation; but we shall find, when we come to examine it, that it does not really account for our increase. If the growth of the American Catholic Church were the result wholly of immigration, we should find that as the number of Catholic inhabitants increased, the apparent effect of this immigration would be diminished. In other words, the ratio of increase would gradually fall to an equality with that of other denominations. But, so far from this being the case, the difference between our ratio of increase and that of the Protestant sects is as great as ever--is even growing greater. The ratio which was ten per cent. a year between 1830 and 1840, rose to 12.50 per cent, a year between 1840 and 1850, and was 10.09 per cent, between 1850 and 1860. There are other causes, therefore, beside European emigration to which we must look for an explanation of Catholic progress in America. If we study with a little attention the extent to which immigration has influenced the development of the whole population of the country, and the exact proportion of the Catholic part of this immigration, we shall find confirmation of the conclusions to which we have been led by the simple testimony of figures. Immigration has never furnished more than six or seven per cent. of the decennial increase of the population of the United States, the growth of which has been at the rate of thirty-five per cent, during the same period. Immigration, therefore, contributed to it only one-fifth. Again, of these immigrants, including both Irish and Germans, not more than one-third have been Catholics. Moreover, we must take account of the considerable number of members that the Church has lost in the course of their dispersion all over the country.

Clearly, then, the influence of immigration is not enough to account for the rapid progress of the faith. A careful analysis of the Catholic population at different tunes, and in different places, enables us to specify two other causes.

1. The Catholics are principally distributed at the North among the free states, where the population increases much faster than it does at the South; and the Catholic families, it has been observed, multiply much faster than the others, in consequence, no doubt, of their more active and regular habits of life, sustained morality, respect for the marriage tie, and regard for domestic obligations. This difference in fecundity is quite perceptible wherever the Catholic element {14} is strong—as in Canada, and the states of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, etc., and, among the Southern states, in Louisiana, Maryland, and Missouri.

2. Another cause of increase is the conversion of Protestants—a cause which operates slowly, quietly, and, at first, imperceptibly, but with that constant and uniform power—reminding us of the great operations of nature—which is almost always the sign of a Providential agency. Eloquent theorists and brilliant writers on statistics, preferring salient facts and striking phenomena—what they call the great principles of science—too often overlook or despise those obscure movements which act quietly upon the human conscience. Yet how much more powerful is this mysterious action—like the continual dropping of water—than the showy effects which captivate so many thinkers, whose organs of perception seem dazzled by the glow of their imagination! Such was the nature of the invisible operation which was inaugurated by the preaching of the martyrs of the faith whom the French Revolution cast forth like seed all over the world. The rules of political economy had nothing to do with it. It acted in the secret chambers of men's hearts and the retirement of their meditative moments, and it has gone on without interruption to the present moment, increasing year by year. The Church seizes upon the convictions of grown men; reaches the young by her admirable systems of education; impresses all by her living, persuasive propagandism, made beautiful by the zeal and devotion and holiness of her missionaries. Simple and dignified, without the affectation of dignity— austere, without fanaticism—their presence alone roots up old prejudices, while their preaching and example fill the soul with new lights and with anxieties which nothing but their instructions can set at rest. Thus, wherever they go, the thoughts and comparisons which they suggest multiply conversions all around them. You have only to question a few Catholic families in the older states about their early religious history, and you will see how important an element in the prosperity of the Church is this force of attraction—so important, that the following statement may almost be taken as a general law: Wherever a Catholic priest establishes himself, though there be not a Catholic family in the place, it is almost certain that by the end of a time which varies from five to ten years, he will be surrounded by a Catholic community large enough to form a parish and support a clergyman. This rule seems to us to have no exception except in some of the southern states. We have no hesitation in stating it broadly of even those parts of New England in which the anti-Catholic feeling is now strongest.

We shall presently have occasion to show that the only thing which prevents the American Church from increasing, perhaps doubling, the rapidity of its progress, is the scarcity of ecclesiastics and missionaries, from which all the dioceses are suffering.

We have explained the important part which converts have played in this progress. The inquiry naturally arises: Whence come so many conversions? What are the causes which generally lead to them? These are delicate and difficult questions. We have no wish to speak ill of the Protestant clergy. Most of them are certainly honorable men, estimable husbands and good fathers; but we cannot help observing that they lack the sacerdotal character so conspicuous in the Catholic priest. Their ministry and their teaching cannot fully satisfy the soul; and whenever a calm and unprejudiced comparison is drawn between them and the Catholic clergy, it is strange if the former do not suffer by the contrast, and behold their flocks, little by little, passing over to the side of the Church. This comparison is one motive which often leads Protestants, not precisely into {15} the bosom of the faith, but to the study of Catholic doctrine; and this is a step by no means easy to persuade them to take; for, of every ten Protestants who honestly study the faith, seven or eight end by becoming Catholics. The Americans are a people of a strong religious bent. Nothing which concerns the great question of religion is indifferent to them. They study and reflect upon such matters much more than we skeptical and critical Frenchmen. The conversions resulting from such frequent consideration of religious matters ought, therefore, to be far more numerous in America, and even in England, than in other countries.

There are doubtless many other causes which contribute to the same result. Among them are mixed marriages, which generally turn out to the advantage of the Church, especially in the case of educated people in the upper ranks in society. Not only are the children of these marriages brought up Catholics, but almost always, as experience has shown us, the Protestant parent becomes a Catholic too.

The excellent houses of education directed by religious orders are another active cause of conversions. If elementary education is almost universal in the United States, it is nevertheless true that the higher institutions of learning are exceedingly defective. The colleges and boarding-schools founded under the direction of the Catholic clergy, though inferior to those of France in the thoroughness of the education they impart and the amount of study required of their pupils, are yet vastly superior to all other American establishments in their method, their discipline, and the attainments of their professors. The consequence is that they are resorted to by numbers of Protestant youth of both sexes. No compulsion is used to make them Catholics; no undue influence is exerted; the press, free as it is, rarely finds excuse for complaint on this score; but facts and doctrines speak for themselves. The good examples and affectionate solicitude which surround these young people, and the friendships they contract, leave a deep impression on their minds, and plant the seed of serious thought, which sooner or later bears fruit. Various circumstances may lead to the final development of this seed. Now perhaps a first great sorrow wakens it into life; now it is quickened by new ideas born of study and experience; in one case the determining influence may be a marriage; in another, intercourse with Catholic society; and not a few may be moved by the falsity of the notions of Catholicism which they find current among Protestants, and which their own experience enables them to detect. This motive operates oftener than people suppose, and generally with those who at school or college seemed most bitterly hostile to the faith. In tine, those who have been educated at Catholic institutions are less prejudiced and better prepared for the action of divine grace, which Providence may send through any one of a thousand channels.

And lastly, Catholicism acts upon the Americans through the medium of the habits and customs to which it gradually attaches them, the result of which is that in the growth of the population the Church makes a constant, an insensible, and what we might call a spontaneous increase. It is a well-known fact that the Catholic families of North America, as a general rule, are distinguished by a character of stability, good order, and moderation which is often wanting in the Yankee race. Now this turns to the advantage of the Church; for it is evident that a people which fixes itself permanently where it has once settled, which concentrates itself, so to speak, has a better chance of acquiring a predominance in the long run than one of migratory habits, always in pursuit of some better state which always eludes it. This truth is nowhere more apparent than in a county of Upper Canada where we spent nearly three years. The county of Glengarry was settled {16} in 1815 by Scotchmen, some of whom were Catholics. The colony increased partly by the natural multiplication of the settlers, partly by immigration, until about 1840, when immigration almost totally ceased, all the lands being occupied. The population was then left to grow by natural increase alone. The Protestants at that time were considerably in the majority; but by 1850 the proportions began to change, and out of 17,576 inhabitants 8,870 were Catholics. In 1860 the majority was completely reversed, and in a population of 21,187 there were 10,919 Catholics; in other words, the latter, by the regular operation of natural causes, had gained every year from one to two per cent, upon the whole. It would not be easy to give a detailed explanation of this fact; we are only conscious that some mysterious and irresistible agency is gradually augmenting the proportion of the Catholic element in American society and weakening the Protestant.

American society might be compared to a troubled expanse of water holding various substances in solution. The solid bottom upon which the waters rest is formed by the deposit of these substances, and day after day, during the moments of rest which follow every agitation of the waves, more and more of the Catholic element is precipitated which the waters bring with them at each successive influx, but fail to carry off again. It is by this human alluvium that our religion grows and extends itself; and if this growth is wonderful, it may be that the effect of the infusion of so much sound doctrine into American society will prove equally astonishing and precious.

Great stress has often been laid upon the good qualities of the American people, but comparatively few have spoken of their faults; not because they had none, but because their faults were lost sight of in the brilliancy of their material prosperity. But recent events have led to more reflection upon this point; so it will not astonish our readers if we point oat one or two, such as the decay of thoughtful, systematic, methodical intelligence among them, in comparison with Europeans; their narrowness of mind; their inaptitude for general ideas; and their sensibly diminishing delicacy of mind. These defects show an unsuspected but serious and rapid degeneracy of the Anglo-American race, and the decline has already perhaps gone further than one would readily believe. If Catholicism, which tends eminently to develop a spirit of method and order, broadness of view and delicacy of sentiment, should combat successfully these failings, it would render a signal service to the United States in return for the liberty which they have granted it.

But Catholics, we should add, are indebted to the United States for something more than simple liberty. They have there learned to appreciate their real power. They have learned by experience how little they have to fear from pure universal liberty, how much strength and influence they can acquire in such a state of society. There is this good and this evil in liberty—that it always proves to the advantage of the strong; so that when there is question of the relations between man and man, it must be a well-regulated liberty, or it will result in the oppression of the weak. But the case is different when it comes to a question of discordant doctrines: man has everything to gain by the triumph of sound, strong principles and the destruction of false and specious theories. In such a contest, let but each side appear in its true colors, and we have nothing to fear for the cause of truth. The United States will at least have had the merit of affording an opportunity for a powerful demonstration of the truth; and great as are the advantages which the Catholic Church can confer upon the country, she herself will reap still greater advantages by conferring them; for it will turn to her benefit in her action upon the world at large.

In fact, the experience of the Church {17} in America has doubtless gone for something in the familiarity which religious minds are gradually acquiring with the principles of political liberty; and thus the growth of American Catholicism is allied to the world-wide reaction which is now taking place after the religious eclipse of the last century. This transformation of the United States, in truth, is only one marked incident in the intellectual revolution which is drawing the whole world toward the Catholic Church—England as well as America, Germany as well as England, even Bulgaria in the far East. The foreign press brings us daily the signs of this progress; and nothing can be easier than to point them out in France under our own eyes. But unfortunately we have been too much in the habit, for the last century, of leading a life of continual mortification, too conscious that we were laughed at by the leaders of public opinion. We crawled along in fear and trembling, creeping close to the walls, dreading at every step to give offence, or to cause scandal, or to lose some of our brethren. Accustomed to see our ranks thinned and whole files carried off in the flower of their youth, we stood in too great fear of the deceitful power of doctrines which seemed to promise everything to man and ask nothing from him in return. And therefore many of us still find it hard to understand the new state of things in which we are making progress without external help. This progress, however, inaugurated by the energy of a few, the perseverance of all, and the overruling hand of divine Providence, is unquestionably going on, and may easily be proved. We have only to visit our churches, attend some of the special retreats for men, or look at the Easter communions, to see what long steps faith and religious practice have taken within the last forty years. The change is most perceptible among the educated classes and in the learned professions. We have heard old professors express their astonishment in comparing the schools of the present time with those of their youth. It was then almost impossible to find a young man at the École Polytechnique, at St. Cyr, or at the École Centrale, with enough faith and enough courage openly to profess his religion; now it may be said that a fifth or perhaps a fourth part of the students openly and unhesitatingly perform their Easter duty. We ourselves remember that no longer ago than 1830 it required a degree of courage of which few were found capable to manifest any religious sentiment in the public lyceums. Voltairianism—or to speak better, an intolerant fanaticism—delighted to cover these faithful few with public ridicule; while now, if we may believe the best authorized accounts, it is only a small minority who openly profess infidelity. We can affirm that in the School of Law the change is quite as great, and it has begun to operate even in that time-honored stronghold of materialism, the School of Medicine.

But what must strike us most forcibly in the examination of these questions is the fact, already pointed out by the Abbé Meignan, that the progress of religion has kept even pace with the extension of free institutions. Wherever the liberal régime has been established, the reaction in favor of religion has become stronger, no doubt because liberty places man face to face with the consequences of his own acts and the necessities of his feeble nature. Man is never so powerfully impelled to draw near to God as when he becomes conscious of his own weakness; never so deeply impressed with the emptiness of false doctrines as when he has experienced their nothingness in the practical affairs of life. The violence of external disorder soon leads him to, reflect upon the necessity of solid, methodical, moral education, such as regulates one's life, and such as the Church alone can impart. And therefore the great change of sentiment of which we have spoken is perceptible chiefly among the educated and liberal classes, while with the ignorant and {18} vulgar infidelity holds its own and is even gaining. The educated classes, more thoughtful, knowing the world and having experience of men, see further and calculate more calmly the tendency of events; with the common people reason and plain sense are often overpowered by the violence of their temperament and the impetuosity of their passions. Ignorance and inordinate desires do the rest, and they imagine that man will know how to conduct without knowing how to govern himself.

Whatever demagogues may say, history proves that the head always rules the body. The period of discouragement and apprehension is past. We shall yet, no doubt, have to go through trials, and violent crises, and perhaps cruel persecutions; but we may hope everything from the future. And why not? If we study the history of the Jewish people, we shall see how God chastises his people in order to rouse them from their moral torpor, and raise them up from apparent ruin by unforeseen means. Weakness, in his hand, at once becomes strength; he asks of us nothing but faith and courage. We have traced his Providence in the methods by which he has stimulated the growth of the American Church—methods all the more effectual because, unlike our own vain enterprises, they worked for a long time in silence and obscurity. These Western bishoprics remained almost unknown up to the day when, the light bursting forth all at once, the world beheld a Church already organized, already strong, where it had not suspected even her existence.

There is a magnificent and instructive scene in Athalie, where the veil of the temple is rent, and discloses to the eyes of the terrified queen, Joas, whom she had believed dead, standing in his glory surrounded by an army. Even so, it seems to us, was the American Church suddenly revealed in all her vigor to the astonished world, when her bishops came two years ago to take their place in the council at Rome. And the same progress is making all over the globe. Noiseless and unobtrusive, it attracts no attention from the world; it is overlooked by Utopian theorists; it goes on quietly in the domain of conscience; but the day will come when its light will break forth and astonish mankind by its brightness. Such are the ways of God!

NOTE.—The greater part of the materials for the preceding article were written or collected during the course of a journey which we made in the United States in 1860. Since then the progress of Catholicism has necessarily been somewhat checked by the events of the lamentable civil war which is desolating the country; but the check has been far less serious than might have reasonably been apprehended. Religion has been kept apart from political dissensions and public disorders; it has only had to suffer the common evils which war, mortality, and general impoverishment have inflicted upon the whole people. If all these things are to have any bad effect upon the progress of the Church, it will be in future years, not now. In fact, all the documents which we have been able to collect show that the numbers of both the faithful and the clergy, instead of falling off, have gone on increasing. In thirty-eight dioceses there are now 275 more priests than there were in 1860; from the five other sees, namely, those of New Orleans, Galveston, Mobile, Natchitoches, and Charleston, we have no returns. This increase is confined almost entirely to the regions in which the Church was already strongest; elsewhere matters have remained about stationary.

Of this number of 275 priests added to the Church in the course of three years, 251 belong to the following fourteen dioceses, namely: Baltimore, Pittsburg, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Brooklyn, Albany, Alton, Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul, Detroit, Fort Wayne, Vincennes, and Hartford. The last-named belongs to the {19} Northeastern or New England group, all the others to the Central and Western. Thus fourteen dioceses alone show nine-tenths of the total increase, and the others divide the remaining tenth among them in very minute fractions. From some states, it is true, the returns are very meagre, and from others they are altogether wanting; but the disproportion is so strong as to leave no doubt that the future conquests of the Church in the United States will be gained, as we have already said, principally in the Middle and Western States.

E. R.

From The Month.

THE ANCIENT SAINTS OF GOD.

A FRENCH OFFICER'S STORY.

BY THE LATE CARDINAL WISEMAN.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTION.

We often practically divide the saints into three classes. The ancient saints, those of the primitive age of Christianity, we consider as the patrons of the universal Church, watching over its well-being and progress, but, excepting Rome, having only a general connection with the interests of particular countries, still less of individuals.

The great saints of the middle age, belonging to different races and countries, have naturally become their patrons, being more especially reverenced and invoked in the places of their births, their lives, and still more their deaths; whence, St. Willibrord, St. Boniface, and St. Walburga are more honored in Germany, where they died, than in England, where they were born.

The third class includes the more modern saints, who spoke our yet living languages, printed their books, followed the same sort of life, wore the same dress as we do, lived in houses yet standing, founded institutions still flourishing, rode in carriages, and in another generation would have traveled by railway. Such are St. Charles, St. Ignatius, St. Philip, St. Teresa, St. Vincent, B. Benedict Joseph, and many others. Toward these we feel a personal devotion independent of country; nearness of time compensating for distance of place. There is indeed one class of saints who belong to every age and every country; devotion toward whom, far from diminishing, increases the further we recede from their time and even their land. For we are convinced that a Chinese convert has a more sensitive and glowing devotion toward our Blessed Lady, than a Jewish neophyte had in the first century. When I hear this growth of piety denounced or reproached by Protestants, I own I exult in it.

For the only question, and there is none in a Catholic mind, is whether such a feeling is good in itself; if so, growth in it, age by age, is an immense blessing and proof of the divine presence. It is as if one told me that there is more humility now in the Church than there was in the first century, more zeal than in the third, more faith than in the eighth, more charity than in the twelfth. And so, if there is more devotion now than there was 1,800 years ago toward the Immaculate Mother of God, toward {20} her saintly spouse, toward St. John, St. Peter, and the other Apostles, I rejoice; knowing that devotion toward our divine Lord, his infancy, his passion, his sacred heart, his adorable eucharist, has not suffered loss or diminution, but has much increased. It need not be, and it is not, as John the Baptist said, "He must increase, and I diminish." Both here increase together; the Lord, and those who best loved him.

But this is more than a subject of joy: it is one of admiration and consolation. For it is the natural course of things that sympathies and affections should grow less by time. We care and feel much less about the conquests of William I., or the prowess of the Black Prince, than we do about the victories of Nelson or Wellington; even Alfred is a mythical person, and Boadicea fabulous; and so it is with all nations. A steadily increasing affection and intensifying devotion (as in this case we call it) for those remote from us, in proportion as we recede from them, is as marvellous—nay, as miraculous—as would be the flowing of a stream from its source up a steep hill, deepening and widening as it rose. And such I consider this growth, through succeeding ages, of devout feeling toward those who were the root, and seem to become the crown, or flower, of the Church. It is as if a beam from the sun, or a ray from a lamp, grew brighter and warmer in proportion as it darted further from its source.

I cannot but see in this supernatural disposition evidence of a power ruling from a higher sphere than that of ordinary providence, the laws of which, uniform elsewhere, are modified or even reversed when the dispensations of the gospel require it; or rather, these have their own proper and ordinary providence, the laws of which are uniform within its system. And this is one illustration, that what by every ordinary and natural course should go on diminishing, goes on increasing. But I read in this fact an evidence also of the stability and perpetuity of our faith; for a line that is ever growing thinner and thinner tends, through its extenuation, to inanition and total evanescence; whereas one that widens and extends as it advances and becomes more solid, thereby gives earnest and proof of increasing duration.

When we are attacked about practices, devotions, or corollaries of faith—"developments," in other words—do we not sometimes labor needlessly to prove that we go no further than the Fathers did, and that what we do may be justified from ancient authorities? Should we not confine ourselves to showing, even with the help of antiquity, that what is attacked is good, is sound, and is holy; and then thank God that we have so much more of it than others formerly possessed? If it was right to say "Ora pro nobis" once in the day, is it not better to say it seven times a day; and if so, why not seventy times seven? The rule of forgiveness may well be the rule of seeking intercession for it. But whither am I leading you, gentle reader? I promised you a story, and I am giving you a lecture, and I fear a dry one. I must retrace my steps. I wished, therefore, merely to say that, while the saints of the Church are very naturally divided by us into three classes—holy patrons of the Church, of particular portions of it, and of its individual members—there is one raised above all others, which passes through all, composed of protectors, patrons, and nomenclators, of saints themselves. For how many Marys, how many Josephs, Peters, Johns, and Pauls, are there not in the calendar of the saints, called by those names without law of country or age!

But beyond this general recognition of the claims of our greatest saints, one cannot but sometimes feel that the classification which I have described is carried by us too far; that a certain human dross enters into the composition of our devotion; we perhaps nationalize, or even individualize, {21} the sympathies of those whose love is universal, like God's own, in which alone they love. We seem to fancy that St. Edward and St. Frideswida are still English; and some persons appear to have as strong an objection to one of their children bearing any but a Saxon saint's name as they have to Italian architecture. We may be quite sure that the power and interest in the whole Church have not been curtailed by the admission of others like themselves, first Christians on earth, then saints in heaven, into their blessed society; but that the friends of God belong to us all, and can and will help us, if we invoke them, with loving impartiality. The little history which I am going to relate serves to illustrate this view of saintly intercession; it was told me by the learned and distinguished prelate whom I shall call Monsig. B. He has, I have heard, since published the narrative; but I will give it as I heard it from his lips.

CHAPTER II.

THE FRENCH OFFICER'S FIRST APPEARANCE.

On the 30th of last month—I am writing early in August—we all commemorated the holy martyrs, Sts. Abdon and Sennen. This in itself is worthy of notice. Why should we in England, why should they in America, be singing the praises of two Persians who lived more than fifteen hundred years ago? Plainly because we are Catholics, and as such in communion with the saints of Persia and the martyrs of Decius. Yet it may be assumed that the particular devotion to these two Eastern martyrs is owing to their having suffered in Rome, and so found a place in the calendar of the catacombs, the basis of later martyrologies. Probably after having been concealed in the house of Quirinus the deacon, their bodies were buried in the cemetery or catacomb of Pontianus, outside the present Porta Portese, on the northern bank of the Tiber. In that catacomb, remarkable for containing the primitive baptistery of the Church, there yet remains a monument of these saints, marking their place of sepulture. [Footnote 5] Painted on the wall is a "floriated" and jewelled cross; not a conventional one such as mediaeval art introduced, but a plain cross, on the surface of which the painter imitated natural jewels, and from the foot of which grow flowers of natural forms and hues; on each side stands a figure in Persian dress and Phrygian cap, with the names respectively running down in letters one below the other:

SANCTVS ABDON: SANCTVS SENNEN.

The bodies are no longer there. They were no doubt removed, as most were, in the eighth century, to save them from Saracenic profanation, and translated to the basilica of St. Mark in Rome. There they repose, with many other martyrs no longer distinguishable; since the ancient usage was literally to bury the bodies of martyrs in a spacious crypt or chamber under the altar, so as to verify the apocalyptic description, "From under the altar of God all the saints cry aloud." This practice has been admirably illustrated by the prelate to whom I have referred, in a work on this very crypt, or, in ecclesiastical language, Confession of St. Mark's.

[Footnote 5: See Fabiola, pp. 362, 363.]

One 30th of July, soon after the siege of Rome in 1848, the chapter of St. Mark's were singing the office and mass of these Persian martyrs, as saints of their church. Most people on week-days content themselves with hearing early a low mass, so that the longer offices of the basilica, especially the secondary ones, are not much frequented. On this occasion, however, a young French officer was noticed by {22} the canons as assisting alone with great recollection.

At the close of the function, my informant went up to the young man, and entered into conversation with him.

"What feast are you celebrating today?" asked the officer.

"That of Sts. Abdon and Sennen," answered Monsignor B.

"Indeed! how singular!"

"Why? Have you any particular devotion to those saints?"

"Oh, yes; they are my patron saints. The cathedral of my native town is dedicated to them, and possesses their bodies."

"You must be mistaken there: their holy relics repose beneath our altar; and we have to-day kept their feast solemnly on that account."

On this explanation of the prelate the young officer seemed a little disconcerted, and remarked that at P— everybody believed that the saints' relics were in the cathedral.

The canon, as he then was, of St. Mark's, though now promoted to the "patriarchal" basilica of St. John, explained to him how this might be, inasmuch as any church possessing considerable portions of larger relics belonging to a saint was entitled to the privilege of one holding the entire body, and was familiarly spoken of as actually having it; and this no doubt was the case at P—.

"But, beside general grounds for devotion to these patrons of my native city, I have a more particular and personal one; for to their interposition I believe I owe my life."

The group of listeners who had gathered round the officer was deeply interested in this statement, and requested him to relate the incident to which he alluded. He readily complied with their request, and with the utmost simplicity made the following brief recital.

CHAPTER III.

THE OFFICER'S NARRATIVE.

"During the late siege of Rome I happened to be placed in an advanced post, with a small body of soldiers, among the hillocks between our headquarters in the villa Pamphily-Doria and the gate of St. Pancratius. The post was one of some danger, as it was exposed to the sudden and unsparing sallies made by the revolutionary garrison on that side. The broken ground helped to conceal us from the marksmen and the artillery on the walls. However, that day proved to be one of particular danger. Without warning, a sortie was made in force, either merely in defiance or to gain possession of some advantageous post; for you know how the church and convent of St. Pancratius was assailed by the enemy, and taken and retaken by us several times in one day. The same happened to the villas near the walls. There was no time given us for speculation or reflection. We found ourselves at once in presence of a very superior force, or rather in the middle of it; for we were completely surrounded. We fought our best; but escape seemed impossible. My poor little picket was soon cut to pieces, and I found myself standing alone in the midst of our assailants, defending myself as well as I could against such fearful odds. At length I felt I was come to the last extremity, and that in a few moments I should be lying with my brave companions. Earnestly desiring to have the suffrages of my holy patrons in that my last hour, I instinctively exclaimed, 'Sts. Abdon and Sennen, pray for me!' What then happened I cannot tell. Whether a sudden panic struck my enemies, or something more important called off their attention, or what else to me inexplicable—occurred, I cannot say; all that I know is, that somehow or other I found myself alone, unwounded {23} and unhurt, with my poor fellows lying about, and no enemy near.

"Do you not think that I have a right to attribute this most wonderful and otherwise unaccountable escape to the intercession and protection of Sts. Abdon and Sennen?"

I need scarcely say that this simple narrative touched and moved deeply all its hearers. No one was disposed to dissent from the young Christian officer's conclusion.

CHAPTER IV.

THE EXPLANATION.

It was natural that those good ecclesiastics who composed the chapter of St. Mark's should feel an interest in their youthful acquaintance. His having accidentally, as it seemed, but really providentially, strolled into their church at such a time, with so singular a bond of sympathy with its sacred offices that day, necessarily drew them in kindness toward him. His ingenuous piety and vivid faith gained their hearts.

In the conversation which followed, it was discovered that all his tastes and feelings led him to love and visit the religious monuments of Rome; but that he had no guide or companion to make his wanderings among them as useful and agreeable as they might be made. It was good-naturedly and kindly suggested to him to come from time to time to the church, when some one of the canons would take him with him on his ventidue ore walk after vespers, and act the cicerone to him, if they should visit some interesting religious object. This offer he readily accepted, and the intelligent youth and his reverend guides enjoyed pleasant afternoons together. At last one pleasanter than all occurred, when in company with Monsignor B.

Their ramble that evening led them out of the Porta Portuensis, among the hills of Monte Verde, between it and the gate of St. Pancratius— perhaps for the purpose of visiting that interesting basilica. Be it as it may, suddenly, while traversing a vineyard, the young man stopped.

"Here," he exclaimed, "on this very spot, I was standing when my miraculous deliverance took place."

"Are you sure?"

"Quite. If I lived a hundred years, I could never forget it. It is the very spot."

"Then stand still a moment," rejoined the prelate; "we are very near the entrance to the cemetery of Pontianus. I wish to measure the distance."

He did so by pacing it.

"Now," he said, "come down into the catacomb, and observe the direction from where you stand to the door." The key was soon procured.

They accordingly went down, proceeded as near as they could judge toward the point marked over-head, measured the distance paced above, and found themselves standing before the memorial of Sts. Abdon and Sennen.

"There," said the canon to his young friend; "you did not know that, when you were invoking your holy patrons, you were standing immediately over their tomb."

The young officer's emotion may be better conceived than described on discovering this new and unexpected coincidence in the history of his successful application to the intercession of ancient saints.

SANCTI ABDON ET SENNEN, ORATE PRO NOBIS.

{24}

From The Lamp.

A PILGRIMAGE TO ARS.

I went to Lyons for the express purpose of visiting the tomb of the Curé of Ars; for I knew the village of Ars was not very far from that city, though I had but a vague idea as to where it was situated or how it was to be reached. I trusted, however, to obtaining all needful information from the people at the hotel where I was to pass the night; and I was not mistaken in my expectations; but I must confess, to my sorrow, that I felt for a moment a very English sort of shamefacedness about making the inquiry. Put to the waiter of an English hotel, such a question would simply have produced a stare of astonishment or a smile of pity. A visit to the tomb of the Duke of Wellington at St. Paul's, or a descent into kingly vaults for the wise purpose of beholding Prince Albert's coffin, with its wreaths of flowers laid there by royal and loving hands these things he would have sympathized with and understood. But a pilgrimage to the last resting-place of a man who, even admitting he were at that moment a saint in heaven, had been but a simple parish-priest upon earth, would have been a proceeding utterly beyond his capacity to comprehend, and he would undoubtedly have pronounced it either an act of insanity or one of superstition, or something partaking of the nature of the two. I forgot, for a moment, that I was in a Catholic country, and inquired my way to Ars with an uncomfortable expectation of a sneering answer in return. Once, however, that the question was fairly put, there was nothing left for me but to be ashamed of my own misgivings.

"Madame wished to visit the tomb of the sainted Curé?—mais oui. It was the easiest thing in the world. Only an hour's railway from Lyons to Villefranche; and an omnibus at the latter station, which had been established for the express purpose of accommodating the pilgrims, who still flocked to Ars from every quarter of the Catholic world."

I listened, and my way seemed suddenly to become smooth before me. Later on in the evening, I found that the housemaid of the hotel had been there often; and two or three times at least during the lifetime of the Curé. I asked her for what purpose she had gone there; whether to be cured of bodily ailments or to consult him on spiritual matters? "For neither one nor the other," she answered, with great simplicity; "but she had had a great grief, and her mother had taken her to him to be comforted." There was something to me singularly lovely in this answer, and in the insight which it gave me into the nature of that mission, so human, and yet so divine, which the Curé had accomplished in his lifetime. God had placed him there, like another John the Baptist, to announce penance to the world. He preached to thousands—he converted thousands—he penetrated into the hidden consciences of thousands, and laid his finger, as if by intuition, upon the hidden sore that kept the soul from God. Men, great by wealth and station, came to him and laid their burden of sin and misery at his feet. Men, greater still by intellect, and prouder and more difficult of conversion (as sins of the intellect ever make men), left his presence simple, loving, and believing as little children. For these he had lightning glances and words of fire; these by turns he reprimanded, exhorted, and encouraged; but when the weak and sorrowful of God's flock came to him, he paused in his apostolic task to weep over them and console them. And so it was with {25} Jesus. The great and wealthy of the earth came to him for relief, and he never refused their prayers; but how many instances do we find in the gospel of the gift of health bestowed, unasked and unexpected, upon some poor wanderer by the wayside, or the yet greater boon of comfort given to some poor suffering heart, for no other reason that we know of than that it suffered and had need of comfort! The cripple by the pool of Bethsaida received his cure at the very moment when he was heartsick with hope deferred at finding no man to carry him down to the waters; and the widow of Nain found her son suddenly restored to life because, as the gospel expressly tells us, he was "the only son of his mother, and she was a widow."

The heart of the Curé of Ars seems to have been only less tender than that of his divine Master; and in the midst of the sublime occupation of converting souls to God, he never disdained the humble task of healing the stricken spirit, and leading it to peace and joy.

"My husband died suddenly," the young woman went on to say, in answer to my further questions; "and from affluence I found myself at once reduced to poverty. I was stunned by the blow; but my mother took me to the cure; and almost before he had said a word, I felt not only consoled, but satisfied with the lot which God had assigned me." And so indeed she must have been. When I saw her, she was still poor, and earning her bread by the worst of all servitude, the daily and nightly servitude of a crowded inn; but gentle, placid, and smiling, as became one who had seen and been comforted by a saint. She evidently felt that she had been permitted to approach very near to God in the person of God's servant, and every word she uttered was so full of love and confidence in the sainted curé that it increased (if that were possible) my desire to kneel at his tomb, since the happiness of approaching his living person had been denied me.

The next morning I set off for Villefranche. It is on the direct line to Paris, and at about an hour's railroad journey from Lyons. When I reached it, I found three omnibuses waiting at the station, and I believe they were all there for the sole purpose of conveying pilgrims to Ars. One of the conductors tried every mode of persuasion—and there are not a few in the vocabulary of a Frenchman—to inveigle me into his omnibus. "I should be at Ars in half an hour, and could return at two, three, four o'clock—in short, at any hour of the night or day that might please me best." It was with some difficulty I resisted the torrent of eloquence he poured out upon me; but, in the first place, I felt that he was promising what he himself would have called "the impossible," since a public conveyance must necessarily regulate its movements by the wishes of the majority of its passengers; and in the next, I had a very strong desire to be alone in body as well as in mind during the few hours that I was to spend at Ars.

At last I found an omnibus destined solely for visitors to Villefranche itself, and the conductor promised that he would provide me a private carriage to Ars if I would consent to drive first to his hotel. Cabaret he might have called it with perfect truth, for cabaret it was, and nothing more—a regular French specimen of the article, with a great public kitchen, where half the workmen of the town assembled for their meals, and a small cupboard sort of closet opening into it for the accommodation of more aristocratic guests. Into this, bon gré, mal gré, they wished to thrust me, but I violently repelled the threatened honor, and with some difficulty carrying my point, succeeded in being permitted to remain in the larger and cooler space of the open kitchen until my promised vehicle should appear. It came at last, a sort of half-cab, half-gig, without a hood, but with a curiously contrived harness of loose ropes, and looking altogether {26} dangerously likely to come to pieces on the road. Luckily, I am not naturally nervous in such matters, and, consoling myself with the thought that if we did get into grief the "bon curé" was bound to come to my assistance, seeing I had incurred it solely for the sake of visiting his tomb, I was soon settled as comfortably as circumstances would permit, and we set off at a brisk pace.

The country around Villefranche is truly neither pretty nor picturesque; and though we were not really an hour on the road, the drive seemed tedious. Our Jehu also, as it turned out, had never been at Ars before; so that he had not only to stop more than once to inquire the way, but actually contrived at the very last to miss it. He soon discovered the mistake, however, and retracing his steps, a very few minutes brought us to the spot where the saint had lived forty years, and where he now sleeps in death. His house stands beside the church, but a little in the rear, so it does not immediately catch the eye; and the church, where his real life was spent, is separated from the road by a small enclosure, railed off, and approached by a few steps. We looked around for some person to conduct us, but there was no one to be seen; so, after a moment's hesitation, we ascended the steps and entered the church. If you wish to know what kind of church it is, I cannot tell you. I do not know, in fact, whether it is Greek or Gothic, or of no particular architecture at all; I do not know even if it is in good taste or in bad taste. The soul was so filled with a sense of the presence of the dead saint that it left no room for the outer sense to take note of the accidents amid which he had lived. There are two or three small chapels—a Lady chapel, one dedicated to the Sacred Heart, and another to St. John the Baptist. There is also the chapel of St. Philomena, with a large lifelike image of the "bonne petite sainte" to whom he loved to attribute every miracle charity compelled him to perform; and there is the confessional, where for forty years he worked far greater wonders on the soul than any of the more obvious ones he accomplished on the body. All, or most of all, this I saw in a vague sort of way, as one who saw not; but the whole church was filled with such an aroma of holiness, there was such a sense of the actual presence of the man who had converted it into a very tabernacle in the wilderness—a true Holy of Holies, where, in the midst of infidel France, God had descended and conversed almost visibly with his people—that I had neither the will nor the power to condescend to particulars, and examine it in detail.

My one thought as I entered the church was, to go and pray upon his tomb; but in the first moment of doubt and confusion I could not remember, if indeed I had been told, the exact spot where he was buried. The chapel of St. Philomena was the first to attract my notice, and feeling that I could not be far wrong while keeping close to his dear little patroness, I knelt down there to collect my ideas.

The stillness of the church made itself felt. There were indeed many persons praying in it, but they prayed in that profound silence which spoke to the heart, and penetrated it in a way no words could have ever done.

I was thirsting, however, to approach the tomb of the saint, and at last ventured to whisper the question to a person near me. She pointed to a large black slab nearly in the centre of the church, and told me that he lay beneath it. Yes, he was there, in the very midst of his people, not far from the chapel of St. Philomena, and opposite to the altar whence he had so many thousands of times distributed the bread of life to the famishing souls who, like the multitude of old, had come into the desert, and needed to be fed ere they departed to their homes. Yes, he was there; and with a strange mingling of joy and sorrow in the thought I went and knelt down beside him.

{27}

Had I gone to Ars but a few years before, I might have found him in his living person; might have thrown myself at his feet, and poured out my whole soul before him. Now I knelt indeed beside him, but beside his body only, and the soul that would have addressed itself to mine was far away in the bosom of its God. Humanly speaking, the difference seemed against me, and yet, in a more spiritual point of view, it might perhaps be said to be in my favor.

The graces which he obtained for mortals here he obtained by more than mortal suffering and endurance—by tears, by fastings, and nightly and daily impetrations;—now, with his head resting, like another St. John, on the bosom of his divine Lord, surely he has but to wish in order to draw down whole fountains of love and tenderness on his weeping flock below. And certainly it would seem so; for however numerous the miracles accomplished in his lifetime, they have been multiplied beyond all power of calculation since his death.

Later on in the day, when the present curé showed me a room nearly half full of crutches and other mementos of cures wrought—"These are only the ones left there during his lifetime," he observed, in a tone which told at once how much more numerous were those which cure had made useless to their owners since his death.

I had not been many minutes kneeling before his tomb, when the lady who had pointed it out to me asked if I would like to see the house which he had inhabited in his lifetime. On my answering gladly in the affirmative, she made me follow her through a side-door and across a sort of court to the house inhabited by the present curé. This house had never been the abode of M. Vianney, but had been allotted to the priests who assisted him in his missions. The one which he actually inhabited is now a sort of sanctuary, where every relic and recollection of him is carefully preserved for the veneration of the faithful. We were shown into a sort of salle à manger, sufficiently poor to make us feel we were in the habitation of men brought up in the school of a saint, and almost immediately afterward the present curé entered. He had been for many years the zealous assistant of the late curé; and, in trying to give me an idea of the influx of strangers into Ars, he told me that, while M. Vianney spent habitually from fifteen to seventeen hours in the confessional, he and his brother priest were usually occupied at least twelve hours out of the twenty-four in a similar manner. Even this was probably barely sufficient for the wants of the mission, for the number of strangers who came annually to Ars during the latter years of the curé's life was reckoned at about 80,000, and few, if any, of these went away without having made a general confession, either to M. Vianney himself, or, if that were not possible, to one or other of the assisting clergy.

It was pleasant to talk with one who had been living in constant communication with a saint; and I felt as if something of the spirit of M. Vianney himself had taken possession of the good and gentle man with whom I was conversing. Among other things, he told me that the devout wish of the saint had of late years been the erection of a new church to St. Philomena; and he gave me a fac-simile of his handwriting in which he had promised to pray especially for any one aiding him in the work. The surest way, therefore, I should imagine, to interest him in our necessities—now that he is in heaven—would be to aid in the undertaking which he had in mind and heart while yet dwelling on earth. Even in his lifetime there had been a lottery got up for raising funds; and as money is still coming in from all quarters, his wish will doubtless soon be accomplished. I saw a very handsome altar which has been already presented, and which has been put aside in one of the rooms of the curé until the church, for which it is {28} intended, shall have been completed. M. le curé showed me one or two small photographs, which had been taken without his knowledge during the lifetime of the saint; and also a little carved image, which he said was a wonderful likeness, and far better than any of the portraits. Afterward he pointed out another photograph, as large as life, and suspended against the wall, which had been procured after death. It was calm and holy, as the face of a saint in death should be, and I liked it still better in its placid peace than the smile of the living photograph. Even the smile seemed to tell of tears. You know that he who smiles is still doing battle—cheerfully and successfully indeed, but still doing battle with the enemies of his soul; while the grave calmness of the dead face tells you at once that all is over—the fight is fought, the crown is won; eternity has set its seal on the good works of time, and all is safe for ever.

I could have looked at that photograph a long time, and said my prayers before it—it seemed to repose in such an atmosphere of sanctity and peace—but the hours were passing quickly, and there was still much to see and hear concerning the dead saint. I took leave, therefore, of the good priest who had been my cicerone so far, and sought the old housekeeper, who was in readiness to show me the house where M. Vianney had lived. We crossed a sort of court, which led us to a door opposite the church. When this was opened, I found myself in a sort of half-garden, half-yard, in the centre of which the old house was standing.

It is hard to put upon paper the feelings with which a spot the habitation of a saint just dead is visited. The spirit of love and charity and peace which animated the living man still seems brooding over the spot where his life was passed, and you feel intensely that the true beauty of the Lord's house was here, and that this has been the place where his glory hath delighted to dwell. The first room I entered was one in which the crutches left there by invalids had been deposited. It was a sight to see. The crutches were piled as close as they could be against the wall, and yet the room was almost half full. The persons who used those crutches must have been carried hither, lame and suffering, and helpless as young children; and they walked away strong men and cured. Truly "the lame walk and the blind see;" and the Lord hath visited his people in the person of his servant.

My next visit was made to the salle à manger, where M. Vianney had always taken the one scanty meal which was his sole support during his twenty-four hours of almost unbroken labor. It was poverty in very deed—poverty plain, unvarnished, and unadorned—such poverty as an Irish cabin might have rivalled, but could scarcely have surpassed. The walls were bare and whitewashed; the roof was merely raftered; and the floor, which had once been paved with large round stones, such as are used for the pavement of a street, was broken here and there into deep holes by the removal of the stones. During his forty years' residence at Ars, M. Vianney had probably never spent a single sou upon any article which could contribute to his own comfort or convenience; and this room bore witness to the fact. How, indeed, should he buy anything for himself, who gave even that which was given to him away, until his best friends grew well-nigh weary of bestowing presents, which they felt would pass almost at the same instant out of his own possession into the hands of any one whom he fancied to be in greater want of them than he was? I stood in that bare and desolate apartment, and felt as if earth and heaven in their widest extremes, their most startling contrasts, were there in type and reality before me. All that earth has of poor and miserable and unsightly was present to the eyes of the body; all that heaven has of bright {29} and beautiful and glorious was just as present, just as visible, to the vision of the soul. It was the very reverse of the fable of the fairy treasures, which vanish into dust when tested by reality. All that you saw was dust and ashes, but dust and ashes which, tried by the touchstone of eternity, would, you knew, prove brighter than the brightest gold, fairer than the fairest silver that earth ever yielded to set in the diadem of her kings! My reflections were cut short by the entrance of one of the priests, who invited us to come up stairs and inspect the vestments which had belonged to the late curé, and which were kept, I think, apart from those in ordinary use in the church. There was a great quantity of them, and they were all in curious contrast with everything else we had seen belonging to M. Vianney. Nothing too good for God; nothing too mean and miserable for himself—that had been the motto of his life; and the worm-eaten furniture of the dining-room, the gold and velvet of the embroidered vestments, alike bore witness to the fidelity with which he had acted on it. The vestments were more than handsome—some of them were magnificent. One set I remember in particular which was very beautiful. It had been given, with canopy for the blessed sacrament and banners for processions, by the present Marquis D'Ars, the chief of that beloved family, who, after the death of Mdlle. D'Ars, became M. Vianney's most efficient aid in all his works of charity. The priest who showed them to us, and who had also been one of the late curé's missionaries, told us that M. Vianney was absolutely enchanted with joy when the vestments arrived, and that he instantly organized an expedition to Lyons in order to express his gratitude at the altar of Notre Dame de Fourrière. The whole parish attended on this occasion. They went down the river in boats provided for the purpose, and with banners flying and music playing, marched in solemn procession through the streets of Lyons, and up the steep sides of Fourrière, until they reached the church of Notre Dame. There the whole multitude fell on their knees, and M. Vianney himself prayed, no doubt long and earnestly, before the miraculous image of Our Lady, seeking through her intercession to obtain some especial favor for the man who, out of his own abundance, had brought gifts of gold and silver to the altar of his God.

I asked the priest for some information about the granary which was said to have been miraculously filled with corn. He told me he had been at Ars at the time, and that there could be no doubt that the granary had been quite empty the night before. It was, I think, a time of scarcity, and the grain had been set aside for the use of the poor. M. Vianney went to bed miserable at the failure of his supplies; but when he visited the granary again early the next morning, he found it full. It was at the top of his own house, I believe, and was kept, of course, carefully locked. Nobody knew how it had been filled, or by whom. In fact, it seemed absolutely impossible that any one could have carted the quantity of grain needed for the purpose and carried it up stairs without being detected in the act. The priest made no comment on the matter; indeed, he seemed anything but inclined to enlarge upon it, though he made no secret of his own opinion as to the miraculous nature of the occurrence. As soon as he had answered my inquiries, he led us to the room which had been the holy curé's own personal apartment. It was, as well as I can remember, the one over the dining-room. No apostle ever lived and died in an abode more entirely destitute of all human riches. It was kept exactly in the same state in which it had been during his lifetime—a few poor-looking books still on the small book-shelf, a wooden table and a chair, and the little bed in the corner, smoothed and laid down, as if only waiting his return from the confessional for the {30} few short hours he gave to slumber—if, indeed, he did give them; for no one ever penetrated into the mystery of those hours, or knew how much of the time set apart apparently for his own repose was dedicated to God, or employed in supplicating God's mercies on his creatures.

The history of that room was the history of the saint. A book-shelf filled with works of piety and devotion; a stove, left doubtless because it had been originally built into the room, but left without use or purpose (for who ever heard of his indulging in a fire?); a table and a chair—that was all; but it was enough, and more than enough, to fill the mind with thought, and to crowd all the memories of that holy life into the few short moments that I knelt there. How often had he come back to that poor apartment, his body exhausted by fasting, and cramped by long confinement in the confessional, and his heart steeped (nay, drowned, as he himself most eloquently expressed it) in bitterness and sorrow by the long histories of sins to which he had been compelled to listen—sins committed against that God whom he loved far more tenderly than he loved himself! How often, in the silence and darkness of the night, has he poured forth his soul, now in tender commiseration over Jesus crucified by shiners, now over the sinners by whom Jesus had been crucified! How often has he (perhaps) called on God to remove him from a world where God was so offended; and yet, moved by the charity of his tender human heart, has besought, almost in the same breath, for the conversion of those sinners whose deeds he was deploring—the cure of their diseases and the removal or consolation of their sorrows! Like a mother who, finding her children at discord, now prays to one to pardon, now to another to submit and be reconciled, so was that loving, pitying heart ever as it were in contradiction with itself—weeping still with Jesus, and yet still pleading for his foes.

The mere action of such thoughts upon the human frame would make continued life a marvel; but when to this long history of mental woe we add the hardships of his material life—the fifteen or seventeen hours passed in the confessional, in heat and cold, in winter as in summer; the one scanty meal taken at mid-day; the four hours of sleep, robbed often and often of half their number for the sake of quiet prayer—when we think of these things, there is surely more of miracle in this life of forty years' duration than in the mere fact that it won miracles at last from heaven, and that God, seeing how faithfully this his servant did his will here on earth, complied in turn with his, and granted his desires.

No one, I think, can visit that spot, or hear the history of that life, as it is told by those who knew him as it were but yesterday, without an increase of love, an accession of faith, a more vivid sense of the presence of God in the midst of his creatures, and a more real comprehension of the extent and meaning of those words, "the communion of saints," which every one repeats in the creed, and yet which few take sufficiently to their heart of hearts to make it really a portion of their spiritual being—a means of working out their own salvation by constant and loving communication with those who have attained to it already. Thousands will seek the living saint for the eloquence of his words, the sublimity, of his counsels, the unction of his consolations; but, once departed out of this life, who visits him in his tomb? who turns to him for aid? who lift their eyes to heaven, to ask for his assistance thence, with the same undoubting confidence with which they would have sought it had he been still in the flesh beside them? In one sense of the word, many; and yet few indeed compared to the number of those to whom "the communion of saints" is an article of faith, or ought at least to be so, in something more than the mere service of the lip. It was amid some such {31} thoughts as these that I left the town of Ars, grieved indeed that I had not seen the holy curé in his lifetime, and yet feeling that, if I had but faith enough, I was in reality rather a gainer than a loser by his death. He who would have prayed for me on earth would now pray for me in heaven. He who would have dived into my conscience and brought its hidden sins to light, would obtain wisdom and grace for another to put his finger on the sore spot and give it healing. He who would perhaps have cured me of my bodily infirmities, could do so (if it were for the good of my soul) not less efficiently now that he was resting on the heart of his divine Lord. God had granted his prayers while he was yet upon earth—a saint indeed, and yet liable at any moment to fall into sin—would he refuse to hear him now that he had received him into his kingdom, and so rendered him for ever incapable of offending? I hoped not, I felt not; and in this certainty I went on my way rejoicing, feeling that it was well for this sinful world that it had yet one more advocate at the throne of its future Judge, and well especially for France that, in this our nineteenth century, she had given a saint to God who would have been the glory of the first. For truly the arm of the Lord is not shortened. What he has done before, he can do again; and, therefore, we need not wonder if the miracles of the Apostles are still renewed at the tomb of this simple and unlettered, priest, who taught their doctrines for forty years in the unknown and far-off village of which Providence had made him pastor.

From Once A Week.

THE THREE WISHES.

The Eastern origin of this tale seems evident; had it been originally composed in a Northern land, it is probable that the king would have been represented as dethroned by means of bribes obtained from his own treasury. In an Eastern country the story-teller who invented such a just termination of his narrative would, most likely, have experienced the fate intended for his hero, as a warning to others how they suggested such treasonable ideas. Herr Simrock, however, says it is a German tale; but it may have had its origin in the East for all that. Nothing is more difficult, indeed, than to trace a popular tale to its source. Cinderella, for example, belongs to nearly all nations; even among the Chinese, a people so different to all European nations, there is a popular story which reads almost exactly like it. Here is the tale of the Three Wishes.

There was once a wise emperor who made a law that to every stranger who came to his court a fried fish should be served. The servants were directed to take notice if, when the stranger had eaten the fish to the bone on one side, he turned it over and began on the other side. If he did, he was to be immediately seized, and on the third day thereafter he was to be put to death. But, by a great stretch of imperial clemency, the culprit was permitted to utter one wish each day, which the emperor pledged himself to grant, provided it was not to spare his life. Many had already perished in consequence of this edict, when, one day, a count and his young son presented themselves at court. The fish was served as usual, and when the {32} count had removed all the fish from one side, he turned it over, and was about to commence on the other, when he was suddenly seized and thrown into prison, and was told of his approaching doom. Sorrow-stricken, the count's young son besought the emperor to allow him to die in the room of his father; a favor which the monarch was pleased to accord him. The count was accordingly released from prison, and his son was thrown into his cell in his stead. As soon as this had been done, the young man said to his gaolers—"You know I have the right to make three demands before I die; go and tell the emperor to send me his daughter, and a priest to marry us." This first demand was not much to the emperor's taste, nevertheless he felt bound to keep his word, and he therefore complied with the request, to which the princess had no kind of objection. This occurred in the times when kings kept their treasures in a cave, or in a tower set apart for the purpose, like the Emperor of Morocco in these days; and on the second day of his imprisonment the young man demanded the king's treasures. If his first demand was a bold one, the second was not less so; still, an emperor's word is sacred, and having made the promise, he was forced to keep it; and the treasures of gold and silver and jewels were placed at the prisoner's disposal. On getting possession of them, he distributed them profusely among the courtiers, and soon he had made a host of friends by his liberality.

The emperor began now to feel exceedingly uncomfortable. Unable to sleep, he rose early on the third morning and went, with fear in his heart, to the prison to hear what the third wish was to be.

"Now," said he to his prisoner, "tell me what your third demand is, that it may be granted at once, and you may be hung out of hand, for I am tired of your demands."

"Sire," answered his prisoner, "I have but one more favor to request of your majesty, which, when you have granted, I shall die content. It is merely that you will cause the eyes of those who saw my father turn the fish over to be put out."

"Very good," replied the emperor, "your demand is but natural, and springs from a good heart. Let the chamberlain be seized," he continued, turning to his guards.

"I, sire!" cried the chamberlain; "I did not see anything—it was the steward."

"Let the steward be seized, then," said the king.

But the steward protested with tears in his eyes that he had not witnessed anything of what had been reported, and said it was the butler. The butler declared that he had seen nothing of the matter, and that it must have been one of the valets. But they protested that they were utterly ignorant of what had been charged against the count; in short, it turned out that nobody could be found who had seen the count commit the offence, upon which the princess said:

"I appeal to you, my father, as to another Solomon. If nobody saw the offence committed, the count cannot be guilty, and my husband is innocent."

The emperor frowned, and forthwith the courtiers began to murmur; then he smiled, and immediately their visages became radiant.

"Let it be so," said his majesty; "let him live, though I have put many a man to death for a lighter offence than his. But if he is not hung, he is married. Justice has been done."

{33}

From The Month.

EX HUMO.

BY BARRY CORNWALL.

  Should you dream ever of the days departed—
  Of youth and morning, no more to return—
  Forget not me, so fond and passionate-hearted;
      Quiet at last, reposing
      Under the moss and fern.

  There, where the fretful lake in stormy weather
  Comes circling round the reddening churchyard pines,
  Rest, and call back the hours we lost together,
      Talking of hope, and soaring
      Beyond poor earth's confines.

  If, for those heavenly dreams too dimly sighted,
  You became false—why, 'tis a story old:
  I, overcome by pain, and unrequited,
      Faded at last, and slumber
      Under the autumn mould.

  Farewell, farewell! No longer plighted lovers,
  Doomed for a day to sigh for sweet return:
  One lives, indeed; one heart the green earth covers—
      Quiet at last, reposing
      Under the moss and fern.

From The Dublin Review.

THE CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS OF ALEXANDRIA.

S. Clementis Alexandrini Opera Omnia

. Lutetiae. 1629.

Geschichte der Christlicher Philosophie, von

Dr. Heinrich Ritter. Hamburg: Perthes. 1841.

If any country under the sun bears the spell of fascination in its very name, that country is Egypt. The land of the Nile and the pyramids, of the Pharaohs and the Ptolemies—the land where art and science had mysterious beginnings before the dawn of history, where powerful dynasties held sway for long generations over the fertile river-valley, and built for themselves mighty cities—Thebes, the hundred-gated, Memphis, with its palaces, Heliopolis, with its temples— and left memorials of themselves that are attracting men at this very day to Luxor and Carnak, to the avenue of sphynxes and the pyramids— Egypt, where learning

    Uttered its oracles sublime
    Before the Olympiads, in the dew
    And dusk of early time—

the land where,

{34}

  Northward from its Nubian springs,
    The Nile, for ever new and old,
  Among the living and the dead
    Its mighty, mystic stream has rolled—

Egypt seems destined to be associated with all the signal events of every age of the world. Israel's going into and going out of Egypt is one of the epic pages of Holy Scripture; Sesostris, King of Egypt, left his name written over half of Asia; Alexander, the greatest of the Greeks, laid in Egypt the foundation of a new empire; Cleopatra, the captive and the captor of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, killed herself as the old land passed away for ever from the race of Ptolemy; Clement and Origen, Porphyry and Plotinus, have left Egypt the classic land of the Church's battle against the purest form of heathen philosophy; St. Louis of France has made Egypt the scene of a glorious drama of heroism and devotion; the pyramids have lent their name to swell the list of Napoleon's triumphs; and the Nile is linked for ever with the deathless fame of Nelson.

In the last decade of the second century, about the time when the pagan virtues of Marcus Aurelius had left the Roman empire to the worse than pagan vices of his son Commodus, Egypt, to the learned and wealthy, meant Alexandria. What Tyre had been in the time of Solomon, what Sidon was in the days of which Homer wrote, that was Alexandria from the reign of Ptolemy Soter to the days of Mahomet. In external aspect it was in every way worthy to bear the name of him who drew its plans with his own hands. Its magnificent double harbor, of which the Great Port had a quay-side six miles in length, was the common rendezvous for merchant ships from every part of Syria, Greece, Italy, and Spain; and its communications with the Red Sea and the Nile brought to the warehouses that overlooked its quay the riches of Arabia and India, and the corn and flax of the country of which it was the capital. The modern traveller, who finds Alexandria a prosperous commercial town, with an appearance half European, half Turkish, learns with wonder that its 60,000 inhabitants find room on what was little more than the mole that divided the Great Port from the Eunostos. But it should be borne in mind that old Alexandria numbered 300,000 free citizens. The mosques, the warehouses, and the private dwellings of the present town are built of the fragments of the grand city of Alexander. The great conqueror designed to make Alexandria the capital of the world. He chose a situation the advantages of which a glance at the map will show; and if any other proof were needed, it may be found in the fact that, since 1801, the population of the modern town has increased at the rate of one thousand a year. He planned his city on such vast proportions as might be looked for from the conqueror of Darius. Parallel streets crossed other streets, and divided the city into square blocks. Right through its whole length, from East to West—that is, parallel with the sea-front—one magnificent street, two hundred feet wide and four miles in length, ran from the Canopic gate to the Necropolis. A similar street, shorter, but of equal breadth, crossed this at right angles, and came out upon the great quay directly opposite the mole that joined the city with the island of Pharos. This was the famous Heptastadion, or Street of the Seven Stadia, and at its South end was the Sun-gate; at its North, where it opened on the harbor, the gate of the Moon. To the right, as you passed through the Moon-gate on to the broad quay, was the exchange, where merchants from all lands met each other, in sight of the white Pharos and the crowded shipping of the Great Port. A little back from the gate, in the Heptastadion, was the Caesareum, or temple of the deified Caesars, afterward a Christian church. Near it was the Museum, the university of Alexandria. Long marble colonnades connected the {35} university with the palace and gardens of the Ptolemies. On the opposite side of the great street was the Serapeion, the magnificent temple of Serapis, with its four hundred columns, of which Pompey's Pillar is, perhaps, all that is left. And then there was the mausoleum of Alexander, there were the courts of justice, the theatres, the baths, the temples, the lines of shops and houses—all on a scale of grandeur and completeness which has never been surpassed by any city of the world. Such a city necessarily attracted men. Alexandria was fitly called the "many-peopled," whether the epithet referred to the actual number of citizens or to the varieties of tongue, complexion, and costume that thronged its streets. The Greeks, the Egyptians, and the Jews, each had their separate quarter; but there were constant streams of foreigners from the remote India, from the lands beyond the black rocks that bound the Nile-valley, and from the Ethiopic races to which St. Matthew preached, where the Red Sea becomes the Indian Ocean. At the time we speak of, these discordant elements were held in subjection by the Roman conquerors, whose legionaries trod the streets of the voluptuous city with stern and resolute step, and were not without occasion, oftentimes, for a display of all the sternness and resolution which their bearing augured.

Alexandria, however, in addition to the busy life of commerce and pleasure that went on among Greeks, Egyptians, Jews, and Africans, was the home of another kind of life, still more interesting to us. Ptolemy Soter, who carried out Alexander's plans, was a man of no common foresight and strength of character. He was not content with building a city. He performed, in addition, two exploits, either of which, from modern experience, we should be inclined to consider a title to immortality. He invented a new god, and established a university. The god was Serapis, whom he imported from Pergamus, and who soon became popular. The university was the Museum, in which lived and taught Demetrius of Phalerus, Euclid, Stilpo of Megara, Philetas of Cos, Apelles the painter, Callimachus, Theocritus, Eratosthenes, Apollonius Rhodius, and a host of others in philosophy, poetry, geometry, astronomy, and the arts. Here, under successive Ptolemies, professors lectured in splendid halls, amid honored affluence. All that we have of the Greek classics we owe to the learned men of the Museum. Poetry bloomed sweetly and luxuriantly in the gardens of the Ptolemies; though, it must be confessed, not vigorously, not as on Ionic coast-lands, nor as in the earnest life of Athenian freedom—save when some Theocritus appeared, with his broad Doric, fresh from the sheep-covered downs of Sicily. The name of Euclid suggests that geometry was cared for at the Museum; Eratosthenes, with his voluminous writings, all of which have perished, and his one or two discoveries, which will never die, may stand for the type of geography, the science for which he lived; and Hipparchus, astronomer and inventor of trigonometry, may remind us how they taught at the Museum that the earth was the centre of the universe, and yet, notwithstanding, could foretell an eclipse almost as well as the astronomer royal. In philosophy, the university of Alexandria has played a peculiar part. As long as the Ptolemies reigned in Egypt, the Museum could boast of no philosophy save commentaries on Aristotle and Plato, consisting, in great measure, of subtle obscurities to which the darkest quiddities of the deepest scholastic would appear to have been light reading. But when the Roman came in, there sprang up a school of thought that has done more than any other thing to hand down the fame of Ptolemy's university to succeeding ages. Alexandria was the birthplace of Neo-Platonism, and, whatever we may think of the philosophy itself, we must allow it has bestowed fame on its alma {36} mater. At the dawn of the Christian era, Philon the Jew was already ransacking the great library to collect matter that should enable him to prove a common origin for the books of Plato and of Moses. Two hundred years afterward—that is, just at the time of which we speak— Plotinus was listening to Ammonius Saccas in the lecture-hall of the Museum, and thinking out the system of emanations, abysms, and depths of which he is the first and most famous expounder. Porphyry, the biographer and enthusiastic follower of Plotinus, was probably never at Alexandria in person; but his voluminous writings did much to make the Neo-Platonist system known to Athens and to the cities of Italy. In his youth he had listened to the lectures of Origen, and thus was in possession of the traditions both of the Christian and the heathen philosophy of Alexandria. But his Christian studies did not prevent him from being the author of that famous book, "Against the Christians," which drew upon him the denunciations of thirty-five Christian apologists, including such champions as St. Jerome and St. Augustine. The Neo-Platonist school culminated and expired in Proclus, the young prodigy of Alexandria, the ascetic teacher of Athens, the "inspired dogmatizer," the "heir of Plato." Proclus died in 485, and his chair at Athens was filled by his foolish biographer Marinus, after which Neo-Platonism never lifted up its head.

Between the time when Philon astonished the orthodox money-getting Hebrews of the Jews' quarter by his daring adoption of Plato's Logos, and the day when poor old Proclus—his once handsome and strong frame wasted by fasting and Pythagorean austerities—died, a drivelling old man, in sight of the groves of the Academe and the tomb of Plato, not far from whom he himself was to lie, many a busy generation had trodden the halls of the Museum of Alexandria. All that time the strife of words had never ceased, in the lecture-hall, in the gardens of the departed Ptolemies, round the banquet-table where the professors were feasted at the state's expense. All that time the fame of Alexandria had gathered to her Museum the young generations that succeeded each other in the patrician homes and wealthy burghs of Syria, Greece, and Italy. They came in crowds, with their fathers' money in their purses, to be made learned by those of whose exploits report had told so much. Some came with an earnest purpose. To the young medical student, the Alexandrian school of anatomy and the Alexandrian diploma (in whatever shape it was given)—not to mention the opportunity of perusing the works of the immortal Hippocrates in forty substantial rolls of papyrus—were worth all the expense of a journey from Rome or Edessa. To the lawyer, the splendid collections of laws, from those of the Pentateuch to those of Zamolxis the Scythian, were treasures only to be found in the library where the zeal of Demetrius Phalerius and the munificence of Ptolemy Philadelphus had placed them. But the vast majority of the youth who flocked to the Museum came with no other purpose than the very general one of finishing their education and fitting themselves for the world. With these, the agreeable arts of poetry and polite literature were in far greater request than law, medicine, astronomy, or geography. If they could get a sight of the popular poet of the hour in his morning meditation under the plane-trees of the gardens, or could crush into a place in the theatre when he recited his new "Ode to the Empress's Hair;" or if they attended the lecture of the most fashionable exponent of the myths of the Iliad, and clapped him whenever he introduced an allusion to the divine Plato, it was considered a very fair morning's work, and might be fitly rewarded by a boating party to Canopus in the afternoon, or a revel far into the night in any of those thousand palaces of vice {37} with which luxurious Alexandria was so well provided. And yet there is no doubt that the young men carried away from their university a certain education and a certain refinement—an education which, though it taught them to relish the pleasures of intellect, in no wise disposed them to forego the enjoyments of sense; and a refinement which, while imparting a graceful polish to the mind, was quite compatible with the deepest moral depravity. Pagans as they were, they were the fairest portion of the whole world, for intellect, for manliness, for generosity, for wit, for beauty and strength of mind and body—natural gifts that, like the sun and the rain, are bestowed upon just and unjust. Their own intercourse with each other taught them far more than the speculations of any of the myth-hunting professors of the Museum. They crowded in to hear them, they cheered them, they would dispute and even fight for a favorite theory that no one understood, with the doubtful exception of its inventor. But it was not to be supposed that they really cared for abysms or mystical mathematics, or that they were not a great deal more zealous for suppers, and drinking bouts, and boating parties. These latter employments, indeed, may be said to have formed their real education. Greek intellect, Greek taste, wit, and beauty, in the sunniest hour of its bloom, mingled with its like in the grandest city that, perhaps, the earth has ever seen. The very harbors, and temples, and palaces were an education. The first rounding of the Pharos—when the six-mile semicircle of granite quay and marble emporia burst on the view, with the Egyptian sun flashing from white wall and blue sea, and glancing and sparkling amidst the dense picturesque multitude that roared and surged on the esplanade—disclosed a sight to make the soul grow larger. The wonderful city itself was a teaching: the assemblage of all that was best and rarest in old Egyptian art, and all that was freshest and most lovely in the art of Greece, left no corner of a street without its lesson to the eye. Indoors, there was the Museum, with its miles of corridors and galleries, filled with paintings and sculptures; outside, the Serapeion, the Caesareum, the exchange, the palace, the university itself, each a more effective instructor than a year's course in the schools. And after all this came the library, with its 700,000 volumes!

In the year of our Lord 181, ships filled the Great Port, merchants congregated in the exchange, sailors and porters thronged the quays; crowds of rich and poor, high and low, flocked through the streets; youths poured in to listen to Ammonius Saccas, and poured out again to riot and sin; philosophers talked, Jews made money, fashionable men took their pleasure, slaves toiled, citizens bought and sold and made marriages; all the forms of busy life that had their existence within the circuit of the many-peopled city were noisily working themselves out. In the same year, Pantaenus became the head of the catechetical school of the patriarchal Church of Alexandria.

It was the time when those who had lived and walked with the Apostles had passed away, and when the third generation of the Church's rulers was already growing old. St. Irenaeus was near his glorious end; St. Eleutherius, of memory dear to Britain, had just closed his pontificate by martyrdom, and St. Victor sat in his place. The echoes of the voice of Peter had hardly died out in Rome and Antioch; the traditions of Paul's bodily presence were yet living in Asia, in Greece, and the Islands; and the sweet odor of John's life still hung about the places where his sojourning had been: many a church of Greece and Egypt and of the far East had the sepulchre of its founder, an Apostle or an apostolic man, round which to pray. It was the age of the persecutions, and the age of the apologies. In every {38} city that was coming about which from the first had been inevitable. The Church was laying hold of human learning, and setting it to do her own work. In fixing upon Alexandria as the spot where, at this period, the contest between Christian science and Gentile learning, Gentile ignorance and Gentile brute force, was most interesting and most developed, we must pass by many other Churches, not in forgetfulness, though in silence. We must pass by Rome, the capital of the world, not because there were not learned men there whom Jesus Christ had raised up to battle with heathen philosophy; for it was but a few years since Justin Martyr had shed his blood for the faith, and Apollonius from his place in the senate had spoken his "apology" for his fellow Christians. But the enemies which the Gospel had to meet at Rome were not so much the learning and science of the heathen as his evil passions and vicious life; and the sword of persecution, at Rome hardly ever sheathed, kept down all attempts at regularity or organization in public teaching. We must pass by Athens, still the intellectual capital of the world, not because there were not at Athens also worthy doctors of the wisdom of the cross—witness, to the contrary, Athenagoras, the Christian philosopher, who presented his apology to Marcus Aurelius. But Athens, though at the end of the second century and long afterward she was the mother of orators, poets, and philosophers, seems to have been too thoroughly steeped in the sensuous idolatry of Greece to have harbored a school of Christianity by the side of the Porch and the Lyceum. If the same was true of Athens then as a century afterward, her smooth-tongued, "babbling" sophists, and her pagan charms, must have had to answer for the soul of many a poor Christian youth that went to seek learning and found perdition. We pass by Carthage, in spite of Tertullian's great name; Antioch, notwithstanding Theophilus, whose labors against the heathen still bore fruit; Sardis, in spite of Melito, then just dead, but living still in men's mouths by the fame of his learning, eloquence, and miracles; and Hierapolis, in spite of Apollinaris, who, like so many others, approached the emperor himself with an apology. All over the Church there were men raised up by God, and fitted with learning to confront learning, patience to instruct ignorance, and unflinching fortitude to endure persecution—men in every way worthy to be the instruments of that great change which was being wrought out through the wide world of the Roman empire.

But at Alexandria, the school of Christianity existed under interesting and peculiar conditions. St. Mark had landed on the granite quay of the Great Port with Peter's commission; he had been martyred, and his successors had been martyred after him; and for a long time Christianity here, as everywhere else, had been contemptuously ignored. It spread, however, as we know. In time, more than one student, before he attended his lecture in the splendid halls of the Museum, had given ear to a far different lesson in a different school. The Christian catechetical school of Alexandria is said to have been founded by St. Mark himself. If so, it is only what we might naturally expect; for wherever heathens were being converted, there a school of teachers had to be provided for their instruction; and we read of similar institutions at Jerusalem, at Antioch, and at Rome. But the catechetical school of Alexandria soon assumed an importance that no other school of those times ever attained. Whether it was that the influence of the university gave an impetus to regular and methodical teaching, or that the converts in Alexandria were in great measure from a cultivated and intellectual class, it appears to have been found necessary from the earliest times to have an efficient school, with a man of vigor and intellect at its head, capable of maintaining his position even when compared {39} with the professors of the university. The first of the heads or doctors of the school of whom history has left any account, is Pantaenus. Pantaenus is not so well known as his place in Church history and his influence on his age would seem to warrant. He was appointed to his important post at a time when Christians all over the world must have been rejoicing. The fourth persecution was just dying out. For twenty years, with the exception of the short interval immediately after the miracle of the Thundering Legion, had Marcus Aurelius, imperial philosopher of the Stoic sort, continued to command or connive at the butchery of his Christian subjects. What were the motives that led this paragon of virtuous pagans to lower himself to the commonplace practices of racking, scourging, and burning, is a question that depends for its answer upon who the answerer is. Philosophers of a certain class, from Gibbon to Mr. Mill, are disposed to take a lenient, if not a laudatory, estimate of his conduct in this matter, and think that the emperor could not have acted otherwise consistently with his principles and convictions, as handed down to us in his "Meditations." Doubtless he had strong convictions on the subject of Christianity, though it might be questioned whether he came honestly by them. But his convictions, whatever they were, would probably have ended in the harmless shape of philosophic contempt, had it not been for the men by whom he was surrounded. They were Stoics, of course, like their master, but their stoicism was far from confining itself to convictions and meditations. They were practical Stoics, of the severest type which that old-world Puritanism admitted. As good Stoics, they were of all philosophers the most conceited, and took it especially ill that any sect should presume to rival them in their private virtues of obstinacy and endurance. It is extremely probable that the fourth persecution, both in its commencement and its revival, was owing to the good offices of Marcus Aurelius's solemn-faced favorites. But, whatever be the blame that attaches to him, he has answered for it at the same dread tribunal at which he has answered for the deification of Faustina and the education of Commodus.

However, about the year 180, persecution ceased at Alexandria, and the Christians held up their heads and revived again, after the bitter winter through which they had just passed. Their first thoughts and efforts appear to have been directed to their school. The name of Pantaenus was already celebrated. He was a convert from paganism, born probably in Sicily, but certainly brought up in Alexandria. Curiously enough, he had been a zealous Stoic, and remained so, in the Christian sense, after his conversion. There is no doubt that he was well known among the Gentile philosophers of Alexandria. Perhaps he had lectured in the Museum and dined in the Hall. Probably he had spent many a day buried in the recesses of the great libraries, and could give a good account of not a few of their thousands of volumes. He must have known Justin Martyr—perhaps had something to say to the conversion of that brilliant genius, not as a teacher, but as a friend and fellow-student. He may have come across Galen, when that lively medical man was pursuing his researches on the immortal Hippocrates, or entertaining a select circle, in the calm of the evening, under one of the porticos of the Heptastadion. No sooner was he placed at the head of the Christian school than he inaugurated a great change, or rather a great development. Formerly the instruction had been intended solely for converts, that is, catechumens, and the matter of the teaching had corresponded with this object. Pantaenus changed all this. The cessation of the persecution had, perhaps, encouraged bolder measures; men would think there was no prospect of another, as men generally think when a long and difficult trial is over; so the Christian schools were to be opened {40} to all the world. If Aristotle and Plato, Epicurus and Zeno, had their lecturers, should not Jesus Christ have schools and teachers too? And what matter if the Christian doctrine were somewhat novel and hard—was not Ammonius the Porter, at that very time, turning the heads of half the students in the city, and filling his lecture-room to suffocation, by expounding transcendental theories about Plato's Logos, and actually teaching the doctrine of a Trinity? Shame upon the Christian name, then, if they who bear it do not open their doors, now that danger is past, and break the true bread to the hungry souls that eagerly snatch at the stones and dry sticks that others give! So thought Pantaenus. Of his teachings and writings hardly a trace or a record has reached us. We know that he wrote valued commentaries on Holy Scripture, but no fragment of them remains. His teaching, however, as might have been expected, was chiefly oral. He met the philosophers of Alexandria on their own ground. He showed that the fame of learning, the earnestness of character, the vivid personal influence that were so powerful in the cause of heathen philosophy, could be as serviceable to the philosophy of Christ. The plan was novel in the Christian world—at least, in its systematic thoroughness. That Pantaenus had great influence and many worthy disciples is evident from the fact that St. Clement of Alexandria, his successor, was formed in his school, and that St. Alexander of Jerusalem, the celebrated founder of the library which Eusebius consulted at Jerusalem, writing half a century afterward to Alexandria, speaks with nothing less than enthusiasm of the "happy memory" of his old master. If we could pierce the secrets of those long-past times, what a stirring scene of reverend wisdom and youthful enthusiasm would the forgotten school of the Sicilian convert unfold to our sight! Doubtless, from amidst the confused jargon of all manner of philosophies, the voice of the Christian teacher arose with a clear and distinct utterance; and the fame of Pantaenus was carried to far countries by many a noble Roman and many an accomplished Greek, zealous, like all true academic sons, for the glory of their favorite master.

After ten years of such work as this, Pantaenus vacated his chair, and went forth as a missionary bishop to convert the Indians. Before passing on to his successor, a few words on this Indian mission, apparently so inopportune for such a man at such a time, will be interesting, and not unconnected with the history of the Christian schools.

In the "many-peopled" city there were men from all lands and of all shades of complexion. It was nothing strange, then, that an embassy of swarthy Indians should have one day waited on the patriarch and begged for an apostle to take home with them to their countrymen. No wonder, either, that they specified the celebrated master of the catechisms as their dignissimus. The only wonder is that he was allowed to go. Yet he went; he set out with them, sailed to Canopus, the Alexandrian Richmond, where the canal joined the Nile; sailed up the ancient stream to Koptos, where the overland route began; joined the caravan that travelled thence, from well to well, to Berenice, Philadelphus's harbor on the Red Sea; embarked, and, after sailing before the monsoon for seventy days, arrived at the first Indian port, probably that which is now Mangalore, in the presidency of Bombay. This, in all likelihood, was the route and the destination of Pantaenus. Now those among whom his missionary labors appear to have lain were Brahmins, and Brahmins of great learning and extraordinary strictness of life. Moreover, there appears to be no reason to doubt that the Church founded by St. Thomas still existed, and even flourished, in these very parts, though its apostolic founder had been martyred a hundred years before. It was not so unreasonable, then, that {41} a bishop like Pantaenus should have been selected for such a Church and such a people. Let the reader turn to the story of Robert de' Nobili, and of John de Britto, whose field of labor extended to within a hundred miles of master in human learning when the the very spot where Pantaenus probably landed. St. Francis Xavier had already found Christians in that region who bore distinct traces of a former connection with Alexandria, in the very points in which they deviated from orthodoxy. De' Nobili's transformation of himself into a Brahmin of the strictest and most learned caste is well known. He dressed and lived as a Brahmin, roused the curiosity of his adopted brethren, opened school, and taught philosophy, inculcating such practical conclusions as it is unnecessary to specify. De Britto did the very same things. If any one will compare the Brahmins of De Britto and De' Nobili with those earlier Brahmins of Pantaenus, as described, for instance, by Cave from Palladius, he will not fail to be struck with the similarity of accounts; and if we might be permitted to fill up the picture upon these conjectural hints, we should say that it seems to us very likely that Pantaenus, during the years that he was lost to Alexandria, was expounding and enforcing, in the flowing cotton robes of a venerable Saniastes, the same deep philosophy to Indian audiences as he had taught to admiring Greeks in the modest pallium of a Stoic. Recent missionary experience has uniformly gone to prove that deep learning and asceticism are, humanly speaking, absolutely necessary in order to attempt the conversion of Brahmins with any prospect of success: and the mission of Pantaenus seems at once to furnish an illustration of this fact, and to afford an interesting glimpse of "Christian Missions" in the second century. But we must return to Alexandria.

The name that succeeds Pantaenus on the rolls of the School of the Catechisms is Titus Flavius Clemens, immortalized in history as Clement of Alexandria. He had sat under Pantaemus, but he was no ordinary scholar. Like his instructor, he was a convert from paganism. He was already master in human learning when the grace came. He had sought far and wide for the truth, and had found it in the Catholic Church, and into the lap of his new mother he had poured all the treasures of Egyptian wisdom which he had gathered in his quest. Athens, Southern Italy, Assyria, and Palestine had each been visited by the eager searcher; and, last of all, Egypt, and Alexandria, and Pantaenus had been the term of his travels, and had given to his lofty soul the "admirable light" of Jesus Christ. When Pantaenus went out as a missioner to India, Clement, who had already assisted his beloved master in the work of the schools, succeeded him as their director and head. It was to be Clement's task to carry on and to develop the work that Pantaenus had inaugurated—to make Christianity not only understood by the catechumens and loved by the faithful, but recognized and respected by the pagan philosophers. Unless we can clearly see the necessity, or, at least, the reality of the philosophical side of his character, and the influences that were at work to make him hold fast to Aristotle and Plato, even after he had got far beyond them, we shall infallibly set him down, like his modern biographers, as a half-converted heathen, with the shell of Platonism still adhering to him.

It cannot be doubted that in a society like that of Alexandria in its palmy days there were many earnest seekers of the truth, even as Clement himself had sought it. One might even lay it down as a normal fact, that it was the character of an Alexandrian, as distinguished from an Athenian, to speculate for the sake of practising, and not to spend his time in "either telling or hearing some new thing." If an Alexandrian was a Stoic, never was Stoic more demure or more intent on warring against his body, after Stoic {42} fashion; if a geometrican, no disciple of Bacon was ever more assiduous in experimentalizing, measuring, comparing, and deducing laws; if a Platonist, then geometry, ethics, poetry, and everything else, were enthusiastically pressed into the one great occupation of life—the realizing the ideal and the getting face to face with the unseen. That all this earnestness did not uniformly result in success was only too true. Much speculation, great earnestness, and no grand objective truth at the end of it—this was often the lot of the philosophic inquirer of Alexandria. The consequence was that not unfrequently, disgusted by failure, he ended by rushing headlong into the most vicious excesses, or, becoming a victim to despair, perished by his own hand. So familiar, indeed, had this resource of disappointment become to the philosophic mind, that Hegesias, a professor in the Museum, a little before the Christian era, wrote a book counselling self-murder; and so many people actually followed his advice as to oblige the reigning Ptolemy to turn Grand Inquisitor even in free-thinking Egypt, and forbid the circulation of the book. Yet all this, while it revealed a depth of moral wretchedness which it is frightful to contemplate, showed also a certain desperate earnestness; and doubtless there were, even among those who took refuge in one or other of these dreadful alternatives, men who, in their beginnings, had genuine aspirations after truth, mingled with the pride of knowledge and a mere intellectual curiosity. Doubtless, too, there was many a sincere and guileless soul among the philosophic herd, to whom, humanly speaking, nothing more was wanting than the preaching of the faith. Their eyes were open, as far as they could be without the light of revelation: let the light shine, and, by the help of divine grace, they would admit its beams into their souls.

There are many such, in every form of error. In Clement's days, especially, there were many whom Neo-Platonism, the Puseyism of paganism, cast up from the ocean of unclean error upon the shores of the Church. Take the case of Justin Martyr: he was a young Oriental of noble birth and considerable wealth. In the early part of the second century, we find him trying first one school of philosophers and then another, and abandoning each in disgust. The Stoics would talk to him of nothing but virtues and vices, of regulating the diet and curbing the passions, and keeping the intellect as quiet as possible—a convenient way, as experience taught them, of avoiding trouble; whereas Justin wanted to hear something of the Absolute Being, and of that Being's dealings with his own soul—a kind of inquiry which the Stoics considered altogether useless and ridiculous, if not reprehensible. Leaving the Stoics, he devoted himself heart and soul to a sharp Peripatetic, but quarrelled with him shortly and left him in disgust; the cause of disagreement being, apparently, a practical theory entertained by his preceptor on the subject of fees. He next took to the disciples of Pythagoras. But with these he succeeded no better than with the others; for the Pythagoreans reminded him that no one ignorant of mathematics could be admitted into their select society. Mathematics, in a Pythagorean point of view, included geometry, astronomy, and music—all those sciences, in fact, in which there was any scope for those extraordinary freaks of numbers which delighted the followers of the old vegetarian. Justin, having no inclination to undergo a novitiate in mathematics, abandoned the Pythagoreans and went elsewhere. The Platonists were the next who attracted him. He found no lack of employment for the highest qualities of his really noble soul in the lofty visions of Plato and the sublimated theories of his disciples and commentators; though it appears a little singular that, with his propensities toward the ideal and abstract, he should have tried so many masters before he {43} sat down under Plato. However, be that as it may, Plato seems to have satisfied him for a while, and he began to think he was growing a very wise man, when these illusions were rudely dispelled. One day he had walked down to a lonely spot by the sea-shore, meditating, probably, some deep idea, and perhaps declaiming occasionally some passage of Plato's Olympian Greek. In his solitary walk he met an old man, and entered into conversation with him. The event of this conversation was that Justin went home with a wonderfully reduced estimate of his own wisdom, and a determination to get to know a few things about which Plato, on the old man's showing, had been woefully in the dark. Justin became a convert to Christianity. Now, Justin had been at Alexandria, and, whether the conversation he relates ever really took place, or is merely an oratorical fiction, the story is one that represents substantially what must have happened over and over again to those who thronged the university of Alexandria, wearing the black cloak of the philosopher.

Justin lived and was martyred some half a century before Clement sat in the chair of the catechisms. But it is quite plain that, in such a state of society, there would not be wanting many of his class and temperament who, in Clement's time, as well as fifty years before, were in search of the true philosophy. And we must not forget that in Alexandria there were actually thousands of well-born, intellectual young men from every part of the Roman empire. To the earnest among these Clement was, indeed, no ordinary master. In the first place, he was their equal by birth and education, with all the intellectual keenness of his native Athens, and all the ripeness and versatility of one who had "seen many cities of men and their manners." Next, he had himself been a Gentile, and had gone through all those phases of the soul that precede and accompany the process of conversion. If any one knew their difficulties and their sore places, it was he, the converted philosopher. If any one was capable of satisfying a generous mind as to which was the true philosophy, it was he who had travelled the world over in search of it. He could tell the swarthy Syrian that it was of no use to seek the classic regions of Ionia, for he had tried them, and the truth was not there; he could assure him it was waste of time to go to Athens, for the Porch and the Garden were babbling of vain questions—he had listened in them all. He could calm the ardor of the young Athenian, his countryman, eager to try the banks of the Orontes, and to interrogate the sages of Syria; for he could tell him beforehand what they would say. He could shake his head when the young Egyptian, fresh from the provincial luxury of Antinoë, mentioned Magna Graecia as a mysterious land where the secret of knowledge was perhaps in the hands of the descendants of the Pelasgi. He had tried Tarentum, he had tried Neapolis; they were worse than the Serapeion in unnameable licentiousness—less in earnest than the votaries that crowded the pleasure-barges of the Nile at a festival of the Moon. He had asked, he had tried, he had tasted. The truth, he could tell them, was at their doors. It was elsewhere, too. It was in Neapolis, in Antioch, in Athens, in Rome; but they would not find it taught in the chairs of the schools, nor discussed by noble frequenters of the baths and the theatres. He knew it, and he could tell it to them. And as he added many a tale of his wanderings and searchings—many an instance of genius falling short, of good-will laboring in the dark, of earnestness painfully at fault—many of those who heard him would yield themselves up to the vigorous thinker whose brow showed both the capacity and the unwearied activity of the soul within. He was the very man to be made a hero of. Whatever there was in the circle of Gentile philosophy he knew. St. Jerome calls {44} him the "most learned of the writers of the Church," and St. Jerome must have spoken with the sons of those who had heard him lecture—noble Christian patricians, perchance, whose fathers had often told them how, in fervent boyhood, they had been spell-bound by his words in the Christian school of Alexandria, or learned bishops of Palestine, who had heard of him from Origen at Caesarea or St. Alexander at Jerusalem. From the same St. Alexander, who had listened to Pantaenus by his side, we learn that he was as holy as he was learned; and Theodoret, whose school did not dispose him to admire what came from the catechetical doctors of Alexandria, is our authority for saying that his "eloquence was unsurpassed." In the fourth edition of Cave's "Apostolici," there is a portrait that we would fain vouch to be genuine. The massive, earnest face, of the Aristotelian type, the narrow, perpendicular Grecian brow, with its corrugations of thought and care, the venerable flowing beard, dignifying, but not concealing, the homely and fatherly mouth, seem to suggest a man who had made all science his own, yet who now valued a little one of Jesus Christ above all human wisdom and learning. But we have no record of those features that were once the cynosure of many eyes in the "many-peopled" city; we have no memorial of the figure that spoke the truths of the Gospel in the words of Plato. We know not how he looked, nor how he sat, when he began with his favorite master, and showed, with inexhaustible learning, where he had caught sight of the truth, and, again, where his mighty but finite intellect had failed for want of a more "admirable light;" nor how he kindled when he had led his hearers through the vestibule of the old philosophy, and stood ready to lift the curtain of that which was at once its consummation and its annihilation.

But the philosophers of Alexandria, so-called, were by no means, without exception, earnest, high-minded, and well-meaning. Leaving out of the question the mob of students who came ostensibly for wisdom, but got only a very doubtful substitute, and were quite content with it, we know that the Museum was the headquarters of an anti-Christian philosophy which, in Clement's time, was in the very spring of its vigorous development. Exactly contemporary with him was the celebrated Ammonius the Porter, the teacher of Plotinus, and therefore the parent of Neo-Platonism. Ammonius had a very great name and a very numerous school. That he was a Christian by birth, there is no doubt; and he was probably a Christian still when he landed at the Great Port and found employment as a ship-porter. History is divided as to his behavior after his wonderful elevation from the warehouses to the halls of the Museum. St. Jerome and Eusebius deny that he apostatized, while the very questionable authority of the unscrupulous Porphyry is the only testimony that can be adduced on the other side; but, even if he continued to be a Christian, his orthodoxy is rather damaged when we find him praised by such men as Plotinus, Longinus, and Hierocles. Some would cut the knot by asserting the existence of two Ammoniuses, one a pagan apostate, the other a Christian bishop—a solution equally contradicted by the witnesses on both sides. But, whatever Saccas was, there is no doubt as to what was the effect of his teaching on, at least, half of his hearers. If we might hazard a conjecture, we should say that he appears to have been a man of great cleverness, and even genius, but too much in love with his own brilliancy and his own speculations not to come across the ecclesiastical authority in a more or less direct way. He supplied many imposing premises which Origen, representing the sound half of his audience, used for Christian purposes, whilst Plotinus employed them for revivifying the dead body of paganism. The brilliant sack-bearer seems to have been, at the very least, a liberal {45} Christian, who was too gentlemanly to mention so very vulgar a thing as the Christian "superstition" in the classic gardens of the palace, or at the serene banquets of sages in the Symposium.

The question, then, is, How did Christianity, as a philosophy, stand in relation to the affluent professors of Ptolemy's university? That they had been forced to see there was such a thing as Christianity, before the time of which we speak (A.D. 200), it is impossible to doubt. It must have dawned upon the comprehension of the most imperturbable grammarian and the most materialist surgeon of the Museum that a new teaching of some kind was slowly but surely striking root in the many forms of life that surrounded them. Rumors must long before have been heard in the common hall that executions had taken place of several members of a new sect or society, said to be impious in its tenets and disloyal in its practice. No doubt the assembled sages had expended at the time much intricate quibble and pun, after heavy Alexandrian fashion, on the subject of those wretched men; more especially when it was put beyond doubt that no promises of reward or threats of punishment had availed to make them compromise their "opinions" in the slightest tittle. Then the matter would die out, to be revived several times in the same way; until at last some one would make inquiries, and would find that the new sect was not only spreading, but, though composed apparently of the poor and the humble, was clearly something very different from the fantastic religions or brutal no-religions of the Alexandrian mob. It would be gradually found out, moreover, that men of name and of parts were in its ranks; nay, some day of days, that learned company in the Hall would miss one of its own number, after the most reverend the curator had asked a blessing—if ever he did—and it would come out that Professor So-and-so, learned and austere as he was, had become a Christian! And some would merely wonder, but, that past, would ask their neighbor, in the equivalent Attic, if there were to be no more cakes and ale, because he had proved himself a fool; others would wonder, and feel disturbed, and think about asking a question or two, though not to the extent of abandoning their seats at that comfortable board.

The majority, doubtless, at Alexandria as elsewhere, set down Christianity as some new superstition, freshly imported from the home of all superstitions, the East. There were some who hated it, and pursued it with a vehemence of malignant lying that can suggest only one source of inspiration, that is to say, the father of all lies himself. Of this class were Crescens the Cynic, the prime favorite of Marcus Aurelius, and Celsus, called the Epicurean, but who, in his celebrated book, written at this very time, appears as veritable a Platonist as Plotinus himself. Then, again, there were others who found no difficulty in recognizing Christianity as a sister philosophy—who, in fact, rather welcomed it as affording fresh material for dialectics—good, easy men of routine, blind enough to the vital questions which the devil's advocates clearly saw to be at stake. Galen is pre-eminently a writer who has reflected the current gossip of the day. He was a hard student in his youth, and a learned and even high-minded man in his maturity, but he frequently shows himself in his writings as the "fashionable physician," with one or two of the weaknesses of that well-known character. He spent a long time at Alexandria, just before Clement became famous, studying under Heraclian, consulting the immortal Hippocrates, and profiting by the celebrated dissecting-rooms of the Museum, in which, unless they are belied, the interests of science were so paramount that they used to dissect—not live horses; but living slaves. He could not, therefore, fail to have known how Christianity was regarded at the Museum. Speaking of Christians, then, in his works, he of course retails a good deal of {46} nonsense about them, such as we can imagine him to have exchanged with the rich gluttons and swollen philosophers whom he had to attend professionally in Roman society; but when he speaks seriously, and of what he had himself observed, he says, frankly and honestly, that the Christians deserved very great praise for sobriety of life, and for their love of virtue, in which they equalled or surpassed the greatest philosophers of the age. So thought, in all probability, many of the learned men of Alexandria.

The Church, on her side, was not averse to appearing before the Gentiles in the garb of philosophy, and it was very natural that the Christian teachers should encourage this idea, with the aim and hope of gaining admittance for themselves and their good tidings into the very heart of pagan learning. And was not Christianity a philosophy? In the truest sense of the word—and, what is more to the purpose, in the sense of the philosophers of Alexandria—it was a philosophy. The narrowed meaning that in our days is assigned to philosophy, as distinguished from religion, had no existence in the days of Clement. Wisdom was the wisdom by excellence, the highest, the ultimate wisdom. What the Hebrew preacher meant when he said, "Wisdom is better than all the most precious things," the same was intended by the Alexandrian lecturer when he offered to show his hearers where wisdom was to be found. It meant the fruit of the highest speculation, and at the same time the necessary ground of all-important practice. In our days the child learns at the altar-rails that its end is to love God, and serve him, and be happy with him; and after many years have passed, the child, now a man, studies and speculates on the reasons and the bearings of that short, momentous sentence. In the old Greek world the intellectual search came first, and the practical sentence was the wished-for result. A system of philosophy was, therefore, in Clement's time, tantamount to a religion. It was the case especially with the learned. Serapis and Isis were all very well for the "old women and the sailors," but the laureate and the astronomer royal of the Ptolemies, and the professors, many and diverse, of arts and ethics, in the Museum, scarcely took pains to conceal their utter contempt for the worship of the vulgar. Their idols were something more spiritual, their incense was of a more ethereal kind. Could they not dispute about the Absolute Being? and had they not glimpses of something indefinitely above and yet indefinably related to their own souls, in the Logos of the divine Plato? So the Stoic mortified his flesh for the sake of some ulterior perfectibility of which he could give no clear account to himself; the Epicurean contrived to take his fill of pleasure, on the maxim that enjoyment was the end of our being, "and tomorrow we die;" the Platonist speculated and pursued his "air-travelling and cloud-questioning," like Socrates in the basket, in a vain but tempting endeavor to see what God was to man and man to God; the Peripatetic, the Eclectic, and all the rest, disputed, scoffed, or dogmatized about many things, certainly, but, mainly and finally, on those questions that will never lie still:—Who are we? and, Who placed us here? Philosophy included religion, and therefore Christianity was a philosophy.

When Clement, then, told the philosophers of Alexandria that he could teach them the true philosophy, he was saying not only what was perfectly true, but what was perfectly understood by them. The catechetical school was, and appeared to them, as truly a philosophical lecture-room as the halls of the Museum. Clement himself had been an ardent philosopher, and he reverently loved his masters, Socrates and Plato and Aristotle, whilst he had the feelings of a brother toward the philosophers of his own day. He became a Christian, and his dearest object was to win his brethren to a participation in his own good fortune. {47} He did not burn his philosophical books and anathematize his masters; like St. Paul, he availed himself of the good that was in them and commended it, and then proclaimed that he had the key of the treasure which they had labored to find and had not found. This explains how it is that, in Clement of Alexandria, the philosopher's mantle seems almost to hide the simple garb of the Christian. This also explains why he is called, and indeed calls himself, an Eclectic in his system; and this marks out the drift and the aim of the many allusions to philosophy that we find in his extant works, and in the traditions of his teaching that have come down to us. If Christianity was truly called a philosophy, what should we expect in its champion but that he should be a philosopher? Men in these days read the Stromata, and find that it is, on the outside, more like Plato than like Jesus Christ; and thus they make small account of it, because they cannot understand its style, or the reason for its adoption. The grounds of questions and the forms of thought have shifted since the days of the catechetical school. But Clement's fellow-citizens understood him. The thrifty young Byzantine, for instance, understood him, who had been half-inclined to join the Stoics, but had come, in his threadbare pallium, to hear the Christian teacher, and who was told that asceticism was very good and commendable, but that the end of it all was God and the love of God, and that this end could only be attained by a Christian. The languid but intellectual man of fashion understood him, who had grown sick of the jargon of his Platonist professors about the perfect man and the archetypal humanity, and who now felt his inmost nature stirred to its depths by the announcement and description of the Word made flesh. The learned stranger from Antioch or Athens, seeking for the truth, understood him, when he said that the Christian dogma alone could create and perfect the true Gnostic or Knower; he understood perfectly the importance of the object, provided the assertion were true, as it might turn out to be. Unless Clement had spoken of asceticism, of the perfect man, and of the true Gnostic, his teaching would not have come home to the self-denying student, to the thoughtful sage, to the brilliant youth, to all that was great and generous and amiable in the huge heathen society of the crowded city. As it was, he gained a hearing, and, having done so, he said to the Alexandrians, "Your masters in philosophy are great and noble: I honor them, I admire and accept them; but they did not go far enough, as you all acknowledge. Come to us, then, and we will show what is wanting in them. Listen to these old Hebrew writers whom I will quote to you. You see that they treated of all your problems, and had solved the deepest of them, whilst your forefathers were groping in darkness. All their light, and much more, is our inheritance. The truth, which you seek, we possess. 'What you worship, without knowing it, that I preach to you.' God's Word has been made flesh—has lived on this earth, the model man, the absolute man. Come to us, and we will show you how you may know God through him, and how through him God communicates himself to you." But here he stopped. The "discipline of the secret" allowed him to go no further in public. The listening Christians knew well what he meant; his pagan hearers only surmised that there was more behind. And was it not much that Christianity should thus measure strength and challenge a contest with the old Greek civilization on equal terms, and about those very matters of intellect and high ethics in which it especially prided itself?

But the contest, never a friendly one, save with the dullest and easiest of the pagan philosophers, very soon grew to be war to the knife. We have said that the quiet lovers of literature among the heathen men of science were perfectly ready to admit the Christian philosophy to a fair share {48} in the arena of disputation and discussion, looking upon it as being, at worst, only a foolish system of obtrusive novelties, which might safely be left to their own insignificancy. But, quite unexpectedly and startlingly for easy-going philosophers, Christianity was found, not merely to claim the possession of truth, but to claim it wholly and solely. And, what was still more intolerable, its doctors maintained that its adoption or rejection was no open speculative question, but a tremendous practical matter, involving nothing less than all morality here and all happiness hereafter; and that the unfortunate philosopher, who, in his lofty serenity, approved it as right, and yet followed the wrong, would have to undergo certain horrors after death, the bare suggestion of which seemed an outrage on the dignity of the philosophical character. This was quite enough for hatred; and the philosophers, as their eyes began to open, saw that Crescens and Celsus were right, and accorded their hatred most freely and heartily.

But Christianity did not stop here. With the old original schools and their offshoots it was a recognized principle that philosophy was only for philosophers; and this was especially true of Clement's most influential contemporaries, the Neo-Platonists. The vulgar had no part in it, in fact could not come within the sphere of its influence; how could they? How could the sailors, who, after a voyage, went to pay their vows in the temple of Neptune on the quay, or the porters who dragged the grain sacks and the hemp bundles from the tall warehouses to the holds of Syrian and Greek merchantmen, or the negro slaves who fanned the brows of the foreign prince, or the armorers of the Jews' quarter, or the dark-skinned, bright-eyed Egyptian women of the Rhacôtis suspected of all evil from thieving to sorcery, or, more than all, the drunken revellers and poor harlots who made night hideous when the Egyptian moon looked down on the palaces of the Brucheion—how could any of these find access to the sublime secrets of Plato or the profound commentaries of his disciples? Even if they had come in crowds to the lecture-halls—which no one wanted them to do, or supposed they would do—they could not have been admitted nor entertained; for even the honest occupations of life, the daily labors necessary in a city of 300,000 freemen, were incompatible with imbibing the divine spirit of philosophy. So the philosophers had nothing to say to all these. If they had been asked what would become of such poor workers and sinners, they would probably have avoided an answer as best they could. There were the temples and Serapis and Isis and the priests—they might go to them. It was certain that philosophy was not meant for the vulgar. In fact, philosophy would be unworthy of a habitation like the Museum—would deserve to have its pensions stopped, its common hall abolished, and its lecture-rooms shut up—if ever it should condescend to step into the streets and speak to the herd. It was, therefore, with a disgust unspeakable, and a swiftly-ripening hatred, that the philosophers saw Christianity openly proclaiming and practising the very opposite of all this. True, it had learned men and respected men in its ranks, but it loudly declared that its mission was to the lowly, and the mean, and the degraded, quite as much as to the noble, and the rich, and the virtuous. It maintained that the true divine philosophy, the source of joy for the present and hope for the future, was as much in the power of the despised bondsman, trembling under the lash, as of the prince-governor, or the Caesar himself, haughtily wielding the insignia of sovereignty. We know what its pretensions and tenets were, but it is difficult to realize how they must have clashed with the notions of intellectual paganism in the city of Plotinus—how the hands that would have been gladly held out in friendship, had it come in respectable {49} and conventional guise, were shut and clenched, when they saw in its train the rough mechanic, the poor maid-servant, the negro, and the harlot. There could be no compromise between two systems such as these. For a time it might have seemed as if they could decide their quarrel in the schools, but the old Serpent and his chief agents knew better: and so did Clement and the Christian doctors, at the very time that they were taking advantage of fair weather to occupy every really strong position which the enemy held. The struggle soon grew into the deadly hand-to-hand grapple that ended in leaving the corpse of paganism on the ground, dead but not buried, to be gradually trodden out of sight by a new order of things.

It must not, however, be supposed that the Christian school of Alexandria was wholly, or even chiefly, employed in controversy with the schools of the heathen. The first care of the Church was, as at all times, the household of the faith: a care, however, in the fulfilment of which there is less that strikes as novel or interesting at first sight than in that remarkable aggressive movement of which it has been our object to give some idea. But even in the Church's household working there is much that is both instructive and interesting, as we get a glimpse of it in Clement of Alexandria. The Church in Alexandria, as elsewhere, was made up of men from every lot and condition of life. There were officials, civil and military, merchants, shop-keepers, work-people—plain, hard-striving men, husbands, and fathers of families. In the wake of the upper thousands followed a long and wide train—the multitude who compose the middle classes of a great city; and it was from their ranks that the Church was mainly recruited. They might not feel much interest in the university, beyond the fact that its numerous and wealthy students were a welcome stimulus to trade; but still they had moral and intellectual natures. They must have craved for some kind of food for their minds and hearts, and cannot have been satisfied with the dry, unnourishing scraps that were flung to them by the supercilious philosophers. They must have felt no small content—those among them who had the grace to hearken to the teachings of Clement—when he told them that the philosophy he taught was as much for them as for their masters and their betters. They listened to him, weighed his words, and accepted them; and then a great question arose. It was a question that was being debated and settled at Antioch, at Rome, and at Athens, no less than at Alexandria; but at Alexandria it was Clement who answered it. "We believe your good tidings," they said; "but tell us, must we change our lives wholly and entirely? Is everything that we have been doing so far, and our fathers have been doing before us, miserably and radically wrong?" They had bought and sold; they had married and given in marriage; they had filled their warehouses and freighted their ships; they had planted and builded, and brought up their sons and daughters. They had loved money, and the praise of their fellow-men; they had their fashions and their customs, old and time-honored, and so interwoven with their very life as to be almost identified with it. Some of their notions and practices the bare announcement of the Gospel sufficiently condemned; and these must go at once. But where was the line to be drawn? Did the Gospel aim at regenerating the world by forbidding marriage and laying a ban on human labor; by making life intolerable with asceticism; by emptying the streets and the market-places, and driving men to Nitria and the frightful rocks of the Upper Nile? And what made the question doubly exciting was the two-fold fact, first, that in those very days men and women were continually fleeing from home and family, and hiding, in the desert; and secondly, that there were in that very city congregations of {50} men calling themselves Christians, who proclaimed that it was wrong to marry, and that flesh-meat and wine were sinful indulgences.

The answer that Clement gave to these questionings is found mainly in that work of his which is called Paedagogus, or "The Teacher." The answer needed was a sharp, a short, and a decisive one. It needed to be like a surgical operation—rapidly performed, completed, with nothing further to be done but to fasten the bandages, and leave the patient to the consequences, whatever they might be. Society had to be reset. We need not repeat for the thousandth time the fact of the unutterable corruptness and rottenness of the whole pagan world. It was not that there were wanting certain true ideas of duty toward the state, the family, the fellow-citizen: the evil lay far deeper. It was not good sense that was wanting; it was the sense of the supernatural. "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die," was the formula that expressed the code of popular morality; and because men could not "eat and drink" comfortably and luxuriously without some sort of law, order, and mutual compact, it followed as a necessary consequence that there must be law, order, and compact. It was not, therefore, that Clement had merely to hold up the Gospel and show them its meaning here and its application there. He had to shift the very groundwork of morality, to take up the very foundations of the moral acts that go to make up life as viewed in the light of right and wrong. He had to substitute heaven for earth, hereafter for here, God for self. And he did so—in a fashion not unknown in the Catholic Church since, as indeed it had been not unknown to St. Paul long before. He simply held up to them the crucifix. Let any one turn to the commencement of the Paedagogus, and he will find a description of what a teacher ought to be. At the beginning of the second chapter he will read these words: "My children, our teacher is like the Father, whose Son he is; in whom there is no sin, great or small, nor any temptation to sin; God in the figure of a man, stainless, obedient to his Father's will; the Word, true God, who is in the Father, who is at the Father's right hand, true God in the form of a man; to whom we must strive with all our might to make ourselves like." It sounds like the commencement of a children's retreat in one of our modern cities to hear Clement proclaim so anxiously that the teacher and model of men is no other than Jesus, and that we must all become children, and go and listen to him and study him; yet it is a sentence that must have spoken to the very inmost hearts of all who had a thought or care for their souls in Alexandria; and one can perceive, in the terms used in the original Greek, a conscious adaptation of epithets to meet more than one Platonic difficulty. It was the reconciliation of the true with the beautiful. The Alexandrians, Greek and Egyptian, with their Greek longings for the beautiful, and their Egyptian tendings to the sensible, were not put off by Clement with a cold abstraction. A mathematical deity, formed out of lines, relations, and analogies, such as Neo-Platonism offered, was well enough for the lecture-room, but had small hold upon the heart. Christianity restored the thrilling sense of a personal God, which Neo-Platonism destroyed, but for which men still sighed, though they knew not what they were sighing for; and Christianity, by Clement's mouth, taught that the living and lovely life of Jesus was to be the end and the measure of the life of all. They were to follow him: "My angel shall walk before you," is Clement's own quotation. And having thus laid down the regenerating principle—God through Jesus Christ—he descends safely and fearlessly into details. Minutely and carefully he handles the problems of life, and sets them straight by the light of the life of Jesus.

These details and these directions, {51} as left to us by Clement in the Paedagogus, are only what we might anticipate from a Christian teacher to his flock; and yet they are very interesting, and disclose many facts that are full of suggestion to one who reads by the light of the Catholic faith. Who would not like to hear what Clement said to the Church of Alexandria about dress, beauty, feasting, drinking, furniture, conversation, money, theatres, sleep, labor, and housekeeping? We know well that there must have been ample scope for discourse on all these topics. The rich Alexandrians, like the rich Romans, and the rich Corinthians, and the rich everywhere, were fearfully addicted to luxury, and their poorer neighbors followed their example as well as they could. But there were circumstances peculiar to Alexandria that enabled it to outdo the rest of the world in this matter; putting Rome, of course, out of the question. It was the market for India; and seeing that almost everything in the way of apparel came from India, Alexandria had the pick of the best that the world could afford, and seems not to have been behindhand in taking advantage of its privilege. Nobody enjoyed more than the Alexandrian— whether he were a descendant of the Macedonian who came in with the Conqueror, or a parvenu of yesterday grown great by his wheat-ships or his silk-bales—to sweep the Heptastadion, or promenade the Great Quay, or lounge in the gardens of the Museum, in what ancient tailors and milliners would call a synthesis of garments, as ample, and stiff, and brilliant as Indian looms could make them. Then, again, Alexandria was a university town. Two hundred years of effeminate Ptolemies and four hundred of wealthy students had been more than enough to create a tradition of high, luxurious living. The conjunction of all that was to be got for money, with any amount of money to get it with, had made Alexandria a model city for carrying out the only maxim which the greater number even of the philosophers themselves really understood and practically followed: "Let us eat and drink!" Again, a navigable river, a rainless sky, and a climate perhaps the finest in the world, offered both inducements and facilities for parties of pleasure and conviviality in general. It is true the river was only a canal: one thing was wanting to the perfection of Alexandria as a site for an empire city, viz., the Nile; but that the canal was a moderate success in the eyes of the Alexandrians may be inferred from the fact that Canopus, where it finished its short course of thirteen or fourteen miles, and joined the Nile, was a perfect city of river-side hotels, to which the boats brought every day crowds of pleasure-seekers. Very gay were the silken and gilded boats, with their pleasant canopies and soothing music; and very gay and brilliant, but not very reputable, were the groups that filled them, with their crowns of flowers, their Grecian attitudinizing, and their ingenious arrangements of fan-working slaves. This was the population which it was Clement's work to convert to purity and moderation.

It is very common with Clement's modern critics, when making what our French allies would call "an appreciation" him, to set him down as a solemn trifler. They complain that they cannot get any "system of theology" out of his writings; indeed, they doubt whether he so much as had one. They find him use the term "faith" first in one sense and then in another, and they are especially offended by his minute instructions on certain matters pertaining to meat, drink, and dress. To any one who considers what Clement intended to do in his writings, and especially in the Paedagogus, there is no difficulty in seeing an answer to a difficulty like this. He did not mean to construct a "system of theology," and therefore it is no wonder if his critics cannot find one. He did not even mean to state the broad, general principles of the Gospel: his hearers knew these well enough. What he did mean to do was, {52} to apply these general rules and principles to a variety of cases occurring in everyday life. And yet, as a matter of fact, it is to be observed that he always does lay down broad principles before entering into details. In the matter of eating, for instance, regarding which he is very severe in his denunciations, and not without reason, he takes care to state distinctly the great Catholic canon of mortification: "Though all things were made for man, yet it is not good to use all, nor at all times." Again, in the midst of his contemptuous enumeration of ancient wines, he does not forget to say, "You are not robbed of your drink: it is given to you, and awaits your hand;" that which is blamed is excess. He sums up what he has been saying against the voluptuous entertainments then so universal by the following sentence—a novelty, surely, to both extremes of pagan society in Alexandria—"In one word, whatever is natural to man must not be taken from him; but, instead thereof, must be regulated according to fitting measure and time."

In deciding whether Clement was a "solemn trifler," or not, there is another consideration which must not be omitted, and that is his sense of the humorous. It may sound incongruous when speaking of a Father of the Church, and much more of a reputed mystical Father like Clement, but we think no one can deny that he often supplements a serious argument by a little stroke of pleasantry. As many of his sentences stand, a look or a smile would lighten them up and make them sparkle into humor. Paper and ink cannot carry the tone of the voice or the glance of the eye, and Clement's voice has been silent and his eye dimmed for many a century; but may we not imagine that at times something of archness in the teacher's manner would impart to his weighty words a touch of quaintness, and the habitually thoughtful eye twinkle with a gleam of pleasantry? He would be no true follower of Plato if it were not so. Who shall say he was not smiling when he gave out that formal list of wines, of eatables, and of scents most affected by the fashionables of those days? He concludes an invective against scandalous feats by condemning the universal crown of roses as a "nuisance:" it was damp, it was cold; it hindered one from using either his eyes or his ears properly. He advises his audience to avoid much curious carving and ornamenting of bed-posts; for creeping things, he says, have a habit of making themselves at home in the mouldings. He asks if one's hands cannot be as well washed in a clay basin as in a silver one. He wonders how one can dare to put a plain little loaf on a grand "wing-footed" table. He cannot see why a lamp of earthenware will not give as good a light as one of silver. He alludes with disgust to "hissing frying-pans," to "spoon and pestle," and even to the "packed stomachs" of their proprietors; to Sicilian lampreys, and Attican eels; shell-fish from Capo di Faro, and Ascrean beet from the foot of Helicon; mullet from the Gulf of Thermae, and pheasants from the Crimea. We hear him contemptuously repeat the phrases of connoisseurs about their wines, the startling variety of which we know from other sources besides his writings: he speaks of the "scented Thasian," the aromatic "Lesbian," the "sweet wine of Crete," the "pleasant Syracusan." The articles of plate which he enumerates to condemn would be more than sufficient to furnish out a modern wedding breakfast. To scents he gives no quarter. We have heard a distinguished professor of chemistry assert, in a lecture, that wherever there is scent on the surface there is sure to be dirt beneath; and, from the well-known fact that in Capua there was one whole street occupied by perfumers, he could draw no other inference than that Capua must have been "a very dirty city." It would appear that Clement of Alexandria was much of this opinion. He gives a picture of a pompous {53} personage in a procession, "going along marvellously scented, for the purpose of producing a sensation, and yet underneath as foul as he could be." He enumerates the absurd varieties of ointments in fashion, and orders them to be thrown away. He is indignant at the saffron-colored scented robe that the gentlemen wore. He will have no flowing or trailing vestments; no "Attic buskins," no "Persian sandals." He complains that the ladies go and spend the whole day at the perfumer's, the goldsmith's, and the milliner's, just as if he were speaking of "shopping" in the nineteenth century, instead of A.D. 200. He blames the men for frequenting the barbers' shops, the taverns, and the dicing-houses. It is amusing in these days to read of his denunciations of shaving. He has no patience with "hair-haters:" a man without the hair that God gave him is a "base sight." "God attached such importance to hair," he says, "that he makes a man come to hair and sense at the same time." But, in reality, this vehement attack on the "smooth men," as he calls them, points to one of the most flagrant of heathen immoralities, and reveals in the context a state of things to which we may not do more than allude. He condemns luxury in furniture, from "beds with silver feet, made of ivory and adorned with gold and tortoise-shell," down to "little table-daggers," that ancient ladies and gentlemen used indifferently to their food and to their slaves. All this is not very deep, but it is just what Clement wanted to say, and a great deal more useful in its place and connection than a "system of theology." We may add that it is a great deal more interesting to us, who know pretty well what Clement's "system of theology" was, but not so well what were the faults and failings of his Christian men and women in those far-off Alexandrian times.

There is another epithet bestowed upon Clement, more widely and with better authority than that of "trifler." He is called a mystic. He deals in allegorical interpretations of Holy Scripture, in fanciful analogies, and whimsical reasonings; he was carried away by the spirit of Neo-Platonism, and substituted a number of idle myths for the stern realities of the Gospel. It is not our business at present to show, by references, that this accusation is untrue; but we may admit at once that it is not unfounded, and we maintain that it points to an excellence, rather than a defect, in his teaching. From the remarks made just now, the reader will be prepared to expect that a teacher in Alexandria in Clement's days must have been a mystic. It was simply the fashion; and a fashion, in thought and speech, exacts a certain amount of compliance from those who think or speak for the good of its followers. Neo-Platonism was not extant in his time as a definite system, but ever since the days of Philon its spirit had been the spirit of the Museum. Nature, in its beauty and variety, was an allegory of the soul so said the philosophers, and the crowd caught it up with eagerness. The natural philosopher could not lecture on Aristotle De Animalibus without deducing morals in the style of AEsop. The moralist, in his turn, could hardly keep up his class-list without embodying his Beautiful and his Good in the aesthetical garb of a myth—the more like Plato, the better. The mathematician discoursed of numbers, of lines, and of angles, but the interesting part of his lecture was when he drew the analogy from lines and numbers to the soul and to God. Alexandria liked allegory, and believed, or thought she believed, that the Seen was always a type of the Unseen. Such a belief was not unnatural, and by no means hopelessly erroneous; nay, was it not highly useful to a Christian teacher, with the Bible in his hand, in which he would really have to show them so many things, per allegoriam dicta? Clement took up the accustomed tone. Had he done otherwise, he would have been strange and old-fashioned, whereas he {54} wanted to get the ear of his countrymen, and therefore thought it no harm to fall in with their humor for the mythical; just as good Father Faber preached and wrote like a modern Englishman, and not like an antique Douai controversialist, or a well-meaning translator of "Sermons from the French." But, say the objectors, Clement's interpretation of Scripture is so very forced and unnatural. The whole subject of allegorical interpretation of Sacred Scripture is too wide to be entered upon here; but that the Bible, especially the Old Testament, has an allegorical sense, no one denies, and the decision of what is the true allegorical sense depends more upon the authority of the teacher than upon the interpretation itself. In the time of Clement, when the Gnostics were attributing the Old Testament to the Evil Principle, there was a special necessity for a warm and loving acknowledgment that it was the voice and the teaching of God to man; and it is no wonder, therefore, that he allows himself, with the brilliant fancy of an Athenian, even if sometimes with the fantasticalness of an Alexandrian, to extract meanings out of the sacred text which our sober eyes could never have discovered. As it is, we owe to his mysticism no small portion of the eloquence and beauty of his writings; we may instance that charming passage in the Paedagogus where he alludes to the incident related in the twenty-sixth chapter of Genesis—"Abimelech, King of the Palestines, looking out through a window, saw Isaac playing with Rebecca his wife." Isaac represents, the little one of Christ, and is interpreted to be joy; Rebecca is patience; the royal Abimelech signifies heavenly wisdom. The child of Jesus Christ, joyful with a joy that none but that blessed teacher can give, lovingly sports with his "helpmate," patience, and the wisdom that is from above looks on and wonderingly admires. The beauty of conception and perfection of form that is inseparable from true Greek art, whether in a statue or a medal, an epic or an epigram, is by no means wanting to the first of the Greek Fathers. A reader who should take up the Paedagogus for no other than literary reasons would not be disappointed; he would receive, from his reading, a very high idea of the wisdom, the eloquence, and, above all, the saintly unction of the great Catholic doctor and philosopher who first made human science the handmaid of Christian theology.

The witnessing to the truth before heathen philosophers and the teaching the children of the faith might have fully employed both the zeal and the eloquence of Clement. But there was another and a sadder use for words, in the task of resisting the heresies that seemed to grow like foul excrescences from the very growth of the Church herself. Alexandria, the city of Neo-Platonism, was also with nearly as good a title the city of Gnosticism. To examine the history of Gnosticism is not a tempting undertaking. On the one side, it is like walking into a fog, as dense and unpleasant as ever marked a London November; on the other, it is to disturb a moral cess-pool, proverbially better left alone. Of the five groups of the Gnostic family, which seem to agree in little beside worshipping the devil, holding to "emanations," and owing their origin to Simon Magus, the particular group that made Alexandria its headquarters acknowledged as its leading names Basilides, Valentine, and Mark, each of whom outdid the other in the absurdity of his ravings about eons, generations, and the like, and in the abominableness of his practical licentiousness. Valentine and Mark were contemporaries of Clement, if not personally (Valentine is said to have died A.D. 150) at least in their immediate influence. No one can tell satisfactorily what made these precious followers of Simon Magus spend their days in patching up second-hand systems out of the rags of cast-off Oriental mysticism. No doubt their jargon appeared somewhat less {55} unnatural in their own days than it does in ours. They lived nearer the times when the wrecks of primeval revelation and history had been wrought into a thousand fantastic shapes on the banks of the Indus, the Euphrates, and the Nile, and when, in the absence of the true light, men occupied themselves with the theatrical illuminations of Bel, Isis, and Vishnu. But these Gnostics, in the clear dawn of the Gospel, still stuck to the fulsome properties of the devil's play-house. Unsavory and dishonest, they deserve neither respect for sincerity nor allowance for originality; they were mere spinners of "endless genealogies," and, with such a fig-leaf apron, they tried to conceal for a while the rankness of the flesh that finally made the very pagans join in hounding them from the earth. The infamous Mark was holding his conventicles in Alexandria about the very time that Pantaenus and Clement were teaching. To read of his high-flown theories about eons and emanations, his sham magic, his familiarity with demons, his impositions on the weaker sex, and the frightful licentiousness that was the sure end of it all, is like reading the history of the doings of the Egyptian priests in the Serapeion rather than of those who called themselves Christians. And yet these very men, these deluded Marcosians, gave out to learned and unlearned Alexandria that they alone were the true followers of Christ. We may conceive the heart-breaking work it would be for Clement to repel the taunts that their doings brought upon his name and profession, and to refute and keep down false brethren, whose arguments and strength consisted in an appeal to curiosity and brute passion. And yet how nobly he does it, in that picture of the true Gnostic, or Knower, to which he so often returns in all his extant works!

But philosophers, faithful, and heretics do not exhaust the story of Clement's doings. It lends a solemn light to the memorable history we are noting, to bear in mind that the Church's intellectual war with Neo-Platonist and Gnostic was ever and again interrupted by the yells of the blood-thirsty populace, the dragging of confessors to prison, and all the hideous apparatus of persecution. Which of us would have had heart to argue with men who might next day deliver us to the hangman? Who would have found leisure to write books on abstract philosophy with such stern concrete realities as the scourge and the knife waiting for him in the street? Clement's master began to teach just as one persecution was ceasing; Clement himself had to flee from his schools before the "burden and heat" of another; these were not times, one would suppose, for science and orderly teaching. Yet our own English Catholic annals can, in a manner, furnish parallel cases in more than one solid book of controversy and deep ascetical tract, thought out and composed when the pursuivants were almost at the doors. So true it is that when the Church's work demands scientific and written teaching, science appears and books are written, though the Gentiles are raging and the peoples imagining their vain things.

Here, for the present, we draw to a close these desultory notes on the Christian Schools of Alexandria. They will have served their purpose if they have but supplied an outline of that busy intellectual life which is associated with the names of Pantaenus and Clement. There is another name that ought to follow these two—the name of Origen, suggesting another chapter on Church history that should yield to none in interest and usefulness. The mere fact that in old Alexandria, in the face of hostile science, clogged and put to shame by pestilent heresies, ruthlessly chased out of sight ever and again by brute force— in spite of all this, Catholic science won respect from its enemies without for a moment neglecting the interests of its own children, is a teaching that will never be out of date, and least of all at a time like ours, and in a country where learning {56} sneers at revelation, where a thousand jarring sects invoke the sacred name of Christ, and where public opinion—the brute force of the modern world, as the rack and the fagot were of the ancient—never howls so loudly as when it catches sight of the one true Church of the living and eternal God.

From The Lamp.

JEM M'GOWAN'S WISH.

"I wish I were a lord," said Pat M'Gowan, a lazy young fellow, as he stretched over his grandmother's turf-fire a pair of brawny fists that were as red as the blaze that warmed them.

"You wish to be a lord!" answered Granny M'Gowan; "oh, then, a mighty quare lord you would make; but, as long as you live, Pat, never wish again; for who knows but you might wish in the unlucky minute, and that it would be granted to you?"

"Faix, then, granny, I just wish I could have my wish this minute."

"You're a fool, Pat, and have no more sense in your head than a cracked egg has a chance of a chicken inside of it. Maybe you'd never cease repenting of your wish if you got it."

"Maybe so, granny, but for all that I'd like to be a lord. Tell me, granny, when does the unlucky minute come that a body may get their wish?"

"Why, you see, Pat, there is one particular little bit of a minute of time in every twenty-four hours that, if a mortal creature has the unlucky chance to wish on that instant, his wish, whether for good or for bad, for life or death, fortune or misfortune, sickness or health, for himself or for others, the wish is granted to him; but seldom does it turn out for good to the wisher, because it shows he is not satisfied with his lot, and it is contrary to what God in his goodness has laid down for us all to do and suffer for his sake. But, Pat, you blackguard, I see you are laughing at your old granny because you think I am going to preach a sermon to you; but you're mistaken. I'll tell you what happened to an uncle of my own, Jem M'Gowan, who got his wish when he asked for it."

"Got his wish—oh, the lucky old fellow!" cried Pat. "Do, granny, tell me all about him. Got his wish! oh, how I wish I was a lord!"

"Listen to me, Pat, and don't be getting on with any of your foolish nonsense. My uncle, Jem M'Gowan, was then something like yourself, Pat— a strapping, able chap, but one that, like you too, would sooner be scorching his shins over the fire than cutting the turf to make it, and rather watching the potatoes boiling than digging them out of the ridge. Instead of working for a new coat, he would be wishing some one gave it to him. When he got up in the morning, he wished for his breakfast; and when he had swallowed it, he wished for his dinner; and when he had bolted down his dinner, he began to wish for his supper; and when he ate his supper, he wished to be in bed; and when he was in bed, he wished to be asleep—in fact, he did nothing from morning to night but wish, and even in his dreams I am quite sure he wished to be awake. Unlucky for Jem, his cabin was convenient to the great big house of Squire Kavanagh; and when Jem went out in the morning, shivering with cold, and wishing for a glass of whisky to put spirits in him, and he saw the bedroom windows of Squire Kavanagh closed, and knew that the squire was lying warm and snug inside, he always wished to be Squire Kavanagh. Then, when he saw the {57} squire driving the horse and the hounds before him, and he all the while working in the field, he wished it still more; and when he saw him dancing with the beautiful young ladies and illigant young gentlemen in the moonlight of a summer's evening, in front of his fine hall-door and under the shade of the old oak-trees, he wished it more than ever. The squire was always coming before him; and so happy a man did he seem that Jem was always saying to himself, 'I wish I was Squire Kavanagh,' from, cockcrow to sunset, until he at last hit upon the unfortunate minute in the twenty-four hours when his wish was to be granted. He was just after eating his dinner of fine, mealy potatoes, fresh-churned buttermilk, and plenty of salt and salt-butter to relish them, when he stretched out his two legs, threw up his arms, and yawned out, 'Oh, dear, I wish I was Squire Kavanagh!'

"The words were scarce uttered when he found himself, still yawning, in the grand parlor of Kavanagh House, sitting opposite to a table laid out with china, and a table-cloth, silver forks, and no end of silver spoons, and a roaring hot beefsteak before him. Jem rubbed his eyes and then his hands with joy, and thought to himself, 'By dad, my wish is granted, and I'll lay in plenty of beefsteak first of all.' He began cutting away; but, before he had finished, he was interrupted by some people coming in. It was Sir Harry M'Manus, Squire Brien, and two or three other grand gentlemen; and says they to him, 'Kavanagh, don't you know this is the day you're to decide your bet for five hundred pounds, that you will leap your horse over the widest part of the pond outside?'

"'Is it me? says Jem. 'Why, I never leaped a horse in my life!'

"'Bother!' says one; 'you're joking. You told us yourself that you did it twenty times, and there's the English colonel that made the bet with you, and he'll be saying, if you don't do it, that the Irish are all braggers; so, my dear fellow, it just comes to this—you must either leap the pond or fight me; for, relying upon your word, I told the colonel I saw you do it myself.'

"'I must fight you or leap the pond, is it?' answered Jem, trembling from head to foot.

"'Certainly, my dear fellow,' replied Sir Harry. 'Either I must shoot you or see you make the leap; so take your choice.'

"'Oh! then, bring out the horse,' whimpered Jem, who was beginning to wish he wasn't Squire Kavanagh.

"In a minute afterward, Jem found himself out in the lawn, opposite a pond that appeared to him sixty feet wide at the least. 'Why,' said he, 'you might as well ask me to jump over the ocean, or give a hop-step-and-a-leap from Howth to Holyhead, as get any horse to cross that lake of a pond.'

"'Come, Kavanagh,' said Sir Henry, 'no nonsense with us. We know you can do it if you like; and now that you're in for it, you must finish it.'

"'Faix, you'll finish me, I'm afeerd,' said Jem, seeing they were in earnest with him; 'but what will you do if I'm drowned?'

"'Do?' says Sir Henry.' Oh, make yourself aisy on that account. You shall have the grandest wake that ever was seen in the country. We'll bury you dacently, and we'll all say that the bouldest horseman now in Ireland is the late Squire Kavanagh. If that doesn't satisfy you, there's no pleasing you; so bring out the horse immediately.'

"'Oh! murder, murder!" says Jem to himself; 'isn't this a purty thing, that I must be drowned to make a great character for a little spalpeen like Squire Kavanagh? Oh, then, it's I that wish I was Jem M'Gowan again! Going to be drowned like a rat, or smothered like a blind kitten! and all for a vagabond I don't care a straw about. I, that never was on a horse's back before, to think of leaping over an ocean! Bad cess to you, Squire Kavanagh, for your boastin' and your wagerin'!'

{58}

"Well, a fine, dashing, jumping, rearing, great big gray horse was led up by two grooms to Jem's side. 'Oh, the darling!' said Sir Harry; 'there he goes! there's the boy that will win our bets for us! Clap him at once upon the horse's back,' says he to the grooms. The sight left Jem's eyes the very instant he saw the terrible gray horse, well known as one of the most vicious bastes in the entire country. If he could, he'd have run away, but fright kept him standing stock-still; and, before he knew where he was, he was hoisted into the saddle. 'Now, boys,' roared Sir Harry, 'give the horse plenty whip, and my life for it he is over the pond.'

"Jem heard two desperate slashes made on the flanks of the horse. The creature rose on his four legs off the ground, and came down with a soss that sent Jem up straight from the saddle like a ball, and down again with a crack fit to knock him into a hundred thousand pieces, not one of them bigger than the buttons of his waistcoat. 'Murder!' he shrieked; 'I wish I was Jem M'Gowan back again!' But there was no use in saying this, for he had already got his wish. The horse galloped away like lightning. He felt rising one instant up as high as the clouds, and the next he came with a plop into the water, like a stone that you would make take a 'dead man's dive.' He remembered no more till he saw his two kind friends, Sir Harry M'Manus and Squire Brien, holding him by the two legs in the air, and the water pouring from his mouth, nose, and every stitch of his clothes, as heavy and as constant as if it was flowing through a sieve, or as if he was turned into a watering-pot.

"'I'm a dead man,' says he, looking up in the face of his grand friends as well as he could, and kicking at the same time to get loose from them. 'I'm a dead man; and, what's worse, I'm a murdered man by the two of you.'

"'Bedad, you're anything but that,' said Sir Harry. 'You're now the greatest man in the county, for, though you fell into the pond, the horse leapt it; and I have won my bet, for which I am extremely obliged to you.'

"After shaking the water out of him, they laid him down on the grass, got a bottle of whisky, and gave him as much as he chose of it. Jem's spirits began to rise a little, and he laughed heartily when they told him he had won 500 from the English colonel. Jem got on his legs, and was beginning to walk about, when who should he see coming into the demesne but two gentlemen—one dressed like an officer, with under his arm a square mahogany box, the other with a great big horsewhip. Jem rubbed his hands with delight, for he made sure that the gentleman who carried the box was going to make Squire Kavanagh—that is, himself—some mighty fine present.

"'Kavanagh,' said Sir Harry, 'you will want some one to stand by you as a friend in this business; would you wish me to be your friend?'

"'In troth, I would,' says Jem. 'I would like you to act as a friend to me upon all occasions.'

"'Oh, that's elegant!' said Sir Harry. 'We'll now have rare sport.'

"'I'm mighty glad to hear it,' Jem replied, 'for I want a little sport after all the troubles I had.'

"'Oh, you're a brave fellow,' said Sir Harry.

"'To be sure I am,' answered Jem. 'Didn't I leap the gray horse over the big pond?'

"The gentleman with the box and whip here came up to Jem and his friends; and the whip-gentleman took off his hat, and says he, 'Might I be after asking you, is there any one of the present company Squire Kavanagh?'

"Jem did not like the looks of the gentleman, and Sir Harry M'Manus stepped before him, and said—'Yes; he is here to the fore. What is your business with him? I am acting as his friend, and I have a right to ask the question.'

"'Then, I'll tell ye what it is,' said {59} the gentleman. 'He insulted my sister at the Naas races yesterday.'

"'Faix,' says Jem, 'that's a lie! Sure, I wasn't near Naas races.'

"The word was hardly out of his mouth when he got a crack of a horsewhip across the face, that cut, he thought, his head in two. He caught hold of the gentleman, and tried to take the whip out of his hand; but, instead of the strength of Jem M'Gowan, he had only the weakness of Squire Kavanagh, and he was in an instant collared; and, in spite of all his kicking and roaring, lathered with the big whip from the top of his head to the sole of his foot. The gentleman got at last a little tired of beating him, and, flinging him away from him, said 'You and I are now quits about the lie, but you must give me satisfaction for insulting my sister.'

"'Satisfaction!' roared out Jem, as lie twisted and turned about with the pain of the beating. 'Bedad, I'll never be satisfied till every bone in your ugly body is broken.'

"'Very well,' said the gentleman. 'My friend, Captain M'Ginnis, is come prepared for this.'

"Upon that, Jem saw the square box opened that he thought was filled with a beautiful present for him; and he saw four ugly-looking pistols lying beside each other, and in one corner about two dozen of shining bran-new bullets. Jem's knees knocked together with fright when he saw Captain M'Ginnis and Sir Harry priming and loading the pistols.

"'Oh! murder, murder! this is worse than the gray horse,' he said. 'Now I am quite sure of being killed entirely.' So he caught hold of Sir Harry by the coat, and stuttered out, *Oh, then, what in the world are ye going to do with me?'

"'Do?' replied his friend; 'why, you're going to stand a shot, to be sure.'

"'The devil a shot I'll stand,' said Jem. 'I'll run away this minute.'

"'Then, by my honor and veracity, if you do,' replied Sir Harry, 'I'll stop you with a bullet. My honor is concerned in this business. You asked me to be your friend, and I'll see you go through it respectably. You must either stand your ground like a gentleman, or be shot like a dog.'

"Jem heartily wished he was no longer Squire Kavanagh; and as they dragged him up in front of the gentleman, and placed them about eight yards asunder, he thought of the quiet, easy life he led before he became a grand gentleman. He never while a laboring boy was ducked in a pond, or shot like a wild duck. But now he heard something said about 'making ready;' he saw the gentleman raise his pistol on a level with his head; he tried to lift his arm, but it stuck as fast by his side as if it was glued there. He saw the wide mouth of the wicked gentleman's pistol opened at his very eye, and looking as if it were pasted up to his face. He could even see the leaden bullet that was soon to go skelpin' through his brains! He saw the gentleman's finger on the trigger! His head turned round and round, and in an agony he cried out—'Oh, I wish I was Jem M'Gowan back again!'

"'Jem, you'll lose half your day's work,' said Ned Maguire, who was laboring in the same field with him. 'There you've been sleeping ever since your dinner, while Squire Kavanagh, that you are always talking about, was shot a few minutes ago in a duel that he fought with some strange gentleman in his own demesne.'

"'Oh," said Jem, as soon as he found that he really wasn't shot, 'I wouldn't for the wealth of the world be a gentleman. Better to labor all day than spend half an hour in the grandest of company. Faix, I've had enough and to spare of grand company and being a gentleman since I have gone to sleep here in the potato-field; and Squire Kavanagh, if he only knew it, had much more reason, poor man, to wish he was Jem M'Gowan than I had to wish I was Squire Kavanagh.'

{60}

"And ever after that, Pat," concluded the old lady, "Jem M'Gowan went about his work like a man, instead of wasting his time in nonsensical wishings."

"Thankee, granny," yawned Pat M'Gowan, as he shuffled off to bed. "After that long story, I don't think I'll ever wish to be a lord again."

From Chambers's Journal.

THE MONT CENIS TUNNEL.

The tunnel through the Alps at present being pierced to connect the railway system of France and Italy, has acquired the title of the "Mont Cenis Tunnel;" but its real position and direction have very little in common with that well-known Alpine pass. On examining a chart of the district which has been selected for this important undertaking, we shall observe that the main chain of the Cottian Alps extends in a direction very nearly East and West, and that this portion of it is bounded on either side by two roughly parallel valleys. On the North we have the valley of the Arc, and on the South the valley of the Dora Ripari, or, more strictly speaking, the valley of Rochemolles, a branch of the Dora. The Arc, flowing from East to West, descends from Lanslebourg to Modane, and from thence, after joining the Isere, empties itself into the Rhone above Valence. The torrent Rochemolles, on the other hand, flowing from West to East, unites itself with the Dora Ripari at Oulx, descends through a narrow and winding valley to Susa, and thence along the plain to Turin. The postal road, leaving St. Michel, mounts the valley of the Arc as far as Lanslebourg, then turns suddenly to the South, passes the heights of the Mont Cenis, and reaches Susa by a very steep descent. On mounting the valley of the Arc, and stopping about eighteen miles West of Mont Cenis, and a mile and a half below the Alpine village of Modane, we arrive at a place called Fourneaux. Here, at about three hundred feet above the level of the main road, is the Northern entrance of the tunnel; the Southern entrance is at the picturesque village of Bardonnêche, situated at about twenty miles West of Susa, in the valley of Rochemolles.

The considerations which decided the Italian engineers upon selecting this position for the contemplated tunnel, were principally the following: first, it was the shortest route that could be found; secondly, the difference of level between the two extremities was not too great; and, thirdly, the construction of the connecting lines of railway—on the North, from St. Michel to Fourneaux, and on the South, from Susa to Bardonnêche were, as mountain railways go, practicable, if not easy. The idea of a tunnel through the Alps had long occupied the minds of engineers and of statesmen both in France and Italy; but it is to the latter country that we must give the credit of having worked the idea into a practical shape, and of having inaugurated one of the most stupendous works ever undertaken by any people. To pierce a tunnel seven and a half English miles long, by ordinary means, through a hard rock, in a position where vertical shafts were impossible, would be an exceedingly difficult, if not, in a practical point of view, an impossible undertaking, not only on account of the difficulties of ventilation, but also on account of the immense time and consequent expense which it would entail. It was evident, {61} then, that if the project of a tunnel through the Alps was ever to be realized, some extraordinary and completely new system of mining must be adopted, by means of which not only a rapid and perfect system of ventilation could be insured, enabling the miners to resume, without danger, their labors immediately after an explosion, but which would treble, or at least double, the amount of work usually performed in any given time by the system hitherto adopted in tunnelling through hard rock. To three Piedmontese engineers, Messrs. Grandis, Grattoni, and Sommeiller, is due the merit of having solved this most difficult problem; for whether the opening of the Alpine tunnel take place in ten or twenty years, its ultimate success is now completely assured.

A short review of the history of this undertaking, and a summary of the progress made, together with a description of the works as they are conducted at the present time, derived from personal observation, cannot fail to be interesting to English readers.

Early in 1857, at St. Pier d'Arena, near Genoa, a series of experiments was undertaken before a select government commission, to examine into the practicability of a project for a mechanical perforating-engine, proposed by Messrs. Grandis, Grattoni, and Sommeiller, for the more rapid tunnelling through hard rock, and with a view to its employment in driving the proposed shaft through the Alps. This machine was to be worked by means of air, highly compressed by hydraulic or other economical means; which compressed air, after performing its work in the perforating or boring machines, would be an available and powerful source of ventilation in the tunnel. These experiments placed so completely beyond any doubt the practicability of the proposed system, that, so soon as August of the same year, the law permitting the construction of the tunnel was promulgated.

At this time, absolutely nothing had been prepared, with the exception of a very general project presented by the proposers, and the model of the machinery with which the experiments had been made before the government commission; we cannot, therefore, be much surprised on finding that some considerable time elapsed before the new machinery came into successful operation, the more particularly when we consider the entire novelty of the system, and the unusual difficulties naturally attending the first starting of such large works, in districts so wild and uncongenial as those of Fourneaux and Bardonnêche. Fourneaux was but a collection of mountain-huts, containing about four hundred inhabitants, entirely deprived of every means of supporting the wants of any increase of population, and where outside-work could not be carried on for more than six months in the year, owing to its ungenial climate. Nor was the case very different at Bardonnêche, a small Alpine village, situated at more than thirteen hundred metres (4,225 feet) above the level of the sea, and populated by about one thousand inhabitants, who lived upon the produce of their small patches of earth, and the rearing of sheep and goats, and with their only road of communication with the outer world in a most wretched and deplorable condition. Under these circumstances, we can imagine that the task of bringing together large numbers of workmen, and their competent directing staff, must have been by no means easy; and that the first work of the direction, although of a nature really most arduous and tedious (requiring, above all, time and patience), was also of a nature that could scarcely render its effects very apparent to the world at large for some considerable time. Again, it was necessary in this time to make the detailed studies not only of the tunnel itself, but of the compressing and perforating machinery on the large scale proposed to be used. This machinery had to be made and transported through a country abounding in difficulties. Then, as might be {62} expected, actual trials showed serious defects in the new machines for the compression of air; and, in perfecting the mechanical perforators, unexpected difficulties were encountered, which often threatened to prove insurmountable. The total inexperience and unskilfulness of the workmen, and the necessity of giving to them the most tedious instruction; accidents of most disheartening and discouraging kinds—all tended to delay the successful application of the new system.

The first important work to be undertaken was the tracing or setting out of the centre line of the proposed tunnel. It was necessary first to fix on the summit of the mountain a number of points, in a direct line, which should pass through the two points chosen, or rather necessitated by the conditions of the locality, for the two ends of the tunnel in the respective valleys of the Arc and of Rochemolles; secondly, to determine the exact distance between these two ends; and thirdly, to know the precise difference of level between the same points. These operations commenced toward the end of August, 1857. Starting from the Northern entrance at Fourneaux, a line was set out roughly in the direction of Bardonnêche, which line was found to cut the valley of Rochemolles at a point considerably above the proposed Southern entrance of the tunnel. On measuring this distance, however, a second and corrected line could be traced, which was found to be very nearly correct. Correcting this second line in the same manner, always departing from the North end, a third line was found to pass exactly through the two proposed and given points. The highest point of this line was found to be very nearly at an equal distance from each end of the tunnel, and at but a short distance below the true summit of the mountain-point, called the "Grand Vallon." The line thus approximately determined, it was necessary to fix definitely and exactly three principal stations or observatories—one on the highest or culminating point of the mountain, perpendicularly over the axis of the tunnel; and the other two in a line with each entrance, in such a manner that, from the centre observatory, both the others could be observed. At the Southern end, owing to the convenient conformation of the mountain, the observatory could be established at a point not very far from the mouth of the tunnel; but toward the North, several projecting points or counterforts on the mountain necessitated the carrying of the Northern observatory to a very considerable distance beyond the entrance of the gallery—not, however, so far as not to be discerned clearly and distinctly, and without oscillation, by the very powerful and excellent instrument employed. These three points permanently established, remain as a check for those intervening, and serve as the base of the operations for the periodical testing of the accuracy of the line of excavation.

The first rough tracing out of the line was completed before the winter of the year 1857, and it was considered sufficiently correct to permit the commencement of the tunnel at each end by the ordinary means—manual labor. In the autumn of 1858, the corrected line was traced, and the observatories definitely fixed, and all other necessary geodetic operations completed. Contemporaneously was undertaken a careful levelling between the two ends, taken along the narrow path of the Colle di Frejus, and bench-marks were established at intervals along the whole line. All the data necessary for an exact profile of the work were now obtained. The exact length of the future tunnel was found to be twelve thousand two hundred and twenty metres, or about seven and a half English miles; and the difference of level between the two mouths was ascertained to be two hundred and forty metres, or seven hundred and eighty feet, the Southern or Bardonnêche end being the highest. Under these circumstances, it would have been easy to have established a {63} single gradient from Bardonnêche down to Fourneaux of about two centimètres per mètre—that is, of about one in fifty. But a little reflection will show, that in working both ends of the gallery at once, in order to effect the proper drainage of the tunnel, it would be necessary to establish two gradients, each inclining toward the respective mouths, and meeting in some point in the middle. This, in fact, has been done, and the two hundred and forty metres' difference of level has been distributed in the following manner: From Bardonnêche, the gradient mounts at the rate of 0.50 per one thousand mètres—that is, one in two thousand as far as the middle of the gallery; here it descends toward Fourneaux with a gradient of 22.20 mètres per one thousand, or about one in forty-five. The highest point of the Grand Vallon perpendicularly over the axis of the tunnel is 1615.8 mètres, or 5251.31 feet.

The difficulties encountered in the carrying out of these various geodetic operations can scarcely be exaggerated. It is true that nothing is more easy than to picket out a straight line on the ground, or to measure an angle correctly with a theodolite; but if we consider the aspect of the locality in which these operations had to be conducted, repeated over and over again, and tested in every available manner with the most minute accuracy, we shall be quite ready to accord our share of praise and admiration to the perseverance which successfully carried out the undertaking. In these regions, the sun, fogs, snow, and terrific winds succeed each other with truly marvellous rapidity, the distant points become obscured by clouds, perhaps at the very moment when an important sight is to be taken, causing most vexatious delays, and often necessitating a recommencement of the whole operation. These delays may in some cases extend for days, and even weeks. To these inconveniences add the necessity of mounting and descending daily with delicate instruments from three thousand to four thousand feet over rocks and rugged mountain-paths, the time occupied in sending from one point to another, and the difficulty of planting pickets on elevated positions often almost inaccessible. All these inconveniences considered, and we must admit the unusual difficulties of a series of operations which, under other circumstances, would have offered nothing peculiarly remarkable.

As has already been pointed out, the excavation of the gallery at both ends had already been in operation, by ordinary means, since the latter part of the year 1857; this work continued without interruption until the machinery was ready; and the progress made in that time affords a valuable standard by which to measure the effect of the new machinery. In the interval between the end of 1857 and that to which we have now arrived, namely, the end of 1858, many important works had been pushed forward. At Bardonnêche, the communications had been opened, and bridges and roads constructed for facilitating the transport of the heavy machinery. Houses for the accommodation of the workmen had been rapidly springing up, together with the vast edifices for the various magazines and offices. The canal, more than a mile and a half in length, for conveying water to the air-compressing machines, was constructed, and the little Alpine village had become the centre of life and activity. At Fourneaux, works of a similar character had been put in motion; only here the transport of the water for the compressors was more costly and difficult, the water being at a low level. At first, a current derived from the Arc was used to raise water to the required height, but afterward it was found necessary to establish powerful forcing-pumps, new in their details, which are worked by huge water-wheels driven by the Arc itself. Early in the month of June, 1859, the first erection of the compressing machinery was commenced at Bardonnêche. The badness of the season, however, and {64} the Italian campaign of this year, delayed the rapid progress, and even caused a temporary suspension of this work. The results obtained by the experiments which had previously been made on a small scale at St. Pier d'Arena, failed completely in supplying the data necessary to insure a practical success to the first applications of the new system; numberless modifications, both in the compressing-engines and in the perforating-machines, were found necessary; and several months were consumed in experimenting with, modifying, and improving the huge machinery; so that it was not before the 10th of November, 1860, that five compressors were successfully and satisfactorily at work. On the 12th, however, two of the large conducting-pipes burst, and caused a considerable amount of damage, without causing, however, any loss of life. This accident revealed one or two very serious defects in the manner of working the valves of the engine; and in order to provide against the possibility of future accidents of the same nature, further most extensive modifications were undertaken.

By the beginning of January, 1861, the five compressors were again at work; and on the 12th of this month the boring-engine was introduced for the first time into the tunnel. Very little useful result was, however, obtained for a long and anxious period, beyond continually exposing defects and imperfections in the perforators. The pipes conducting the compressed air from the compressing-machines to the gallery gave at first continued trouble and annoyance; soon, however, a very perfect system of joints was established, and this source of difficulty was completely removed. After much labor and patience, and little by little, the perforating-machines became improved and perfected, as is always the case in any perfectly new mechanical contrivance having any great assemblage of parts. Actual practice forced into daylight those numberless little defects which theory only too easily overlooks; but there was no lack of perseverance and ingenuity on the part of the directing engineers; one by one the obstacles were met, encountered, and eventually overcome, and the machines at last arrived at the state of precision and perfection at which they may be seen to-day. About the month of May, 1861, the work was suspended for about a month, in consequence of a derangement in the canal supplying water to the compressors; and it was considered necessary to construct a large reservoir on the flank of the mountain, to act as a deposit for the impurities contained in the water, and which often caused serious inconvenience in the compressors. In the whole of the first year 1861, the number of working days was two hundred and nine, and the advance made was but one hundred and seventy metres (five hundred and fifty feet), or about eighteen inches per day of twenty-four hours, an amount less than might have been done by manual labor in the same time. In the year 1862, however, in the three hundred and twenty-five days of actual work, the advance made was raised to three hundred and eighty metres (one thousand two hundred and thirty-five feet), giving a mean advance of 1.17 metres, or about three feet nine inches per day. In the year 1863, the length done (always referring to the South or Bardonnêche side) was raised to above four hundred metres; and no doubt this year a still greater progress will have been made.

At the Fourneaux or Northern end of the tunnel—owing to increased difficulties peculiar to the locality—the perforation of the gallery was much delayed. A totally different system of mechanism for the compression of air was necessitated; and it was not before the 25th of January, 1863, that the boring-machine was in successful operation on this side, or two years later than at Bardonnêche. The experience, however, gained at this latter place, and the transfer of a few skilful workmen, soon raised the advance {65} made per day to an amount equivalent to that effected at the Southern entrance. Thus, on the South side (omitting the first year, 1861) since the beginning of 1862, and on the North side since the beginning of 1863, the new system of mechanical tunnelling may be said to have been in regular and successful operation.

In the beginning of September of this year were completed in all three thousand five hundred and seventy metres of gallery. From this we deduct sixteen hundred metres done by manual labor, leaving, for the work done by the machines, a length of nineteen hundred and seventy metres. From this we can make a further deduction of the one hundred and seventy metres executed in the first year of experiment and trial at Bardonnêche, so that we have eighteen hundred metres in length excavated by the machines in a time dating from the beginning of 1862 at the South end, and from the beginning of 1863 at the North end of the tunnel. Thus, up to the month of September, 1864, we have in all four years and six months; and eighteen hundred metres divided by 4.5 gives us four hundred metres as the rate of progress per year at each side, or in total, eight hundred metres per year. Basing our calculation, then, on this rate, we find that the eight thousand six hundred and fifty metres yet to be excavated will require about ten and a half more years; so that we may look forward to the opening of the Mont Cenis tunnel at about the year 1875. The directing engineers, who have given good proof of competency and skill, are, however, of opinion that this period may be considerably reduced, unless some totally unlooked-for obstacles are met with in the interior of the mountain. As has been indicated above, sixteen hundred metres in length of the tunnel was completed by manual labor before the introduction of the mechanical boring-engines, in a period of five years at the North and three years at the South side, equal to four years at each end; and eight hundred metres in four years gives us two hundred metres per year, or just one-half excavated by the machine in the same period.

In using the machines, up to the present time, a perfect ventilation of the tunnel has been secured by the compressed air escaping from the exhaust of the boring-engines; or by jets of air expressly impinged into the lower end of the gallery to clear out rapidly the smoke and vapor formed by the explosion of the mine. It should be remembered, moreover, that in working a gallery of this kind, where vertical shafts are impossible, by manual labor, a powerful and costly air-compressing apparatus would have been necessary for the ventilation of the tunnel alone, so that the economy of the system, as applied at the Mont Cenis over the general system of tunnelling in hard rock, is evident. I propose, in the second portion of this article, to give a short description of the machinery employed and the system of working adopted, both at the South and North ends of the Mont Cenis gallery.

II.

Travellers who are given to pedestrian exercises may easily visit the works being carried on for the perforation of the tunnel through the Alps, both at Bardonnêche and at Modane, passing from one mouth of the tunnel to the other by the Colle di Frejus; and in fine weather, the tourist would not repent the eight hours spent in walking from Bardonnêche to Susa—a distance of about twenty-five miles. The road descends the valley of the Dora Ripari, and abounds in beautiful scenery. The railway to be constructed along this narrow defile will be found to tax the skill of the engineer as much as any road yet attempted. Its total length, from the terminus at Susa to the mouth of the Mont Cenis tunnel, will be forty kilometres, {66} or about twenty-four miles; and the difference of level between these two points is about two thousand five hundred feet, the line having a maximum gradient of one in forty, and a minimum of one in eighty-four. There will be three tunnels of importance, having a total length of about ten thousand feet; three others of lesser dimensions, having a total length of five thousand five hundred feet; and twelve other small tunnels, of lengths varying from two hundred and twenty to eight hundred and fifty feet, their total length being five thousand four hundred feet. Thus, the total length of tunnel on these twenty-four miles of railway will be nearly twenty-one thousand feet, or about four miles—just one-sixth of the whole line. There will also be several examples of bridges and retaining walls of unusual dimensions.

The works being carried on at Bardonnêche are on a larger scale than at Modane; so we will, with our readers' permission, suppose ourselves arrived in company at the former place, and the first point which we will visit together will be the large house containing the air-compressing machinery. Before entering, however, we will throw a glance at the exterior of the building. We find before us, as it were, two houses, in a direct line one with the other—one situated at the foot of a steep ascent; and the other at about seventy or eighty feet above it, on the side of the mountain. These two houses are, however, but one, being joined by ten rows of inclined arch-work. Along the summit of each row of arches is a large iron pipe, more than a foot in diameter. These ten pipes, inclined at an angle of about forty-five degrees, come out of the side of the upper house, and enter the side of the lower house, and serve to conduct the water from the large reservoir above to the air-compressing machinery, which is arranged in the house below, exerting in this machinery the pressure of a column of water eighty-four feet six inches in height. On entering the compression-room, we have before us ten compressing-machines, precisely the same in all their parts—five on the right hand, and five on the left, forming, as it were, two groups of five each. In the centre of these two groups are two machines, in every respect like a couple of small steam-engines, only they are worked by compressed air instead of steam, and which we will call aereomotori. Each of these aereomotori imparts a rotary motion to a horizontal axis extending along the whole length of the room, and on which are a series of cams, which regulate the movements of the valves of the great compressors. This axis we will call the "main shaft." One group of five compressors is totally independent of the other, and has its aereomotore with its main shaft; but still, with one single aereomotore, by means of a simple connecting apparatus, it is possible to work one or the other group separately, or both together; also, any number of the ten compressors can be disconnected for repairs without affecting the action of the rest, or may be injured without conveying any injury to the others. In front of each of the ten compressors are placed cylindrical recipients, in every respect like large steam-boilers, except that they have no fire-grate or flues, each having a capacity of seventeen cubic metres, or five hundred and eighty-three cubic feet. These recipients are put into communication one with the other by means of a tube similar to a steam-pipe connecting a series of steam-boilers; and each connection is furnished with a stop-valve, so that any one recipient can be isolated from the rest.

Let us now examine the end and action of this machinery. As the aereomotori which work the valves of the machines for forcing air into the recipients are themselves worked by compressed air coming from the recipients, it is evident that before we can put the compressing-machines in motion, we must have already some supply of compressed air in the {67} cylindrical vessels. This supply of air, compressed to a pressure of six atmospheres, is obtained in the following manner: Each group of five recipients, filled with air at the ordinary atmospheric pressure, is put in communication with a large pipe which enters into a cistern placed in the side of the mountain at about one hundred and sixty-two feet above the floor of the compressing-room. The first operation, then, is to open the equilibrium valves placed at the bottom of the two pipes (one from each group of recipients); water then rushes into the vessels, compressing the ordinary air therein contained to about a pressure of six atmospheres. A communication is now opened between this compressed air and the cylinders of the aereomotori, which commence their action precisely as a steam-engine would do on the admission of steam; a rotary motion is given to the main shaft; and the equilibrium valves, placed in chambers at the bottom of each of the ten pipes coming from the cistern of water placed in the house above, are opened. We will observe the operation in one of the ten lines of action, as it were, consisting of the pipe conducting the water from the cistern, the compressing-machine, and the cylindrical recipient. The equilibrium valve at the bottom of the pipe being opened in the manner above explained, the water, with its head of eighty-four feet six inches, rushes past it, along a short length of horizontal pipe (in which is an exhaust valve, now closed), and begins to mount a vertical column or tube of cast-iron about ten feet high and two feet in diameter: the air in this column undergoes compression until it has reached a pressure sufficient to force open a valve in a pipe issuing from the summit of the tube, and connecting it with the recipient. This valve being already weighted with the pressure of the air compressed to six atmospheres by the means previously explained, a certain quantity of air is thus forced into the vessel; at this moment, another revolution of the main shaft causes the equilibrium valve at the bottom of the conducting-pipe to be shut, and at the same time opens the exhaust valve at the foot of the vertical column. The head of water being now cut off, and the exhaust open, the water in the vertical column begins to sink by its own gravity, leaving a vacuum behind it, if it were not for a small clack-valve opening inward in the upper part of the compressing column, which opens by the external pressure of the air, so that by the time all the water has passed out of the exhaust valve, the compressor is again full of atmospheric air; the valve in connection with the recipient being closed by the compressed air imprisoned in the vessel. The aereomotori continue their motion, another revolution of the main shaft shuts the exhaust and opens the equilibrium or admission valve; the column of water is again permitted to act, and the same action is repeated, more air being forced into the recipient at each round or pulsation of the machine. Now, supposing no consumption of the compressed air to take place beyond that used for driving the aereomotori, it seems evident that the water in the vessels would be gradually forced out, owing to the growing pressure of the air inside, above the pressure of the column of water coming from the higher cistern; but the communication with this higher cistern is always kept open, the column of water acting, in fact, as a sort of moderator or governor to the compressing-machine, rising or falling according to the consumption of the compressed air, and always insuring that there shall be a pressure of six atmospheres acting against the valve at the summit of the vertical column. A water-tube placed on the outside of each group of recipients, with a graduated scale marked on it, indicates at a glance the consumption of air. If the perforating-machines in the tunnel cease working, the pressure augments in the recipients, and the water in them falls until an equilibrium is established, {68} between the pressure of the column of water and the force of the compressors, until, in fact, these work without being able to lift the valve at the summit of the vertical compressing column. On the other hand, if more air than usual be used for ventilating the tunnel, or by an accidental leakage in the conducting-pipes, the water rises rapidly in the recipients, and consequently in the water-gauge outside, and in thus creating an equilibrium, indicates the state of things. By this means a continual compensation of pressure is kept up, which prevents any shock on the valves, and causes the machine to work with the regularity and uniformity of a steam-engine provided with a governor. In every turn of the main shaft, a complete circle of effects take place in the compressors; and experience has shown that three turns a minute of the shaft—that is, three pulsations of the compressing-machine per minute—are sufficient. It will thus be seen that a column of water, having the great velocity due to a head of eighty-four feet six inches, acts upon a column of air contained in a vertical tube; the effect of this velocity being to inject, as it were, a certain quantity of air into a recipient at each upward stroke of the column, and at each downward stroke drawing in after it an equivalent quantity of atmospheric air as a fresh supply. The ten recipients charged with air compressed to six atmospheres (ninety pounds on the square inch) in the manner above explained, serve as a reservoir of the force required for working the boring-engines in the tunnel, and for ventilating and purifying the gallery. The air is conducted in pipes about eight inches in diameter, having a thickness of metal of about three-eighths of an inch. Much doubt had previously been expressed as to the possibility of conveying compressed air to great distances without a very great and serious loss of power. The experience gained, however, at the Mont Cenis has shown that, conveyed to a distance of thirteen English miles, the loss would be but one-tenth of the original force; and that the actual measured loss of power in a distance of six thousand five hundred feet, a little more than a mile and a quarter, was less than 1-127th of the original pressure in the recipients.

The mouth of the tunnel is but a few hundred yards from the air-compressing house—we will now proceed thither. For nearly a mile in length the gallery is completed and lined with masonry. At the first view, we are struck with the bold outline of its section and its ample dimensions. Excepting, perhaps, the passage of an occasional railway-truck, laden with pieces of rock and rubbish, we find nothing to remind us of the numbers of busy workmen and of the powerful machines which are laboring in the tunnel. All is perfectly quiet and solitary. Looking around us as we traverse this first and completed portion, we observe nothing very different from an ordinary railway-tunnel, with the exception of the great iron pipe which conveys the compressed air, and is attached to the side of the wall. At the end of about a quarter of an hour we begin to hear sounds of activity, and little lights flickering in the distance indicate that we are approaching the scene of operations. In a few moments we reach the second division of the tunnel, or that part which is being enlarged from the comparatively small section made by the perforating-machine to its full dimensions, previously to being lined with masonry. In those portions where the workmen are engaged in the somewhat dangerous operation of detaching large blocks of stone from the roof, the tunnel is protected by a ceiling of massive beams, under which the visitor passes—not, however, without hurrying his pace and experiencing a feeling of satisfaction when the distance is completed. Gradually leaving behind us the bee-like crowd of busy miners, with the eternal ring of their boring-bars against the hard rock, we find the excavated gallery {69} getting smaller and smaller, and the difficulties of picking our way increasing at every step; the sounds behind us get fainter and fainter, and in a short time we are again in the midst of a profound solitude.

The little gallery in which we are now stumbling our way over blocks of stone and rubbish, only varied by long tracts of thick slush and pools of water, is the section excavated by the boring-machine—in dimension about twelve feet broad by eight feet high. The tramway which has accompanied us all the way is still continued along this small section. In the middle portion underneath the rails is the canal, inclined toward the mouth of the tunnel, for carrying off the water; and in this canal are now collected the pipes for conveying the compressed air to the machines, and the gas for illuminating the gallery. At the end of a few minutes, a rattling, jingling sound indicates that we are near the end of our excursion, and that we are approaching the perforating-machines. On arriving, we find that nearly the whole of the little gallery is taken up by the engine, the frame of which, mounted upon wheels, rests upon the main tramway, so that the whole can be moved backward or forward as necessary. On examining the arrangement a little closely, we find that in reality we have before us nine or ten perforators, completely independent of one another, all mounted on one frame, and each capable of movement in any direction. Attached to every one of them are two flexible tubes, one for conveying the compressed air, and the other the water which is injected at every blow or stroke of the tool into the hole, for the purpose of clearing out the debris and for cooling the point of the "jumper." In front, directed against the rock, are nine or ten tubes (according to the number of perforators), very similar in appearance to large gun-barrels, out of which are discharged with great rapidity an equal number of boring-bars or jumpers. Motion is given to these jumpers by the direct admission of a blast of compressed air behind them, the return stroke being effected by a somewhat slighter pressure of air than was used to drive them forward. We will suppose the machine brought up for the commencement of an attack. The points most convenient for the boring of the holes having been selected, the nine or ten perforators, as the case may be, are carefully adjusted in front of them. The compressed air is then admitted, and the boring of the holes commences. On an average, at the end of about three-quarters of an hour, the nine or ten holes are pierced to a depth of two feet to two feet six inches. Another ten holes are then commenced, and so on, until about eighty holes are pierced. The greater number of these holes are driven toward the centre of the point of attack, and the rest round the perimeter. The driving of these eighty holes to an average depth of two feet three inches, is usually completed in about seven hours, and the second operation is then commenced.

The flexible tubes conveying the compressed air and the water are detached from the machines, and placed in security in the covered canal. The perforating-machine, mounted on its frame or truck, is drawn back on the tramway behind two massive folding-doors of wood. Miners then advance and charge the holes in the centre with powder, and adjust the matches; fire is given, and the miners retire behind the folding-doors, which are closed. The explosion opens a breach in the centre part of the front of attack. Powerful jets of compressed air are now injected, to clear off the smoke formed by the powder. As soon as the gallery is clear, the other holes in the perimeter are charged and fired, and more air is injected. Then comes the third operation. Gangs of workmen advance and clear away the debris and blocks of stone detached by the explosion of the mine, in little wagons running on a pair of rails placed by the side of the main tramway. This done, the main line is {70} prolonged to the requisite distance, and the perforating engine is again brought forward for a fresh attack. Thus, we have three distinct operations—first, the mechanical perforation of the holes; secondly, the charging and explosion of the mine; and thirdly, the clearing away of the debris. By careful registers kept since the commencement of the work, it is found that the mean duration of each successive operation is as follows: for the perforation of the holes, seven hours thirty-nine minutes; for the charging and explosion of the mine, three hours twenty-nine minutes; for the clearing away of the debris, two hours thirty-three minutes; or, in all, nearly fourteen hours. Occasionally, however, the three operations may be completed in ten hours, all depending upon the hardness of the rock. It has been found practically more expeditious to make two series of operations in twenty-four hours.

Whatever may be the nature of the rock, if it is very hard, the depth of the holes is reduced; that is, the perforation is only continued for a certain given time—about six and a half hours—which, for the eighty holes with ten perforaters, gives us about three-quarters of an hour for each hole. The rock is generally of calcareous schist, crystallized, and exceedingly hard, traversed by thick veins of quartz, which often break the points of the boring-tools after a few blows. Each jumper gives about three blows per second, and makes one-eighteenth of a revolution on its axis at each blow, or one complete revolution every six seconds. Thus, in the three-quarters of an hour necessary to drive a single hole to the depth of twenty-seven inches, we have four hundred and fifty revolutions of the bar, and eighteen hundred violent blows given by the point against the hard rock, and that under an impulse of about one hundred and eighty pounds. These figures will give us some idea of the wear and tear of the perforating-machines. It is calculated that on an average one perforating-machine is worn out for every six metres of gallery, so that more than two thousand will be consumed before the completion of the tunnel. The total length completed at the Bardonnêche side at the present time is just two thousand three hundred metres, or nearly a mile and a half.

At the north or Modane end, the mechanical perforators are precisely the same as at Bardonnêche, as also is the system of working in the gallery. The machinery for the compression of air, however, is very different, more simple, and in every way an improvement upon that at the South end. Not finding any convenient means of obtaining a head of eighty-four feet of water sufficient in quantity for working a series of compressors, as at Bardonnêche, there has been established at Modane a system of direct compression, the necessary force for which is derived from the current of the Arc. Six large water-wheels moved by this current give a reciprocating motion to a piston contained in a large horizontal cylinder of cast iron. This piston, having a column of water on each side of it, raises and lowers alternately these two columns, in two vertical tubes about ten feet high, compressing the air in each tube alternately, and forcing a certain quantity, at each upward stroke of the water, to enter into a cylindrical recipient. There is very little loss of water in this machine, which in its action is very like a large double-barreled common air-pump. It is a question open to science whether the employment of compressed air for driving the perforating engines in a work such as is in operation at the Mont Cenis, could not be advantageously and economically exchanged for the employment of a direct hydraulic motive force, the ventilation of the tunnel being provided for by other means. The system, however, employed at Modane has many advantages, which it is impossible to overlook, and its complete success has given a marked and decided impulse to the modern science of tunnelling through hard rock.

{71}

Translated from the Civiltà Cattolica.

ON THE UNITY OF TYPE IN THE ANIMAL KINGDOM.

I.

The generation of a human creature takes place neither by the development of a being which is found in the germ, sketched as it were like a miniature, nor by a sudden formation or an instantaneous transition from potential to actual existence. It is effected by the true production of a new being, which pre-exists only virtually in the activity of the germ communicated by the conceiver, and the successive transformation of the potential subject.

This truth, an a priori postulate of philosophy, and demonstrated by physiology a posteriori, was illustrated by us in a preceding article. Here we must discard an error which has sprung from this truth. For there have been materialists who maintained that there was but one type in the whole animal kingdom, that is, man, as he unites in himself in the highest possible degree perfection of organism and delicacy of feelings; and that all the species of inferior animals were so many stages in the development of that most perfect type. This opinion is thus expressed by Milne-Edwards in his highly esteemed lectures on the Physiology and Comparative Anatomy of Man and Animals:

"Every organized being undergoes in its development deep and various modifications. The character of the anatomical structure, no less than its vital faculties, changes as it passes from the state of embryo to that of a perfect animal in its own species. Now all the animals which are derived from the same type move during a certain time in the same embryonic road, and resemble each other in that process of organization during a certain period of time, the longer as their zoological relationship is closer; afterward they deviate from the common road and each acquires the properties belonging to it. Those that are to have a more perfect structure proceed further than those whose organization is completed at less cost. It results from this that the transitory or embryonic state of a superior animal resembles, in a more or less wonderful manner, the permanent state of another animal lower in the same zoological series. Some authors have thought right to conclude from this that the diversity of species proceeds from a series of stages of this kind taking place at different degrees of the embryonic development; and these writers, falling into the exaggerations to which imitators are especially liable, have held that every superior animal, in order to reach its definitive form, must pass through the series of the proper forms of animals which are its inferiors in the zoological hierarchy; so that man, for instance, before he is born, is at first a kind of worm, then a mollusk, then a fish, or something like it, before he can assume the characters belonging to his species. An eminent professor has recently expressed these views in a concise form, saying that the embryology of the most perfect being is a comparative transitory anatomy, and that the anatomic table of the whole animal kingdom is a fixed and permanent representation of the movable aspect of human organogeny."

Thus, according to this opinion, man is the only type of animal life; and every inferior species is but an imitation, more or less perfect, of the same; an inchoation stopped in its course at a greater or shorter distance from the term to which the work of nature tends in its organization of the human embryo. In short, an {72} entoma in difetto, to use the language of Dante.

The doctrine is not new in the scientific world. It was proclaimed in the last century by Robinet, who held that all inferior beings are but so many proofs or sketches upon which nature practises in order to learn how to form man. In the beginning of the present century Lamarck, in Germany, following Kielmayer, reproduced the same theory. According to him all the species of animals inferior to man are but so many lower steps at which the human embryo stops in its gradual development. Man, on the contrary, is the last term reached by nature after she has travelled all through the zoological scale, to fit herself for that work. About the same time the celebrated naturalist, Stephen Geoffroy Saint Hilaire, began to disseminate in France analogous ideas under the name of stages of development (arrêt de devéloppement); and these ideas, exaggerated by some of his disciples, amounted in their minds to the same doctrine of Lamarck, just alluded to. Among them Professor Serres holds the first rank, and it is to him that Milne-Edwards alludes in the passage just cited. He expresses himself thus:

"Human organogeny is a comparative transitory anatomy, as comparative anatomy is the fixed and permanent state of the organogeny of man; and, on the contrary, if we reverse the proposition, or method of investigation, and study animal life from the lowest to the highest, instead of considering it from the highest to the lowest, we shall see that the organisms of the series reproduce incessantly those of the embryos, and fix themselves in that state which for animals becomes the term of their development. The long series of changes of form presented by the same organism in comparative anatomy is but the reproduction of the numerous series of transformations to which this organism is subjected in the embryo in the course of its development. In the embryo the passage is rapid, in virtue of the power of the life which animates it; in the animal the life of the organism is exhausted, and it stops there, because it is not permitted to follow the course traced for the human embryo. Distinct stages on the one hand, progressive advance on the other, here is the secret of development, the fundamental difference which the human mind can perceive between comparative anatomy and organogeny. The animal series thus considered in its organisms is but a long chain of embryos which succeed each other gradually and at intervals, reaching at last man, who thus finds his physical development in comparative organogeny."

Thus speaks Serres. And in another place:

"The whole animal kingdom appears only like one animal in the course of formation in the different organisms. It stops here sooner, there later, and thus at the time of each interruption determines, by the state in which it then is, the distinctive and organized characters of classes, families, genera, and species."

II.

THIS OPINION REFUTED BY PHILOSOPHICAL REASONS.

The futility of the above doctrine is manifest, in the first place, from the weakness of the foundation on which it rests. That foundation is no other than a kind of likeness which appears at first sight between the rudimental forms which, in the first steps of its development, are assumed by the human embryo, and the forms of some inferior animals. For the germ, by the very reason that it has not, as it was once believed, all the organism of the human body in microscopic proportions, but in order to acquire it must pass from potential to actual existence—by that very reason, is {73} subjected to continual metamorphoses, that is, to successive transformations, which give it different aspects, from that of a little disc to the perfect human figure. Now, it is clear that, in this gradual transition from the mere power to the act of perfect organization, a kind of analogy or likeness to some of the numberless forms of inferior organizations of the animal kingdom may, and must, be found in its intermediate and incomplete state.

But, evidently, between analogy and identity there is an immense difference; and the fact of there being an analogy with some of those forms, gives us no right to infer that there is one with all. Hence this theory is justly despised by the most celebrated naturalists as the whim of an extravagant fancy.

"According to Lamarck," says Frédault, in speaking of this, theory, "all the animals are but inferior grades at which the human germ stopped in its development, and man is but the result of the last efforts of a nature which has passed successively through the grades of its novitiate, and has arrived at the last term of its perfection. Presented in this view, the doctrine of epigenesis raised against itself the most simple and scientific common sense, as being manifestly erroneous. Numerous works on the development of the germ have demonstrated that appearances were taken for realities, and that imagination had created a real romance. It has been proved that if, at certain epochs of its development, the human germ has a distant resemblance either to a worm or a reptile, such resemblance is very remote, and that on this point we must believe as much as we would believe of the assertion of a man who, looking at the clouds, should say that he could discover the palaces and gardens of Armida, with horsemen and armies, and all that a heated imagination might fancy."

However, laying aside all that, the opinion which we are now examining originates, with those who uphold it, in a total absence of philosophical conceptions. That strange idea of the unity of type and of its stages, in order to establish the forms of inferior animals, would never have risen in the mind of any one who had duly considered the immutability of essences and the reason of the formation of a thing. The act of making differs from the thing made only as the means differs from the end. Both belong to the same order—one implies movement, the other rest. Their difference lies only in this: that what in the term is unfolded and complete, in its progress toward the term is found to be only sketched out, and having a tendency to formation. Hence it follows that, whatever the point of view from which we consider the embryo of each animal, it is nothing else but the total organism of the same in the course of formation; and, therefore, it differs as substantially from every other organism as the term itself toward which it proceeds. And what we affirm of the whole organism must be said of each of its parts, which are essentially related to the whole and follow the nature of the whole. The first rudiments, for instance, of the hands of man could not properly be compared to the wings of a bird. As they are hands after being made, so they are hands in the process of formation; as their structure is different, so is their being immutable.

Whatever may be the likeness between the first appearances of the human embryo and the forms of lower animals, they are not the effect of a stable existence, but of a transitory and shifting existence, which does not constitute a species, but is merely and essentially a movement toward the formation of the species. On the contrary, the forms presented by animals already constituted in their being belong to a stable and permanent existence, which diversifies one species from another. The difference, then, between the former and the latter is interior and substantial, and cannot be changed into exterior and accidental, as it would be if it consisted in {74} stopping or in travelling further on. The movement or tendency which takes place in the germ to become another thing until the said germ assumes a perfect organization relative to the being it must produce, is not a quality which can be discarded, since it is intimately combined with the subject itself in which it is found. The essence itself must be changed in it in order to obtain stability and consistency. But if the essence be changed, we are out of the question, since in that case we should have, not the human embryo arrested at this or that stage on its road, but a different being substituted for it; of analogous exterior appearance, perhaps, but substantially different, which would constitute an annual of inferior degree.

In short, each animal is circumscribed in its own species, like every other being in nature. If to reach to the perfection required by its independent existence it needs development, every step in that journey is an inchoation of the next, and cannot exist but as such. To change its nature and to make it a permanent being, is as impossible as to change one essence into another.

Again: From the opinion we are refuting it would follow that all animals, man excepted, are so many monsters, since they are nothing else but deviations, for want of ulterior development, from what nature really intends to do as a term of its action. Thus anomaly is converted into law, disorder into order, an accidental case into a constant fact.

Finally, in that hypothesis we should have to affirm not only that the inferior and more imperfect species appeared on earth before the nobler and the more akin to the unique and perfect type, but also that on the appearance of a more perfect species the preceding one had disappeared; being inferior in the scale of perfection. For what other reason could be alleged for nature's stopping at a bird when it intends to make a man, but that the causes are not properly disposed, or that circumstances are not quite favorable to the production of that perfect animal? Then when the causes are ready, and the circumstances propitious, it is necessary that man be fashioned and that the bird disappear. Now all that is contrary to experience. For all the species, together with the type, are of the same date, and we see them born constantly in the same circumstances which are common to all, either of temperature or atmosphere or latitude, etc.

The theory, then, of the unity of type in the animal kingdom and of stages of development falls to the ground, if we only look at it from a philosophical point of view.

III.

IT IS REFUTED BY PHYSIOLOGICAL REASONS.

However, physiological arguments have more force in this matter than the philosophical; since they are more closely connected with the subject, and have in their favor the tangible evidence of fact.

We shall take our arguments from three celebrated naturalists as the representatives of an immense number, whom want of space forbids us to quote.

Flourens shows the error of that opinion by referring to the diversity of the nervous system. The nervous system is the foundation of the animal organism; it is the general instrument of vital functions, of sensation, and of motion. If then one archetypal idea presides over the formation of the different organisms, only one nervous system ought to appear in each, more or less developed or arrested. But experience teaches us the contrary. It shows nervous systems differing in different animals ordained to different functions, each perfect in its kind. "Is there a unity of type?" asks this celebrated naturalist. "To say that there is but one type is to say that there is but one form of {75} nervous system; because the form of the nervous system determines the type; that is, it determines the general form of the animal. Now, can we affirm that there is but one form of nervous system? Can we hold that the nervous system of the zoophyte is the same as that of the mollusk, and this latter the same as that of the articulata, or this again the same as that of the vertebrata? And if we cannot say that there is only one nervous system, can we affirm that there is only one type?"

He speaks likewise of the unity of plan. Every creature is built differently, and the difference is especially striking between members of the several grand divisions of the animal kingdom. The plan then of each is different, and so is the typical idea which prescribes its formation. No animal can then be considered as the proof or outline of another.

"Is there a unity of plan? The plan is the relative location of the parts. One can conceive very well the unity of plan without the unity of number; for it is sufficient that all the parts, whatever their number may be, keep always relatively to each other the same place. But can one say that the vertebrate animal, whose nervous system is placed above the digestive canal, is fashioned after the same plan as the mollusk, whose digestive canal is placed above the nervous system? Can one say that the crustacean, whose heart is placed above the spinal marrow, is fashioned after the same pattern as the vertebrate, whose spinal marrow is placed above the heart? Is the relative location of the parts maintained? On the contrary, is it not overthrown? And if there is a change in the location of parts, how is there a unity of plan?"

Müller draws nearer to the consideration of the development of the human embryo, and forcibly illustrates the falsehood of the pretended theory. "It is not long since it was held with great seriousness that the human foetus, before reaching its perfect state, travels successively though the different degrees of development which are permanent during the whole life of animals of inferior classes. That hypothesis has not the least foundation, as Baer has shown. The human embryo never resembles a radiate, or an insect, or a mollusk, or a worm. The plan of formation of those animals is quite different from that of the vertebrate. Man then might at most resemble these last, since he himself is a vertebrate, and his organization is fashioned after the common type of this great division of the animal kingdom. But he does not even resemble at one time a fish, at another a reptile, a bird, etc. The analogy is no greater between him and a reptile or a bird, than it is between all vertebrate animals. During the first stages of their formation, all the embryos of vertebrate animals present merely the simplest and most general delineations of the type of a vertebrate; hence it is that they resemble each other so much as to render it very difficult to distinguish them. The fish, the reptile, the bird, the mammal, and man are at first the simplest expression of a type common to all; but in proportion as they grow, the general resemblance becomes fainter and fainter, and their extremities, for instance, after being alike for a certain time, assume the characters of wings, of hands, of feet, etc."

Mr. Milne-Edwards takes the same view of embryonic generation:

"I agree with Geoffrey Saint Hilaire, that often a great analogy is observed between the final state of certain parts of the bodies of some inferior animals, and the embryonic state of the same parts of other animals belonging to the same type the organism of which is further developed, and with the same philosopher, I call the cause of the state of permanent inferiority arrests of development. But I am far from thinking with some of his disciples that the embryo of man or of mammals exhibits in its different degrees of formation the species of the less perfect of animate creation. No! a {76} mollusk or an anhelid is not the embryo of a mammal, arrested in its organic development, any more than the mammal is a kind of fish perfected. Each animal carries within itself, from the very origin, the beginning of its specific individuality, and the development of its organism, in conformity to the general outline of the plan of structure proper to its species, is always a condition of its existence. There is never a complete likeness between an adult animal and the embryo of another, between one of its organs and the transitory state of the same in the course of formation; and the multiplicity of the products of creation could never be explained by a similar transmutation of species. We shall see hereafter, that in every zoological group composed of animals which seem to be derived from a common fundamental type, the different species do not exhibit at first any marked difference, but soon begin to be marked by various particularities of constructure always growing and numerous. Thus each species acquires a character of its own, which distinguishes it from all others in the way of development, and each of its organs becomes different from the analogous part of every other embryo. But the changes which the organs and the whole being undergo after they have deviated from the common genesiac form, are generally speaking the less considerable in proportion as the animal is destined to receive a less perfect organism, and consequently they retain a kind of resemblance to those transitory forms."

Reason then and experience, theory and fact, philosophy and physiology, agree in protesting against the arbitrary doctrine of the unity of type in the animal kingdom; a doctrine which has its origin in an absence of sound scientific notions and a superficial observation of the phenomena of nature. Through the former defect men failed to consider that if the end of each animal species is different, different also must be its being, and therefore a different type must preside as a rule and supreme law over the formation of the being. By the latter, some very slight and partial analogies have been mistaken for identity and universality, and mere appearances have been assumed as realities.

From Blackwood's Magazine.

DOMINE, QUO VADIS? [Footnote 6]

BY P. S. WORSLEY.

[Footnote 6: See Mrs. Jameson's "Sacred and Legendary Art," p. 180.]

  There stands in the old Appian Way,
     Two miles without the Roman wall,
  A little ancient church, and grey:
     Long may it moulder not nor fall!
  There hangs a legend on the name
  One reverential thought may claim.

  'Tis written of that fiery time,
     When all the angered evil powers
  Leagued against Christ for wrath and crime,
     How Peter left the accursed towers,
  Passing from out the guilty street,
  And shook the red dust from his feet.

{77}

  Sole pilgrim else in that lone road,
      Suddenly he was 'ware of one
  Who toiled beneath a weary load,
      Bare-headed, in the heating sun,
  Pale with long watches, and forespent
  With harm and evil accident.

  Under a cross his weak limbs bow,
     Scarcely his sinking strength avails.
  A crown of thorns is on his brow,
     And in his hands the print of nails.
  So friendless and alone in shame,
  One like the Man of Sorrows came.

  Read in her eyes who gave thee birth
     That loving, tender, sad rebuke;
  Then learn no mother on this earth,
     How dear soever, shaped a look
  So sweet, so sad, so pure as now
  Came from beneath that holy brow.

  And deeply Peter's heart it pierced;
     Once had he seen that look before;
  And even now, as at the first,
     It touched, it smote him to the core.
  Bowing his head, no word save three
  He spoke—"Quo vadis, Domine?"

  Then, as he looked up from the ground,
     His Saviour made him answer due—
  "My son, to Rome I go, thorn-crowned,
     There to be crucified anew;
  Since he to whom I gave my sheep
  Leaves them for other men to keep."

  Then the saint's eyes grew dim with tears.
     He knelt, his Master's feet to kiss—
  "I vexed my heart with faithless fears;
     Pardon thy servant, Lord, for this."
  Then rising up—but none was there—
  No voice, no sound, in earth or air.

  Straightway his footsteps he retraced,
     As one who hath a work to do.
  Back through the gates he passed with haste,
     Silent, alone and full in view;
  And lay forsaken, save of One,
  In dungeon deep ere set of sun.

{78}

  Then he who once, apart from ill,
     Nor taught the depth of human tears,
  Girded himself and walked at will,
     As one rejoicing in the years,
  Girded of others, scorned and slain,
  Passed heavenward through the gates of pain.

  If any bear a heart within,
     Well may these walls be more than stone,
  And breathe of peace and pardoned sin
     To him who grieveth all alone.
  Return, faint heart, and strive thy strife;
  Fight, conquer, grasp the crown of life.

From The Month.

CONSTANCE SHERWOOD.

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

BY LADY GEORGIANA FULLERTON.

CHAPTER I.

I had not thought to write the story of my life; but the wishes of those who have at all times more right to command than occasion to entreat aught at my hands, have in a manner compelled me thereunto. The divers trials and the unlooked-for comforts which have come to my lot during the years that I have been tossed to and fro on this uneasy sea—the world—have wrought in my soul an exceeding sense of the goodness of God, and an insight into the meaning of the sentence in Holy Writ which saith, "His ways are not as our ways, nor his thoughts like unto our thoughts." And this puts me in mind that there are sayings which are in every one's mouth, and therefore not to be lightly gainsayed, which nevertheless do not approve themselves to my conscience as wholly just and true. Of these is the common adage, "That misfortunes come not alone." For my own part, I have found that when a cross has been laid on me, it has mostly been a single one, and that other sorrows were oftentimes removed, as if to make room for it. And it has been my wont, when one trial has been passing away, to look out for the next, even as on a stormy day, when the clouds have rolled away in one direction and sunshine is breaking overhead, we see others rising in the distance. There has been no portion of my life free from some measure of grief or fear sufficient to recall the words that "Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward;" and none so reft of consolation that, in the midst of suffering, I did not yet cry out, "The Lord is my shepherd; his rod and his staff comfort me."

I was born in the year 1557, in a very fair part of England, at Sherwood Hall, in the county of Stafford. For its comely aspect, commodious chambers, sunny gardens, and the sweet walks in its vicinity, it was as commendable a residence for persons of moderate fortune and contented minds as can well be thought of. Within and without this my paternal home nothing was wanting which might please the eye, or minister to {79} tranquillity of mind and healthful recreation. I reckon it amongst the many favors I have received from a gracious Providence, that the earlier years of my life were spent amidst such fair scenes, and in the society of parents who ever took occasion from earthly things to lead my thoughts to such as are imperishable, and so to stir up in me a love of the Creator, who has stamped his image on this visible world in characters of so great beauty; whilst in the tenderness of those dear parents unto myself I saw, as it were, a type and representation of his paternal love and goodness.

My father was of an ancient family, and allied to such as were of greater note and more wealthy than his own. He had not, as is the manner with many squires of our days, left off residing on his own estate in order to seek after the shows and diversions of London; but had united to a great humility of mind and a singular affection for learning a contentedness of spirit which inclined him to dwell in the place assigned to him by Providence. He had married at an early age, and had ever conformed to the habits of his neighbors in all lawful and kindly ways, and sought no other labors but such as were incidental to the care of his estates, and no recreations but those of study, joined to a moderate pursuit of field-sports and such social diversions as the neighborhood afforded. His outward appearance was rather simple than showy, and his manners grave and composed. When I call to mind the singular modesty of his disposition, and the retiredness of his manners, I often marvel how the force of circumstances and the urging of conscience should have forced one so little by nature inclined to an unsettled mode of life into one which, albeit peaceful in its aims, proved so full of danger and disquiet.

My mother's love I enjoyed but for a brief season. Not that it waxed cold toward me, as happens with some parents, who look with fondness on the child and less tenderly on the maiden; but it pleased Almighty God to take her unto himself when I was but ten years of age. Her face is as present to me now as any time of my life. No limner's hand ever drew a more faithful picture than the one I have of her even now engraved on the tablet of my heart. She had so fair and delicate a complexion that I can only liken it to the leaf of a white rose with the lightest tinge of pink in it. Her hair was streaked with gray too early for her years; but this matched well with the sweet melancholy of her eyes, which were of a deep violet color. Her eyelids were a trifle thick, and so were her lips; but there was a pleasantness in her smile and the dimples about her mouth such as I have not noticed in any one else. She had a sweet womanly and loving heart, and the noblest spirit imaginable; a great zeal in the service of God, tempered with so much sweetness and cordiality that she gave not easily offence to any one, of howsoever different a way of thinking from herself; and either won them over to her faith through the suavity of her temper and the wisdom of her discourse, or else worked in them a personal liking which made them patient with her, albeit fierce with others. When I was about seven years of age I noticed that she waxed thin and pale, and that we seldom went abroad, and walked only in our own garden and orchard. She seemed glad to sit on a bench on the sunny side of the house even in summer, and on days when by reason of the heat I liked to lie down in the shade. My parents forbade me from going into the village; and, through the perverseness common to too many young people, on account of that very prohibition I longed for liberty to do so, and wearied oftentimes of the solitude we lived in. At a later period I learnt how kind had been their intent in keeping me during the early years of childhood from a knowledge of the woeful divisions which the late changes in religion had wrought in our country; which I might easily have heard from {80} young companions, and maybe in such sort as to awaken angry feelings, and shed a drop of bitter in the crystal cup of childhood's pure faith. If we did walk abroad, it was to visit some sick persons, and carry them food or clothing or medicines, which my mother prepared with her own hands. But as she grew weaker, we went less often outside the gates, and the poor came themselves to fetch away what in her bounty she stored up for them. I did not notice that our neighbors looked unkindly on us when we were seen in the village. Children would cry out sometimes, but half in play, "Down with the Papists!" but I witnessed that their elders checked them, especially those of the poorer sort; and "God bless you, Mrs. Sherwood!" and "God save you, madam!" was often in their mouths, as she whom I loved with so great and reverent an affection passed alongside of them, or stopped to take breath, leaning against their cottage-palings.

Many childish heartaches I can even now remember when I was not suffered to join in the merry sports of the 1st of May; for then, as the poet Chaucer sings, the youths and maidens go

"To fetch the flowers fresh and branch and bloom,
And these, rejoicing in their great delight,
Eke each at other throw the blossoms bright."

I watched the merry wights as they passed our door on their way to the groves and meadows, singing mirthful carols, and bent on pleasant pastimes; and tears stood in my eyes as the sound of their voices died away in the distance. My father found me thus weeping one May-day, and carried me with him to a sweet spot in a wood, where wild-flowers grew like living jewels out of the green carpet of moss on which we sat; and there, as the birds sang from every bough, and the insects hovered and hummed over every blossom, he entertained me with such quaint and pleasant tales, and moved me to merry laughter by his witty devices; so that I set down that day in my book of memory as one of the joyfullest in all my childhood. At Easter, when the village children rolled pasch eggs down the smooth sides of the green hills, my mother would paint me some herself, and adorned them with such bright colors and rare sentences that I feared to break them with rude handling, and kept them by me throughout the year, rather as pictures to be gazed on than toys to be played with in a wanton fashion.

On the morning of the Resurrection, when others went to the top of Cannock Chase to hail the rising sun, as is the custom of those parts, she would sing so sweetly the psalm which speaketh of the heavens rejoicing and of the earth being glad, that it grieved me not to stay at home; albeit I sometimes marvelled that we saw so little company, and mixed not more freely with our neighbors.

When I had reached my ninth birthday, whether it was that I took better heed of words spoken in my hearing, or else that my parents thought it was time that I should learn somewhat of the conditions of the times, and so talked more freely in my presence, it so happened that I heard of the jeopardy in which many who held the Catholic faith were, and of the laws which were being made to prohibit in our country the practice of the ancient religion. When Protestants came to our house—and it was sometimes hard in those days to tell who were such at heart, or only in outward semblance out of conformity to the queen's pleasure—I was strictly charged not to speak in their hearing of aught that had to do with Catholic faith and worship; and I could see at such times on my mother's face an uneasy expression, as if she was ever fearing the next words that any one might utter.

In the autumn of that year we had visitors whose company was so great an honor to my parents, and the occasion of so much delight to myself, that I can call to mind every little circumstance of their brief sojourn under our roof, even as if it had taken place but {81} yesterday. This visit proved the first step toward an intimacy which greatly affected the tenor of my life, and prepared the way for the direction it was hereafter to take.

These truly honorable and well-beloved guests were my Lady Mounteagle and her son Mr. James Labourn, who were journeying at that time from London, where she had been residing at her son-in-law the Duke of Norfolk's house, to her seat in the country; whither she was carrying the three children of her daughter, the Duchess of Norfolk, and of that lady's first husband, the Lord Dacre of the North. The eldest of these young ladies was of about my own age, and the others younger.

The day on which her ladyship was expected, I could not sit with patience at my tambour-frame, or con my lessons, or play on the virginals; but watched the hours and the minutes in my great desire to see these noble wenches. I had not hitherto consorted with young companions, save with Edmund and John Genings, of whom I shall have occasion to speak hereafter, who were then my playmates, as at a riper age friends. I thought, in the quaint way in which children couple one idea with another in their fantastic imaginations, that my Lady Mounteagle's three daughters would be like the three angels, in my mother's missal, who visited Abraham in his tent.

I had craved from my mother a holiday, which she granted on the score that I should help her that forenoon in the making of the pasties and jellies, which, as far as her strength allowed, she failed not to lend a hand to; and also she charged me to set the bed-chambers in fair order, and to gather fresh flowers wherewith to adorn the parlor. These tasks had in them a pleasantness which whiled away the time, and I alternated from the parlor to the store-room, and the kitchen to the orchard, and the poultry-yard to the pleasure-ground, running as swiftly from one to the other, and as merrily, as if my feet were keeping time with the glad beatings of my heart. As I passed along the avenue, which was bordered on each side by tall trees, ever and anon, as the wind shook their branches, there fell on my head showers of red and gold-colored leaves, which made me laugh; so easy is it for the young to find occasion of mirth in the least trifle when their spirits are lightsome, as mine were that day. I sat down on a stone bench on which the western sun was shining, to bind together the posies I had made; the robins twittered around me; and the air felt soft and fresh. It was the eve of Martinmas-day—Hallowtide Summer, as our country folk call it. As the sun was sinking behind the hills, the tread of horses' feet was heard in the distance, and I sprang up on the bench, shading my eyes with my hand to see the approach of that goodly travelling-party, which was soon to reach our gates. My parents came out of the front door, and beckoned me to their side. I held my posies in my apron, and forgot to set them down; for the first sight of my Lady Mounteagle, as she rode up the avenue with her son at her side, and her three grand-daughters with their attendants, and many richly-attired serving-men beside, filled me with awe. I wondered if her majesty had looked more grand on the day that she rode into London to be proclaimed queen. The good lady sat on her palfry in so erect and stately a manner, as if age had no dominion over her limbs and her spirits; and there was something so piercing and commanding in her eye, that it at once compelled reverence and submission. Her son had somewhat of the same nobility of mien, and was tall and graceful in his movements; but behind her, on her pillion, sat a small counterpart of herself, inasmuch as childhood can resemble old age, and youthful loveliness matronly dignity. This was the eldest of her ladyship's grand-daughters, my sweet Mistress Ann Dacre. This was my first sight of her who was hereafter to hold so great a place in my heart and {82} in my life. As she was lifted from the saddle, and stood in her riding-habit and plumed hat at our door, making a graceful and modest obeisance to my parents, one step retired behind her grandam, with a lovely color tinging her cheeks, and her long lashes veiling her sweet eyes, I thought I had never seen so fair a creature as this high-born maiden of my own age; and even now that time, as it has gone by, has shown me all that a court can display to charm the eyes and enrapture the fancy, I do not gainsay that same childish thought of mine. Her sisters, pretty prattlers then, four and six years of age, were led into the house by their governess. But ere our guests were seated, my mother bade me kiss my Lady Mounteagle's hand and commend myself to her goodness, praying her to be a good lady to me, and overlook, out of her great indulgence, my many defects. At which she patted me on the cheek, and said, she doubted not but that I was as good a child as such good parents deserved to have; and indeed, if I was as like my mother in temper as in face, I must needs be such as her hopes and wishes would have me. And then she commanded Mistress Ann to salute me; and I felt my cheeks flush and my heart beat with joy as the sweet little lady put her arms round my neck, and pressed her lips on my cheek.

Presently we all withdrew to our chambers until such time as supper was served, at which meal the young ladies were present; and I marvelled to see how becomingly even the youngest of them, who was but a chit, knew how to behave herself, never asking for anything, or forgetting to give thanks in a pretty manner when she was helped. For the which my mother greatly commended their good manners; and her ladyship said, "In truth, good Mistress Sherwood, I carry a strict hand over them, never suffering their faults to go unchastised, nor permitting such liberties as many do to the ruin of their children." I was straightway seized with a great confusion and fear that this was meant as a rebuke to me, who, not being much used to company, and something overindulged by my father, by whose side I was seated, had spoken to him more than once that day at table, and had also left on my plate some victuals not to my liking; which, as I learnt at another time from Mistress Ann, was an offence for which her grandmother would have sharply reprehended her. I ventured not again to speak in her presence, and scarcely to raise my eyes toward her.

The young ladies withdrew early to bed that night, and I had but little speech with them. Before they left the parlor, Mistress Ann took her sisters by the hand, and all of them, kneeling at their grandmother's feet, craved her blessing. I could see a tear in her eye as she blessed them; and when she laid her hand on the head of the eldest of her grand-daughters, it lingered there as if to call down upon her a special benison. The next day my Lady Mounteagle gave permission for Mistress Ann to go with me into the garden, where I showed her my flowers and the young rabbits that Edmund Genings and his brother, my only two playmates, were so fond of; and she told me how well pleased she was to remove from London unto her grandmother's seat, where she would have a garden and such pleasant pastimes as are enjoyed in the country.

"Prithee, Mistress Ann," I said, with the unmannerly boldness with which children are wont to question one another, "have you not a mother, that you live with your grandam?"

"I thank God that I have," she answered; "and a good mother she is to me; but by reason of her having lately married the Duke of Norfolk, my grandmother has at the present time the charge of us."

"And do you greatly love my Lady Mounteagle?" I asked, misdoubting in my folly that a lady of so grave aspect and stately carriage should be loved by children.

{83}

"As greatly as heart can love," was her pretty answer.

"And do you likewise love the Duke of Norfolk, Mistress Ann?" I asked again.

"He is my very good lord and father," she answered; "but my knowledge of his grace has been so short, I have scarce had time to love him yet."

"But I have loved you in no time," I cried, and threw my arms round her neck. "Directly I saw you, I loved you, Mistress Ann."

"Mayhap, Mistress Constance," she said, "it is easier to love a little girl than a great duke."

"And who do you affection beside her grace your mother, and my lady your grandam, Mistress Ann?" I said, again returning to the charge; to which she quickly replied:

"My brother Francis, my sweet Lord Dacre."

"Is he a child?" I asked.

"In truth, Mistress Constance," she answered, "he would not be well pleased to be called so; and yet methinks he is but a child, being not older, but rather one year younger than myself, and my dear playmate and gossip."

"I wish I had a brother or a sister to play with me," I said; at which Mistress Ann kissed me and said she was sorry I should lack so great a comfort, but that I must consider I had a good father of my own, whereas her own was dead; and that a father was more than a brother.

In this manner we held discourse all the morning, and, like a rude imp, I questioned the gracious young lady as to her pastimes and her studies and the tasks she was set to; and from her innocent conversation I discovered, as children do, without at the time taking much heed, but yet so as to remember it afterward, what especial care had been taken by her grandmother—that religious and discreet lady—to instill into her virtue and piety, and in using her, beside saying her prayers, to bestow alms with her own hands on prisoners and poor people; and in particular to apply herself to the cure of diseases and wounds, wherein she herself had ever excelled. Mistress Ann, in her childish but withal thoughtful way, chide me that in my own garden were only seen flowers which pleased the senses by their bright colors and perfume, and none of the herbs which tend to the assuagement of pain and healing of wounds; and she made me promise to grow some against the time of her next visit. As we went through the kitchen-garden, she plucked some rosemary and lavender and rue, and many other odoriferous herbs; and sitting down on a bench, she invited me to her side, and discoursed on their several virtues and properties with a pretty sort of learning which was marvellous in one of her years. She showed me which were good for promoting sleep, and which for cuts and bruises, and of a third she said it eased the heart.

"Nay, Mistress Ann," I cried, "but that must be a heartsease;" at which she smiled, and answered:

"My grandam says the best medicines for uneasy hearts are the bitter herb confession and the sweet flower absolution."

"Have you yet made your first communion, Mistress Ann?" I asked in a low voice, at which question a bright color came into her cheek, and she replied:

"Not yet; but soon I may. I was confirmed not long ago by the good Bishop of Durham; and at my grandmother's seat I am to be instructed by a Catholic priest who lives there."

"Then you do not go to Protestant service?" I said.

"We did," she answered, "for a short time, whilst we stayed at the Charterhouse; but my grandam has understood that it is not lawful for Catholics, and she will not be present at it herself, or suffer us any more to attend it, neither in her own house nor at his grace's."

While we were thus talking, the two little ladies, her sisters, came from the house, having craved leave from the governess to run out into the {84} garden. Mistress Mary was a pale delicate child, with soft loving blue eyes; and Mistress Bess, the youngest, a merry imp, whose rosy cheeks and dimpling smiles were full of glee and merriment.

"What ugly sober flowers are these, Nan, that thou art playing with?" she cried, and snatched at the herbs in her sister's lap. "When I marry my Lord William Howard, I'll wear a posy of roses and carnations."

"When I am married," said little Mistress Mary, "I will wear nothing but lilies."

"And what shall be thy posy, Nan?" said the little saucy one again, "when thou dost wed my Lord Surrey?"

"Hush, hush, madcaps!" cried Mistress Ann. "If your grandam was to hear you, I doubt not but the rod would be called for."

Mistress Mary looked round affrighted, but little Mistress Bess said in a funny manner, "Prithee, Nan, do rods then travel?"

"Ay; by that same token, Bess, that I heard my lady bid thy nurse take care to carry one with her."

"It was nurse told me I was to marry my Lord William, and Madge my Lord Thomas, and thee, Nan, my Lord Surrey, and brother pretty Meg Howard," said the little lady, pouting; "but I won't tell grandam of it an it would be like to make her angry."

"I would be a nun!" Mistress Mary cried.

"Hush!" her elder sister said; "that is foolish talking, Madge; my grandmother told me so when I said the same thing to her a year ago. Children do not know what Almighty God intends them to do. And now methinks I see Uncle Labourn making as if he would call us to the house, and there are the horses coming to the door. We must needs obey the summons. Prithee, Mistress Constance, do not forget me."

Forget her! No. From that day to this years have passed over our heads and left deep scars on our hearts. Divers periods of our lives have been signalized by many a strange passage; we have rejoiced, and, oftener still, wept together; we have met in trembling, and parted in anguish; but through sorrow and through joy, through evil report and good report, in riches and in poverty, in youth and in age, I have blessed the day when first I met thee, sweet Ann Dacre, the fairest, purest flower which ever grew on a noble stem.

CHAPTER II.

A year elapsed betwixt the period of the so brief, but to me so memorable, visit of the welcomest guests our house ever received—to wit, my Lady Mounteagle and her grand-daughters—and that in which I met with an accident, which compelled my parents to carry me to Lichfield for chirurgical advice. Four times in the course of that year I was honored with letters writ by the hand of Mistress Ann Dacre; partly, as the gracious young lady said, by reason of her grandmother's desire that the bud acquaintanceship which had sprouted in the short-lived season of the aforesaid visit should, by such intercourse as may be carried on by means of letters, blossom into a flower of true friendship; and also that that worthy lady and my good mother willed such a correspondence betwixt us as would serve to the sharpening of our wits, and the using our pens to be good servants to our thoughts. In the course of this history I will set down at intervals some of the letters I received at divers times from this noble lady; so that those who read these innocent pictures of herself, portrayed by her own hand, may trace the beginnings of those virtuous inclinations which at an early age were already working in her soul, and ever after appeared in her.

On the 15th day of January of the next year to that in which my eyes had feasted on this creature so embellished with rare endowments and {85} accomplished gracefulness, the first letter I had from her came to my hand; the first link of a chain which knit together her heart and mine through long seasons of absence and sore troubles, to the great comforting, as she was often pleased to say, of herself, who was so far above me in rank, whom she chose to call her friend, and of the poor friend and servant whom she thus honored beyond her deserts. In as pretty a handwriting as can well be thought of, she thus wrote:

"MY SWEET MISTRESS CONSTANCE,
—Though I enjoyed your company but for the too brief time during which we rested under your honored parents' roof, I retain so great a sense of the contentment I received therefrom, and so lively a remembrance of the converse we held in the grounds adjacent to Sherwood Hall, that I am better pleased than I can well express that my grandmother bids me sit down and write to one whom to see and to converse with once more would be to me one of the chiefest pleasures in life. And the more welcome is this command by reason of the hope it raises in me to receive in return a letter from my well-beloved Mistress Constance, which will do my heart more good than anything else that can happen to me. 'Tis said that marriages are made in heaven. When I asked my grandam if it were so, she said, 'I am of opinion, Nan, they are made in many more places than one; and I would to God none were made but such as are agreed upon in so good a place.' But methinks some friendships are likewise made in heaven; and if it be so, I doubt not but that when we met, and out of that brief meeting there arose so great and sudden a liking in my heart for you, Mistress Constance,—which, I thank God, you were not slow to reciprocate,—that our angels had met where we hope one day to be, and agreed together touching that matter.

"It suits ill a bad pen like mine to describe the fair seat we reside in at this present time—the house of Mr. James Labourn, which he has lent unto my grandmother. 'Tis most commodious and pleasant, and after long sojourn in London, even in winter, a terrestrial paradise. But, like the garden of Eden, not without dangers; for the too much delight I took in out-of-doors pastimes— and most of all on the lake when it was frozen, and we had merry sports upon it, to the neglect of my lessons, not heeding the lapse of time in the pursuit of pleasure—brought me into trouble and sore disgrace. My grandmother ordered me into confinement for three days in my own chamber, and I saw her not nor received her blessing all that time; at the end of which she sharply reproved me for my fault, and bade me hold in mind that 'twas when loitering in a garden Eve met the tempter, and threatened further and severe punishment if I applied not diligently to my studies. When I had knelt down and begged pardon, promising amendment, she drew me to her and kissed me, which it was not her wont often to do. 'Nan,' she said, 'I would have thee use thy natural parts, and improve thyself in virtue and learning; for such is the extremity of the times, that ere long it may be that many first shall be last and many last shall be first in this realm of England. But virtue and learning are properties which no man can steal from another; and I would fain see thee endowed with a goodly store of both. That great man and true confessor, Sir Thomas More, had nothing so much at heart as his daughter's instruction; and Mistress Margaret Roper, once my sweet friend, though some years older than my poor self, who still laments her loss, had such fine things said of her by the greatest men of this age, as would astonish thee to hear; but they were what she had a right to and very well deserved. And the strengthening of her mind through study and religious discipline served {86} her well at the time of her great trouble; for where other women would have lacked sense and courage how to act, she kept her wits about her, and ministered such comfort to her father, remaining near him at the last, and taking note of his wishes, and finding means to bury him in a Christian manner, which none other durst attempt, that she had occasion to thank God who gave her a head as well as a heart. And who knows, Nan, what may befal thee, and what need thou mayst have of the like advantages?'

"My grandmother looked so kindly on me then, that, albeit abashed at the remembrance of my fault, I sought to move her to further discourse; and knowing what great pleasure she had in speaking of Sir Thomas More, at whose house in Chelsea she had oftentimes been a visitor in her youth, I enticed her to it by cunning questions touching the customs he observed in his family.

"'Ah, Nan!' she said, that house was a school and exercise of the Christian religion. There was neither man nor woman in it who was not employed in liberal discipline and fruitful reading, although the principal study was religion. There was no quarrelling, not so much as a peevish word to be heard; nor was any one seen idle; all were in their several employs: nor was there wanting sober mirth. And so well-managed a government Sir Thomas did not maintain by severity and chiding, but by gentleness and kindness.'

"Methought as she said this, that my dear grandam in that matter of chiding had not taken a leaf out of Sir Thomas's book; and there was no doubt a transparency in my face which revealed to her this thought of mine; for she straightly looked at me and said, 'Nan, a penny for thy thoughts!' at the which I felt myself blushing, but knew nothing would serve her but the truth; so I said, in as humble a manner as I could think of, 'An if you will excuse me, grandam, I thought if Sir Thomas managed so well without chiding, that you manage well with it.' At the which she gave me a light nip on the forehead, and said, 'Go to, child; dost think that any but saints can rule a household without chiding, or train children without whipping? Go thy ways, and mend them too, if thou wouldst escape chastisement; and take with thee, Nan, the words of one whom we shall never again see the like of in this poor country, which he used to his wife or any of his children if they were diseased or troubled, "We must not look at our pleasures to go to heaven in feather-beds, or to be carried up thither even by the chins."' And so she dismissed me; and I have here set down my fault, and the singular goodness showed me by my grandmother when it was pardoned, not thinking I can write anything better worth notice than the virtuous talk with which she then favored me.

"There is in this house a chapel very neat and rich, and an ancient Catholic priest is here, who says mass most days; at the which we, with my grandmother, assist, and such of her servants as have not conformed to the times; and this good father instructs us in the principles of Catholic religion. On the eve of the feast of the Nativity of Christ, my lady stayed in the chapel from eight at night till two in the morning; but sent us to bed at nine, after the litanies were said, until eleven, when there was a sermon, and at twelve o'clock three masses said, which being ended we broke our fast with a mince-pie, and went again to bed. And all the Christmas-time we were allowed two hours after each meal for recreation, instead of one. At other times, we play not at any game for money; but then we had a shilling a-piece to make us merry; which my grandmother says is fitting in this time of mirth and joy for his birth who is the sole origin and spring of true comfort. And now, sweet Mistress Constance, I must bid you farewell; for the greatest of {87} joys has befallen me, and a whole holiday to enjoy it. My sweet Lord Dacre is come to pay his duty to my lady and tarry some days here, on his way to Thetford, the Duke of Norfolk's seat, where his grace and the duchess my good mother have removed. He is a beauty, Mistress Constance; and nature has so profusely conferred on him privileges, that when her majesty the queen saw him a short time back on horseback, in the park at Richmond, she called him to her carriage-door and honored him with a kiss, and the motto of the finest boy she ever beheld. But I may not run on in this fashion, letting my pen outstrip modesty, like a foolish creature, making my brother a looking-glass and continual object for my eyes; but learn to love him, as my grandam says, in God, of whom he is only borrowed, and not so as to set my heart wholly on him. So beseeching God bless you and yours, good Mistress Constance, I ever remain, your loving friend and humble servant,

"ANN DACRE."

Oh, how soon were my Lady Mounteagle's words exalted in the event! and what a sad brief note was penned by that affectionate sister not one month after she writ those lines, so full of hope and pleasure in the prospect of her brother's sweet company! For the fair boy that was the continual object of her eyes and the dear comfort of her heart was accidentally slain by the fall of a vaulting horse upon him at the duke's house at Thetford.

"MY GOOD MISTRESS CONSTANCE"
(she wrote, a few days after his lamentable death),—"The lovingest brother a sister ever had, and the most gracious creature ever born, is dead; and if it pleased God I wish I were dead too, for my heart is well-nigh broken. But I hope in God his soul is now in heaven, for that he was so young and innocent; and when here, a short time ago, my grandmother procured that he should for the first, and as it has pleased God also for the only and the last, time, confess and be absolved by a Catholic priest, in the which the hand of Providence is visible to our great comfort, and reasonable hope of his salvation. Commending him and your poor friend, who has great need of them, to your good prayers, I remain your affectionate and humble servant,

"ANN DACRE."

In that year died also, in childbirth, her grace the Duchess of Norfolk, Mistress Ann's mother; and she then wrote in a less passionate, but withal less comfortable, grief than at her brother's loss, and, as I have heard since, my Lady Mounteagle had her death-blow at that time, and never lifted up her head again as heretofore. It was noticed that ever after she spent more time in prayer and gave greater alms. Her daughter, the duchess, who at the instance of her husband had conformed to the times, desired to have been reconciled on her deathbed by a priest, who for that end was conducted into the garden, yet could not have access unto her by reason of the duke's vigilance to hinder it, or at least of his continual presence in her chamber at the time. And soon after, his grace, whose wards they were, sent for his three step-daughters to the Charterhouse; the parting with which, and the fears she entertained that he would have them carried to services and sermons in the public churches, and hinder them in the exercise of Catholic faith and worship, drove the sword yet deeper through my Lady Mounteagle's heart, and brought down her gray hairs with sorrow to the grave, notwithstanding that the duke greatly esteemed and respected her, and was a very moral nobleman, of exceeding good temper and moderate disposition. But of this more anon, as 'tis my own history I am writing, and it is meet I should relate in the order of time what events came under my notice whilst in {88} Lichfield, whither my mother carried me, as has been aforesaid, to be treated by a famous physician for a severe hurt I had received. It was deemed convenient that I should tarry some time under his care; and Mr. Genings, a kinsman of her own, who with his wife and children resided in that town, one of the chiefest in the county, offered to keep me in their house as long as was convenient thereunto a kindness which my parents the more readily accepted at his hands from their having often shown the like unto his children when the air of the country was desired for them.

Mr. and Mrs. Genings were of the religion by law established. He was thought to be Catholic at heart; albeit he was often heard to speak very bitterly against all who obeyed not the queen in conforming to the new mode of worship, with the exception, indeed, of my mother, for whom he had always a truly great affection. This gentleman's house was in the close of the cathedral, and had a garden to it well stored with fair shrubs and flowers of various sorts. As I lay on a low settle near the window, being forbid to walk for the space of three weeks, my eyes were ever straying from my sampler to the shade and sunshine out of doors. Instead of plying at my needle, I watched the bees at their sweet labor midst the honeysuckles of the porch, or the swallows darting in and out of the eaves of the cathedral, or the butterflies at their idle sports over the beds of mignonette and heliotrope under the low wall, covered with ivy, betwixt the garden and the close. Mr. Genings had two sons, the eldest of which was some years older and the other younger than myself. The first, whose name was Edmund, had been weakly when a child, and by reason of this a frequent sojourner at Sherwood Hall, where he was carried for change of air after the many illnesses incident to early age. My mother, who was some years married before she had a child of her own, conceived a truly maternal affection for this young kinsman, and took much pains with him both as to the care of his body and the training of his mind. He was an apt pupil, and she had so happy a manner of imparting knowledge, that he learnt more, as he has since said, in those brief sojourns in her house than at school from more austere masters. After I came into the world, he took delight to rock me in my cradle, or play with me as I sat on my mother's knee; and when I first began to walk, he would lead me by the hand into the garden, and laugh to see me clutch marigolds or cry for a sunflower.

"I warrant thou hast an eye to gold, Con," he would say; "for 'tis the yellow flowers that please thee best."

There is an old hollow tree on the lawn at Sherwood Hall where I often hid from him in sport, and he would make pretence to seek me elsewhere, till a laugh revealed me to him, and a chase ensued down the approach or round the maze. He never tired of my petulance, or spoke rude words, as boys are wont to do; and had a more serious and contemplative spirit than is often seen in young people, and likewise a singular fancy for gazing at the sky when glowing with sunset hues or darkened by storms, and most of all when studded at night with stars. On a calm clear night I have noticed him for a length of time, forgetting all things else, fix his eyes on the heavens, as if reading the glory of the Lord therein revealed.

My parents did not speak to him of Catholic faith and worship, because Mr. Genings, before he suffered his sons to stay in their house, had made them promise that no talk of religion should be ministered to them in their childhood. It was a sore trial to my mother to refrain, as the Psalmist saith, from good words, which were ever rising from her heart to her lips, as pure water from a deep spring. But she instructed him in many things which belong to gentle learning, and in French, which she knew well; and {89} taught him music, in which he made great progress. And this wrought with his father to the furtherance of these his visits to us. I doubt not but that, when she told him the names of the heavenly luminaries, she inwardly prayed he might one day shine as a star in the kingdom of God; or when she discoursed of flowers and their properties, that he should blossom as a rose in the wilderness of this faithless world; or whilst guiding his hands to play on the clavichord, that he might one day join in the glorious harmony of the celestial choirs. Her face itself was a preachment, and the tones of her voice, and the tremulous sighs she breathed when she kissed him or gave him her blessing, had, I ween, a privilege to reach his heart, the goodness of which was readable in his countenance. Dear Edmund Genings, thou wert indeed a brother to me in kind care and companionship whilst I stayed in Lichfield that never-to-be-forgotten year! How gently didst thou minister to the sick child, for the first time tasting the cup of suffering; now easing her head with a soft pillow, now strewing her couch with fresh-gathered flowers, or feeding her with fruit which had the bloom on it, or taking her hand and holding it in thine own to cheer her to endurance! Thou wert so patient and so loving, both with her who was a great trouble to thee and oftentimes fretful with pain, and likewise with thine own little brother, an angel in beauty and wit, but withal of so petulant and froward a disposition that none in the house durst contradict him, child as he was; for his parents were indeed weak in their fondness for him. In no place and at no time have I seen a boy so indulged and so caressed as this John Genings. He had a pretty wilfulness and such playful ways that his very faults found favor with those who should have corrected them, and he got praise where others would have met with chastisement. Edmund's love for this fair urchin was such as is seldom seen in any save in a parent for a child. It was laughable to see the lovely imp governing one who should have been his master, but through much love was his slave, and in a thousand cunning ways, and by fanciful tricks, constraining him to do his bidding. Never was a more wayward spirit enclosed in a more winsome form than in John Genings. Never did childish gracefulness rule more absolutely over superior age, or love reverse the conditions of ordinary supremacy, than in the persons of these two brothers.

A strange thing occurred at that time, which I witnessed not myself, and on which I can give no opinion, but as a fact will here set it down, and let such as read this story deem of it as they please. One night that, by reason of the unwonted chilliness of the evening, such as sometimes occurs in our climate even in summer, a fire had been lit in the parlor, and the family were gathered round it, Edmund came of a sudden into the room, and every one took notice that his face was very pale. He seemed in a great fear, and whispered to his mother, who said aloud—"Thou must have been asleep, and art still dreaming, child." Upon which he was very urgent for her to go into the garden, and used many entreaties thereunto. Upon which, at last, she rose and followed him. In another moment she called for her husband, who went out, and with him three or four other persons that were in the room, and I remained alone for the space of ten or fifteen minutes. When they returned, I heard them speaking with great fear and amazement of what they had seen; and Edmund Genings has often since described to me what he first, and afterward all the others, had beheld in the sky. He was gazing at the heavens, as was his wont, when a strange spectacle appeared to him in the air. As it were, a number of armed men with weapons, killing and murdering others that were disarmed, and great store of blood running everywhere about them. His parents and those with them witnessed the same thing, and a great {90} fear fell upon them all. I noticed that all that evening they seemed scared, and could not speak of this appearance in the sky without shuddering. But one that was more bold than the rest took heart, and cried, "God send it does not forbode that the Papists will murder us all in our beds!" And Mistress Genings, whose mother was a French Huguenot, said, "Amen!" I marked that her husband and one or two more of the company groaned, and one made, as if unwittingly, the sign of the cross. There were some I know in that town, nay and in that house, that were at heart of the old religion, albeit, by reason of the times, they did not give over attending Protestants' worship.

A few days later I was sitting alone, and had a long fit of musing over the many new thoughts that were crowding into my mind, as yet too childish to master them, when Edmund came in, and I saw he had been weeping. He said nothing at first, and made believe he was reading; but I could see tears trickling down through his fingers as he covered his face with his hands. Presently he looked up and cried out,

"Cousin Constance, Jack is going away from us."

"And if it please God, not for a long time," I answered; for it grieved me to see him sad.

"Nay, but he is going for many years, I fear," Edmund said. "My uncle, Jean de Luc, has asked for him to be brought up in his house at La Rochelle. He is his godfather, and has a great store of money, which he says he will leave to Jack. Alack! cousin Constance, I would that there was no such thing in the world as money, and no such country as France. I wish we were all dead." And then he fell to weeping again very bitterly.

I told him in a childish manner what my mother was wont to say to me when any little trouble fell to my lot—that we should be patient, and offer up our sufferings to God.

"But I can do nothing now for Jack," he cried. "It was my first thought at waking and my last at night, how to please the dear urchin; but now 'tis all over."

"Oh, but Edmund," I cried, "an if you were to be as good as the blessed saints in heaven, you could do a great deal for Jack."

"How so, cousin Constance?" he asked, not comprehending my meaning; and thereupon I answered:

"When once I said to my sweet mother, 'It grieves me, dear heart, that I can give thee nothing, who gives me so much,' she bade me take heed that every prayer we say, every good work we do, howsoever imperfect, and every pain we suffer, may be offered up for those we love; and so out of poverty, and weakness, and sorrow, we have wherewith to make precious and costly and cheerful gifts."

I spoke as a child, repeating what I had heard; but he listened not as a child. A sudden light came into his eyes, and methinks his good angel showed him in that hour more than my poor lips could utter.

"If it be as your sweet mother says," he joyfully cried, "we are rich indeed; and, even though we be sinners and not saints, we have somewhat to give, I ween, if it be only our heartaches, cousin Constance, so they be seasoned with prayers."

The thought which in my simplicity I had set before him took root, as it were, in his mind. His love for a little child had prepared the way for it; and the great brotherly affection which had so long dwelt in his heart proved a harbinger of the more perfect gift of charity; so that a heavenly message was perchance conveyed to him that day by one who likewise was a child, even as the word of the Lord came to the prophet through the lips of the infant Samuel. From that time forward he bore up bravely against his grief; which was the sharper inasmuch that he who was the cause of it showed none in return, but rather joy in the expectancy of the change which was to part them. He {91} would still be a-prattling on it, and telling all who came in his way that he was going to France to a good uncle; nor ever intended to return, for his mother was to carry him to La Rochelle, and she should stay there with him, he said, and not come back to ugly Lichfield.

"And art thou not sorry, Jack," I asked him one day, "to leave poor Edmund, who loves thee so well?"

The little madcap was coursing round the room, and cried, as he ran past me, for he had more wit and spirit than sense or manners:

"Edmund must seek after me, and take pains to find me, if so be he would have me."

These words, which the boy said in his play, have often come back to my mind since the two brothers have attained unto a happy though dissimilar end.

When the time had arrived for Mistress Genings and her youngest son to go beyond seas, as I was now improved in health and able to walk, my father fetched me home, and prevailed on Mr. Genings to let Edmund go back with us, with the intent to divert his mind from his grief at his brother's departure.

I found my parents greatly disturbed at the news they had had touching the imprisonment of thirteen priests on account of religion, and of Mr. Orton being likewise arrested, who was a gentleman very dear to them for his great virtues and the steadfast friendship he had ever shown to them.

My mother questioned Edmund as to the sign he had seen in the heavens a short time back, of which the report had reached them; and he confirming the truth thereof, she clasped her hands and cried:

"Then I fear me much this forebodes the death of these blessed confessors, Father Weston and the rest."

Upon which Edmund said, in a humble manner:

"Good Mistress Sherwood, my dear mother thought it signified that those of your religion would murder in their beds such as are of the queen's religion; so maybe in both cases there is naught to apprehend."

"My good child," my mother answered, "in regard of those now in durance for their faith, the danger is so manifest, that if it please not the Almighty to work a miracle for their deliverance, I see not how they may escape."

After that we sat awhile in silence; my father reading, my mother and I working, and Edmund at the window intent as usual upon the stars, which were shining one by one in the deep azure of the darkening sky. As one of greater brightness than the rest shone through the branches of the old tree, where I used to hide some years before, he pointed to it, and said to me, who was sitting nearest to him at the window:

"Cousin Constance, think you the Star of Bethlehem showed fairer in the skies than yon bright star that has just risen behind your favorite oak? What and if that star had a message for us!"

My father heard him, and smiled. "I was even then," he said, "reading the words of one who was led to the true religion by the contemplation of the starry skies. In a Southern clime, where those fair luminaries shine with more splendor than in our Northern heavens, St. Augustine wrote thus;" and then he read a few sentences in Latin from the book in his hand,—"Raising ourselves up, we passed by degrees through all things bodily, even the very heavens, whence sun and moon and stars shine upon the earth. Yea, we soared yet higher by inward musing and discourse and admiring of God's works, and we came to our own minds and went beyond them, so as to arrive at that region of never-failing plenty where thou feedest Israel for ever with the food of truth." These words had a sweet and solemn force in them which struck on the ear like a strain of unearthly music, such as the wind-harp wakes in the silence of the {92} night. In a low voice, so low that it was like the breathing of a sigh, I heard Edmund say, "What is truth?" But when he had uttered those words, straightway turning toward me as if to divert his thoughts from that too pithy question, he cried: "Prithee, cousin Constance, hast thou ended reading, I warrant for the hundredth time, that letter in thine hand? and hast thou not a mind to impart to thy poor kinsman the sweet conceits I doubt not are therein contained?" I could not choose but smile at his speech; for I had indeed feasted my eyes on the handwriting of my dear friend, now no longer Mistress Dacre, and learnt off, as it were by heart, its contents. And albeit I refused at first to comply with his request, which I had secretly a mind to; no sooner did he give over the urging of it than I stole to his side, and, though I would by no means let it out of my hand, and folded down one side of the sheet to hide what was private in it, I offered to read such parts aloud as treated of matters which might be spoken of without hindrance.

With a smiling countenance, then, he set himself to listen, and I to be the mouthpiece of the dear writer, whose wit was so far in advance of her years, as I have since had reason to observe, never having met at any time with one in whom wisdom put forth such early shoots.

"DEAR MISTRESS CONSTANCE"
(thus the sweet lady wrote),—"Wherefore this long silence and neglect of your poor friend? An if it be true, which pains me much to hear, that the good limb which, together with its fellow, like two trusty footmen, carried you so well and nimbly along the alleys of your garden this time last year, has, like an arrant knave, played fast and loose, and failed in its good service,—wherein, I am told, you have suffered much inconvenience,—is it just that that other servant, your hand, should prove rebellious too, refuse to perform its office, and write no more letters at your bidding? For I'll warrant 'tis the hand is the culprit, not the will; which nevertheless should be master, and compel it to obedience. So, an you love me, chide roundly that contumacious hand, which fails in its duty, which should not be troublesome, if you but had for me one-half of the affection I have for you. And indeed, Mistress Constance, a letter from you would be to me, at this time, the welcomest thing I can think of; for since we left my grandmother's seat, and came to the Charterhouse, I have new friends, and many more and greater than I deserve or ever thought to have; but, by reason of difference of age or of religion, they are not such as I can well open my mind to, as I might to you, if it pleased God we should meet again. The Duke of Norfolk is a very good lord and father to me; but when there are more ways of thinking than one in a house, 'tis no easy matter to please all which have a right to be considered; and, in the matter of religion, 'tis very hard to avoid giving offence. But no more of this at present; only I would to God Mr. Fox were beyond seas, and my lady of Westmoreland at her home in the North; and that we had no worse company in this house than Mr. Martin, my Lord Surrey's tutor, who is a gentleman of great learning and knowledge, as every one says, and of extraordinary modesty in his behavior. My Lord Surrey has a truly great regard for him, and profits much in his learning by his means. I notice he is Catholic in his judgment and affections; and my lord says he will not stay with him, if his grace his father procures ministers to preach to his household and family, and obliges all therein to frequent Protestant service. I wish my grandmother was in London; for I am sometimes sore troubled in my mind touching Catholic religion and conforming to the times, of which an abundance of talk is ministered unto us, to my exceeding great discomfort, by my Lady Westmoreland, his grace's {93} sister, and others also. An if I say aught thereon to Mistress Fawcett (a grave and ancient gentlewoman, who had the care of my Lord Surrey during his infancy, and is now set over us his grace's wards), and of misliking the duke's ministers and that pestilent Mr. Fox—(I fear me, Mistress Constance, I should not have writ that unbeseeming word, and I will e'en draw a line across it, but still as you may read it for indeed 'tis what he is; but 'tis from himself I learnt it, who in his sermons calls Catholic religion a pestilent idolatry, and Catholic priests pestilent teachers and servants of Antichrist, and the holy Pope at Rome the man of sin) she grows uneasy, and bids me be a good child to her, and not to bring her into trouble with his grace, who is indeed a very good lord to us in all matters but that one of compelling us to hear sermons and the like. My Lord Surrey mislikes all kinds of sermons, and loves Mr. Martin so well, that he stops his ears when Mr. Fox preaches on the dark midnight of papacy and the dawn of the gospel's restored light. And it angers him, as well it should, to hear him call his majesty King Philip of Spain, who is his own godfather, from whom he received his name, a wicked popish tyrant and a son of Antichrist. My Lady Margaret, his sister, who is a year younger than himself, and has a most admirable beauty and excellent good nature, is vastly taken with what she hears from me of Catholic religion; but methinks this is partly by reason of her misliking Mr. Fulk and Mr. Clarke's long preachments, which we are compelled to hearken to; and their fashion of spending Sunday, which they do call the Sabbath-day, wherein we must needs keep silence, and when not in church sit still at home, which to one of her lively disposition is heavy penance. Methinks when Sunday comes we be all in disgrace; 'tis so like a day of correction. My Lord Surrey has more liberty; for Mr. Martin carries him and his brothers after service into the pleasant fields about Westminster Abbey and the village of Charing Cross, and suffers them to play at ball under the trees, so they do not quarrel amongst themselves. My Lord Henry Howard, his grace's brother, always maintains and defends the Catholic religion against his sister of Westmoreland; and he spoke to my uncles Leonard, Edward, and Francis, and likewise to my aunt Lady Montague, that they should write unto my grandmother touching his grace bringing us up as Protestants. But the Duke of Norfolk, Mrs. Fawcett says, is our guardian, and she apprehends he is resolved that we shall conform to the times, and that no liberty be allowed us for the exercise of Catholic religion."

At this part of the letter I stopped reading; and Edmund, turning to my father, who, though he before had perused it, was also listening, said: "And if this be liberty of conscience, which Protestants speak of, I see no great liberty and no great conscience in the matter."

His cheek flushed as he spoke, and there was a hoarseness in his voice which betokened the working of strong feelings within him. My father smiled with a sort of pitiful sadness, and answered:

"My good boy, when thou art somewhat further advanced in years, thou wilt learn that the two words thou art speaking of are such as men have abused the meaning of more than any others that can be thought of; and I pray to God they do not continue to do so as long as the world lasts. It seems to me that they mostly mean by 'liberty' a freedom to compel others to think and to act as they have themselves a mind to; and by 'conscience' the promptings of their own judgments moved by their own passions."

"But 'tis hard," Edmund said, "'tis at times very hard, Mr. Sherwood, to know whereunto conscience points, in the midst of so many inward clamors as are raised in the soul by conflicting passions of dutiful affection {94} and filial reverence struggling for the mastery. Ay, and no visible token of God's will to make that darkness light. Tis that," he cried, more moved as he went on, "that makes me so often gaze upward. Would to God I might see a sign in the skies! for there are no sign-posts on life's path to guide us on our way to the heavenly Jerusalem, which our ministers speak of."

"If thou diligently seekest for sign-posts, my good boy," my father answered, "fear not but that he who said, 'Seek, and you shall find,' will furnish thee with them. He has not left himself without witnesses, or his religion to be groped after in hopeless darkness, so that men may not discern, even in these troublous times, where the truth lies, so they be in earnest in their search after it. But I will not urge thee by the cogency of arguments, or be drawn out of the reserve I have hitherto observed in these matters, which be nevertheless the mightiest that can be thought of as regards the soul's health."

And so, breaking off this discourse, he walked out upon the terrace; and I withdrew to the table, where my mother was sitting, and once more conned over the last pages of my lady's letter, which, when the reader hath read, he will perceive the writer's rank and her right to be thus titled.

"And now, Mistress Constance, I must needs inform you of a matter I would not leave you ignorant of, so that you should learn from strangers what so nearly concerns one whom you have a friendship to—and that is my betrothal with my Lord Surrey. The ceremony was public, inasmuch as was needful for the solemnising of a contract which is binding for life—'until death us do part,' as the marriage service hath it. How great a change this has wrought in my thoughts, none knows but myself; for though I be but twelve years of age (for his grace would have the ceremony to take place on my birthday), one year older than yourself, and so lately a child that not a very long time ago my grandmother would chastise me with her own hands for my faults, I now am wedded to my young lord, and by his grace and all the household titled Countess of Surrey! And I thank God to be no worse mated; for my lord, who is a few months younger than me, and a very child for frolicksome spirits and wild mirth, has, notwithstanding, so great a pleasantness of manners and so forward a wit, that one must needs have pleasure in his company; and I only wish I had more of it. Whilst we were only friends and playmates, I used to chide and withstand him, as one older and one more staid and discreet than himself; but, ah me! since we have been wedded, 'tis grand to hear him discourse on the duty of wives, and quote the Bible to show they must obey their husbands. He carries it in a very lordly fashion; and if I comply not at once with his commands, he cries out what he has heard at the play-house:

'Such duty as the subject owes the prince
Even such a woman oweth to her husband;
And when she's froward, peevish sullen, sour,
And not obedient to his honest will,
What is she but a foul contending rebel
And graceless traitor to her loving lord?
I am ashamed that women are so simple
To offer war where they should kneel for peace;
Or seek for rule, supremacy, or sway,
Where they are bound to serve, love, and obey.'

He has a most excellent memory. If he has but once heard out of any English or Latin book so much read as is contained in a leaf, he will forthwith perfectly repeat it. My Lord Henry, his uncle, for a trial, invented twenty long and difficult words a few days back, which he had never seen or heard before; yet did he recite them readily, every one in the same order as they were written, having only once read them over. But, touching that matter of obedience, which I care not to gainsay, 'tis not easy at present to obey my lord my husband, and his grace his father, and Mistress Fawcett, too, who holds as strict a hand over the Countess of Surrey as over Mistress Ann Dacre; for the commands of these my rulers do not at all times accord: but I pray to God I may do my duty, and be a good wife to my lord; and I {95} wish, as I said before, my grandmother had been here, and that I had been favored with her good counsel, and had had the benefit of shrift and spiritual advice ere I entered on this stage of my life, which is so new to me, who was but a child a few weeks ago, and am yet treated as such in more respects than one.

"My lord has told me a secret which Higford, his father's servant, let out to him; and 'tis something so weighty and of so great import, that since he left me my thoughts have been truants from my books, and Monsieur Sebastian, who comes to practice us on the lute, stopped his ears, and cried out that the Signora Contessa had no mercy on him, so to murther his compositions. Tis not the part of a true wife to reveal her husband's secrets, or else I would tell you, Mistress Constance, this great news, which I can with trouble keep to myself; and I shall not be easy till I have seen my lord again, which should be when we walk in the garden this evening; but I pray to God he may not be off instead to the Mall, to play at kittlepins; for then I have small chance to get speech with him to-day. Mr. Martin is my very good friend, and reminds the earl of his duty to his lady; but if my lord comes at his bidding, when he would be elsewhere than in my company, 'tis little contentment I have in his visits.

"'Tis yesterday I writ thus much, and now 'tis the day to send this letter; and I saw not my lord last night by reason of his grandfather my Lord Arundel sending to fetch me unto his house in the Strand. His goodness to me is so great, that nothing more can be desired; and his daughter my Lady Lumley is the greatest comfort I have in the world. She showed me a fair picture of my lord's mother, who died the day he was born, not then full seventeen years of age. She was of so amiable a disposition, so prudent, virtuous, and religious, that all who knew her could not but love and esteem her. And I read a letter which this sweet lady had written in Latin to her father on his birthday, to his great contentment, who had procured her to be well instructed in that language, as well as in her own and in all commendable learning. Then I played at primero with my Lord Arundel and my Lady Lumley and my uncle Francis. The knave of hearts was fixed upon for the quinola, and I won the flush. My uncle Francis cried the winning card should be titled Dudley. 'Not so,' quoth the earl; 'the knave that would match with the queen in the suit of hearts should never win the game.' And further talk ensued; from which I learnt that my Lord Arundel and the Duke of Norfolk mislike my Lord Leicester, and would not he should marry the queen; and my uncle laughed, and said, 'My lord, no good Englishman is there but must be of your lordship's mind, though none have so good reason as yourself to hinder so base a contract; for if my Lord of Leicester should climb unto her majesty's throne, beshrew me if he will not remember the box on the ear your lordship ministered to him some time since;' at which the earl laughed, too; but my Lady Lumley cried, 'I would to God my brother of Norfolk were rid of my Lord Leicester's friendship, which has, I much fear me, more danger in it than his enmity. God send he does not lead his grace into troubles greater than can well be thought of!' Alack, Mistress Constance, what uneasy times are these which we have fallen on! for methinks 'troubles' is the word in every one's mouth. As I was about to step into the chair at the hall-door at Arundel House, I heard one of my lord's guard say to another, 'I trust the white horse will be in quiet, and so we shall be out of trouble.' I have asked Mr. Martin what these words should mean; whereupon he told me the white horse, which indeed I might have known, was the Earl of Arundel's cognisance; and that the times were very troublesome, and plots were spoken of in the North anent the Queen of Scots, her majesty the {96} queen's cousin, who is at Chatesworth; and when he said that, all of a sudden I grew red, and my cheeks burned like two hot coals; but he took no heed, and said, 'A true servant might well wish his master out of trouble, when troubles were so rife.' And now shame take me for taking up so much of your time, which should be spent in more profitable ways than the reading of my poor letters; and I must needs beg you to write soon, and hold me as long as I have held you, and love me, sweet one, as I love you. My Lady Margaret, who is in a sense twice my sister, says she is jealous of Mistress Constance Sherwood, and would steal away my heart from her; but, though she is a winsome and cunning thief in such matters, I warrant you she shall fail therein. And so, commending myself to your good prayers, I remain

"Your true friend and loving servant,
"ANN SURREY."

As I finished and was folding up my letter the clock struck nine. It was waning darker without by reason of a cloud which had obscured the moon. I heard my father still pacing up and down the gravel-walk, and ever and anon staying his footsteps awhile, as if watching. After a short space the moon shone out again, and I saw the shadows of two persons against the wall of the kitchen garden. Presently the hall-door was fastened and bolted, as I knew by the rattling of the chain which hung across it. Then my father looked in at the door and said, "'Tis time, goodwife, for young folks to be abed." Upon which my mother rose and made as if she was about to withdraw to her bed-chamber. Edmund followed us up stairs, and, wishing us both good-night, went into the closet where he slept. Then my mother, taking me by the hand, led me into my father's study.

[TO BE CONTINUED. Page 163]

Translated from Der Katholik.

THE TWO SIDES OF CATHOLICISM.

I.

The Church is, in a twofold respect, universal or catholic. While, on the one hand, she extends herself over the whole earth, and encircles the entire human race with the bond of the same faith and an equal love, on the other she makes known, by this very act, the most special inward character of her own being. Thus the Church is the Catholic Church, both in her interior being and in her exterior manifestation.

The ground of the well-known saying of St. Ambrose, "Where Peter is, there is the Church," [Footnote 7] lies in the thought, that the nature of the Church admits of only one form of historical manifestation. The idea of the true Church can only be realized where Peter is, in the communion of the legitimate Pope as the successor of Peter.

[Footnote 7: Ubi Petrus ibi ecclesia. In Ps. xl. No. 30. ]

This proposition has its proximate justification in that clear expression of the will of Jesus Christ, the founder of the Church, in which he designates the Apostle Peter as the rock on which he will build his Church. Moreover, it is precisely this rock-foundation which is to make the Church indestructible. [Footnote 8] From this it follows that, in virtue of the ordinance of Jesus, the office of Peter, or the primacy given him in the Church, was not to expire with the death of the apostle. For, if the {97} Church is indestructible precisely on account of her foundation upon the rock-man Peter, he must remain for all time the support of the Church, and historical connection with him is the indispensable condition on which the Church can be firmly established in any part of the earth. This constant connection with the Apostle Peter is maintained through the bishop of Rome for the time being. For these two offices, the episcopate of Rome and the primacy, were connected with each other in the person of the Apostle Peter. Consequently the same superior rank in the Church which Peter possessed is transmitted to the legitimate bishop of Rome at the same time with the Roman episcopal see. Thus the Prince of the Apostles remains in very deed the rock-foundation of the Church, continually, in each one of his successors for the time being.

[Footnote 8: Matt. xvi. 18.]

In the view of Christian antiquity, the unity of the Church was the particular object for which the papacy was established. [Footnote 9] This unity, apprehended in its historical development, gives us the conception of catholicity. [Footnote 10]

[Footnote 9: St. Cyprian, De Unit Eccl. Primatus Petro dafur, ut una Christi ecclesia et cathedra una monstretur. The primacy is given to Peter, that the Church of Christ may be shown to be one, and the chair one.]

[Footnote 10: Ibid. Ecclesia quoque una est, quae in multitudinem. latius incremento faeccunditatis extenditur.... ecclesia Domini luce perfusa per obem totam radios suos porrigit. Unum tamen lumen est, quod ubique diffunditur, nec unitas corporis separatur.

The Church also is one, which is extended to a very great multitude by the increase of fruitfulness . . . the Church of the Lord pervaded with light extends its rays over the whole world. Nevertheless the light which is everywhere diffused is one, and the unity of the body is never separated.]

Both these marks of the Church must embody themselves in the form of an outwardly perceptible historical reality. The Church being indebted for her unity, and by necessary consequence for her catholicity, precisely to her historical connection with Peter, catholicity is thus rooted in the idea of the papacy. But does its ultimate and most profound principle lie therein?

The argument, briefly sketched above, obliges us to rest the catholicity of the Church on the actual institution of Christ. We can, however, inquire into the essential reason of this institution. Does this reason lie simply in a free, voluntary determination of Christ, or in the interior essence of the Church herself? In the latter case, the Church would appear as Catholic, because the end of her establishment could be fulfilled under no other condition. There would be in her innermost being a secret determination, by force of which the idea of the Church is completely incapable of realization under any other form than that of catholicity. A Christian Church without the papacy were, therefore, entirely inconceivable. If this is actually the case, there lies hidden under the rind of the Church's visible form of catholicity, a still deeper catholicity, in which we are bound to recognize the most profound principle of the outward, historical side of catholicity.

But that inward principle, the marrow of the Church, where are we to look for it? Our theologians, following St. Augustine, teach that the Church, like man, consists of soul and body. The theological virtues form the soul of the Church, and her body is constituted by the outward profession of the faith, the participation of the sacraments, and exterior connection with the visible head of the Church. [Footnote 11] St. Augustine, indeed, also designates the Holy Ghost as the soul or the inner principle of the Church. This is the same thought with the one which will be presently evolved, in which the inner principle of catholicity will be reduced to the conception of the supernatural. This, however, considered in itself, is withdrawn from the region of historical manifestation. In order that it may pass from the region of the invisible into that of apprehensible reality, it needs a medium that may connect together both orders, the invisible order of the supernatural and the order of historical manifestation. It is only in this {98} way that catholicity can acquire for itself a historical shape, and assume flesh and blood.

[Footnote 11: Bellarm., De Eccl. milit., cap. ii.]

We might be disposed to regard the sacraments as this medium, because they are the instruments by which grace is conferred, in a manner apprehensible through the senses. Nevertheless, we cannot find the constitutive principle of the Church in the sacraments alone. It is well known that Protestantism has set forth the legitimate administration of the sacraments as a mark of the true Church. A searching glance at the Protestant conception of the Church will hereafter give us a proof that a bare communication in sacraments, at least from the Protestant stand-point, cannot possibly verify itself as making a visible Church. According to the Protestant doctrine of justification, a sacrament is indebted for its grace-giving efficacy solely to the faith of the receiver. In this view, therefore, the connection of the invisible element of the supernatural with the historically manifested reality, and consequently the making visible of the true Church, is dependent on conditions where historical fulfilment is not provable. Who can prove whether the recipient of a sacrament has faith? It is true that, according to the Catholic view, an objective efficacy is ascribed to the sacrament, i.e., the outwardly perceptible completion of the sacramental action of itself permits the invisible element of the supernatural to penetrate into the sphere of the visible.

Notwithstanding this, the Catholic sacrament is, by itself alone, no sufficient medium through which the being of the true Church can be brought into visibility. Did she embody herself historically only in so far as a sensible matter and an outward action are endued with a supernatural efficacy, the element of the supernatural would come to a historical manifestation only as the purely objective. A profound view of the essence of the Church would not find this satisfactory. The Church, even on her visible side, is not a purely objective, or merely outward, institution. The ultimate principle of catholicity—and this statement will make our conception intelligible—although implanted in the world as a supernatural leaven from above, has nevertheless its seat in the deepest interior of the human spirit. Thence it penetrates upward into the sphere of historical manifestation, and thus proves itself a church-constitutive principle. Such a connection of the region of the interior and subjective with that of historical and visible reality is caused by the objective efficacy of a sacrament, only in the case where the same is productive of its proper effect. This, however, according to Catholic doctrine, presupposes an inward disposition on the part of the recipient, the presence of which cannot be manifested to outward apprehension. A Church, whose essence consisted merely in the bond established through the sacraments, could either not be verified with certitude, or would have an exclusively exterior character. Accordingly, we have not yet found, in the Catholic sacramental conception, the middle term we are seeking, by which the essence of catholicity can be brought into visible manifestation. Rather, this process has to be already completed and the conception of the Church to be actualized, before the sacrament can manifest its efficacy. Through this last, the element of the supernatural, i.e., the invisible germ of the Church, must be originally planted or gradually strengthened in individual souls. But this is effected by the sacrament as the organ and in the name of the Church, though in particular cases outside of her communion.

The continuous existence of Catholicity is essentially the self-building of the body of Christ. It produces its own increase through the instrumentality of the sacraments. [Footnote 12] The union between the supernatural and the historical actuality, or the bond of {99} catholicity, is not then first established in the sacraments. These only mediate for individual souls the reception into the union, or confirm them in their organic relation to it, and are signs of fellowship. In addition to what has been already said, there is another reason, and one of wider application, to be considered, as bearing on this point. The principle of a new life which has to be infused into individual souls through the sacraments is sanctifying grace. In this, therefore, by logical consequence, we should be obliged to recognize the interior constitutive principle of the Church, if it were true that the connection between the inner being of the Church and her historical manifestation were brought to pass through the efficacy of the sacraments. According to this apprehension of the subject, only the saints would belong to the true Church.

[Footnote 12: Eph. iv. 16.]

One might seek to evade this last conclusion by averring that in the instance of baptism, the sacrament produces in the soul of the recipient, beside sanctifying grace, still another effect, independently of the disposition, namely, the baptismal character. This character is an indelible mark impressed on the soul. Here, then, is given us a supernatural principle which penetrates the deepest interior of the human spirit, and which is, at the same time, capable of verifying itself as a historical fact; inasmuch as it is infallibly infused into the soul through an outward, sensible action, and thereby, through the medium of the latter, becomes visible. Beside this, one might be still more inclined to regard the baptismal character as the Church's formative principle, because the same is stamped upon the soul through a sacrament, whose special end is to incorporate with the body of Christ its individual members; for which reason, also, baptism is designated in the language of the Church as the gate of the spiritual life, vitae spiritualis janua. [Footnote 13]

[Footnote 13: Decret. pro Armenia.]

We must, however, in this immediate connection, put in a reminder, that it is a disputed point in theology, whether baptism is really, in all cases, the indispensably necessary condition of becoming a member of the Church. In the opinion of prominent theologians, a mere catechumen can, under certain circumstances, be a member of the Church. [Footnote 14] Be that as it may, no one will certainly dispute the fact that a catechumen, whose soul is glowing with divine love, belongs at least to the soul of the Church. In him, therefore, the inner germ of the Church's life really exists before the reception of the baptismal character. Beside this, it appears to us that the sacramental character, precisely in view of its determinate end, is not so qualified that we can put it forward as the interior principle of catholicity. The baptismal character is intended for a distinctive mark; by it the seal of Church membership is stamped on the soul. It is true that the same action by which the character is impressed on the soul also makes the baptized person a member of the Church, or, that in the same act which plants the inner germ of the Church's being in the heart, the soul receives also the characteristic outward impress of that being. But in so far as it is the immediate and proper faculty of the baptismal character to impress the stamp of the Church in indelible features upon the soul, the very conception of this character presupposes necessarily the conception of the Church, as prior to itself; which shows that we cannot find the principle of the interior being of the Church in the baptismal character. This is confirmed by the additional consideration that the baptismal character is not effaced from those souls which have broken off every kind of connection with the Church, and have absolutely nothing remaining in them by which they communicate in her being. Finally, the existence of the Church, at least so far as her inner being or soul is concerned, {100} does not date its origin from the institution of baptism. We must, therefore, go one step further, in order to discover the interior source of catholicity. As has been heretofore pointed out, this source lies in that region which we are usually wont to designate as the Supernatural Order. Let us, therefore, make a succinct exposition of the interior law of development in this order.

[Footnote 14: Suarez, De Fide. Disp. ix., § i., No. 18.]

According to the Catholic doctrine, faith is the beginning of human salvation, the ground and root of justification, [Footnote 15] i.e., of the supernatural life of the soul. St. Paul designates faith "the substance of things hoped for." [Footnote 16] That is to say, the beatific vision of God, and with it the point toward which the whole supernatural order tends and in which it rests, has its foundation laid in faith, and is already in germ contained in it. Christ, and with him the fountain of our supernatural life, dwells in us through faith. [Footnote 17] Is Christ, therefore, called the foundation, beside which no other can be laid, [Footnote 18 ]then is faith recognized in the basis of the supernatural order, because by faith we are immediately brought into union with Christ. Wherefore the apostle makes our participation in the fruits of the work of redemption precisely dependent on the condition, "If so ye continue in the faith, grounded and settled." [Footnote 19] The same portion as foundation, which faith has in the inner life of grace in the soul, is also accorded to it in relation to the exterior structure of the Church. The visibility of the true Church is only the historical embodiment of the element of the supernatural. The divine building of the Church has for its foundation the apostles, [Footnote 20] that is, as the sense of the passage evidently is, through the faith which they preached. Very remarkable is the form of expression in the well-known saying of the apostle: "One Lord, one faith, one baptism." [Footnote 21] Here the unity of faith is given the precedence of the unity produced through baptism, as being its necessary pre-requisite. The one baptism is the bond of unity of the Church only in the second line. Through it, namely, the fruitful germ of the one faith in which exclusively the unity of the Church has its root, is continually planted in individual souls, an actual confession of that faith being also included in the ceremony of baptism itself.

[Footnote 15: Trid. Sess. vi., cap. 8.]

[Footnote 16: Heb. xi. i.]

[Footnote 17: Eph iii. 17.]

[Footnote 18: I Cor. iii. 11.]

[Footnote 19: Coloss. i. 23.]

[Footnote 20: Eph. ii. 20.]

[Footnote 21: Eph. iv. 5.]

The Church herself makes use of language which clearly shows that she regards faith as the deepest principle of her being. [Footnote 22] The Catechism of the Council of Trent defines the Church as "the faithful dispersed throughout the world." [Footnote 23]

[Footnote 22: Concil. Lateran., iv. cap. Firmiter: Una fidelium universalis ecclesia. ]

[Footnote 23: Catech. Rom., pars 1, cap. x. . qu. 2. ]

According to St. Thomas, also, the unity, and consequently the catholicity of the Church, is radically grounded in faith. The angelic doctor means here living faith, or fides formata. According to this view, the principle of catholicity pervades the innermost depth of subjectivity. At the same time it is clear how the same comes to an historical manifestation. This takes place in the symbol of the Church. The faith which finds its historical expression in the ecclesiastical symbol is to be regarded as fides formata, [Footnote 24] for this reason, because it is a confession of faith made in the name and by the personality of the collective Church, which possesses its inward principle of unity in the fides formata, or living faith. Moreover, the symbol of the Church is a constant warning for those of her members who have not the grace of sanctification to make their faith living through charity. [Footnote 25]

[Footnote 24: That is, faith made perfect by charity as it exists in a person who is in the state of grace, in contradistinction from the faith of a sinner.—TRANSLATOR ]

[Footnote 25: Secunda Secundae, qu. 1. a. q. ad 3. ]

In the foregoing doctrinal exposition St. Thomas has marked out for us the path to be followed in seeking {101} for the medium of union between the exterior and ulterior catholicity of the Church. Our argument must start, therefore, from the position that the unity of the Church in the first line is a unity in faith. In this notion we have the speculative middle term between the inner being of the Church and her historical form of manifestation. From the blending of both these elements is formed the full, adequate idea of catholicity. This last exhibits itself as a force acting in two distinct spheres, that of the inward subjectivity and that of historical objectivity. Consequently, the exterior and interior catholicity of the Church, or the two sides of Catholicism, must be reduced to the same principle. A further evolution of this thought will make it clear, why the being of the true Church can only find its true actualization in the historical form of Catholicism.

The catholic visible form of the Church, as pointed out above, is indicated in the papacy. But in what relation does the latter stand to the interior catholicity of the Church? In order to find the right answer to this decisive question, we must first more exactly define in what sense the papacy must be regarded as the bond of the historical unity of the Church. It must be so regarded, precisely in so far as the primacy has been instituted for the special end of preserving the faith incorrupt. According to the teaching of the Fathers of the Church, Peter is the Church's foundation of rock, in virtue of his faith. [Footnote 26] By this, of course, is not meant the personal confession of the Apostle Peter, but the object-matter of the same, the contents of the faith to be preached by Peter and his successors. Peter, says Leo the Great, is called by Christ the Rock, on account of the solidity of the faith which he was to preach, pro soliditate fidei quam erat praedicaturus. [Footnote 27 ] This is not the place to develop further in what way the papacy proves itself in act the cement of the unity of faith. We shall speak of that later. It is enough for our purpose, in the meanwhile, to take note of the judgment of the ancient Church. According to the doctrine of the Fathers of the Church, the fundamental significance which the papacy has for the Church, rests upon a relation of dependence between her faith and the faith of Peter, including by consequence that of his successors. In this sense St. Hilarius distinctly calls the faith of the Apostle Peter the foundation of the Church. [Footnote 28] The same view is found in St. Ambrose, [Footnote 29] expressed in nearly the same words. But if Peter is the Church's foundation of rock precisely through his faith, that mutual relation between the inner catholicity of the Church and the papacy is no longer doubtful. For that the Church, according to her inward essence, verifies herself as the Catholic Church, she owes precisely to her faith, as likewise, on the other side, her catholic visible form is conditioned by the outward profession of the same faith. Consequently, the papacy as guardian of the unity of faith, stands also in a necessary connection with the inner being of the Church. Here then we have the uniting member we have been seeking between inward and outward catholicity, the essence and the manifestation of the Church. In so far as the historical connection with Peter must be conceived as a bond of faith, in this same connection or in the form of Catholicism, the true Church, even as to her inner being, comes historically into visible manifestation.

[Footnote 26: See the relevant passages from the fathers in Ballerini, De vi ac rations primatus Rom. Pont., cap. xii., § 1, No. 1. ]

[Footnote 27: Serm. 62.]

[Footnote 28: De Trin., vi. 37. ]

[Footnote 29: De Incarn., cap. 5. ]

Faith, which we affirm to be the essential kernel of Catholicism, has two sides, one which is interior and subjective, and another which comes to outward manifestation. With the heart we believe unto justification, but with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. [Footnote 30] A revealed truth {102} corresponds to supernatural faith as its necessary object. Therefore, it may be remarked in passing, the subjective act of faith is equally infallible with the divine testimony itself, upon which it is essentially based. [Footnote 31] This revealed object of faith, without which a supernatural faith is entirely inconceivable, is mediated or set forth through an organ directly instituted by God for this purpose. An individual, who thinks that he has discovered, through private investigation or in any other way, a particular point of doctrine, which hitherto has not been universally received as such, to be a revealed truth, can only make it an object of supernatural faith, when he is able to judge with certainty that this supposed new doctrine of faith would be approved by the infallible, divinely appointed organ of revealed truth. [Footnote 32]

[Footnote 30: Rom. x. 10.]

[Footnote 31: St. Thomas, Secunda Secunda, q. 1 a. 3.]

[Footnote 32: Suarez, De Fide. Disp. iii., Sect, xiii., No. 9.]

This mediating organ is, however, as we shall fully show in the course of our further exposition, no other than the Apostle Peter, and through the relation which he bears to him, his legitimate successor in office. Peter is the support and the strength of his brethren, inasmuch as his faith, to which the dogmatic utterance of his successors gives a new expression according to the needs of the Church, forms a criterion for the faith of the Church. Peter, preaching of the faith, continually apprehensible through the papal definitions of faith, gives to the faith of the Church the specific form under which the same incorporates itself historically in an ecclesiastical confession. But in the Church-confession of faith, as we have before shown, its inner being comes into visible manifestation. As medium of Peter's preaching of the faith, the papacy is consequently also a Church-constitutive principle, inasmuch as through the actualization of the supreme power delegated to him by Christ, the being of the Church is made visible, and obtains an historical form. This is the sense of the words, "On this Rock I will build my Church."

As we have, in the foregoing remarks, conceived of the papacy as the angle at which the two sides of Catholicism meet, the uniting bond of the outward and inward catholicity of the Church, we are further bound to show why precisely the papacy is the appropriate organ to establish that union between the essence and the manifestation of Catholicism, and thereby to mediate the actualization of the true idea of the Church. For this purpose we must endeavor to penetrate somewhat deeper into the inner being or soul of the Church. We shall there find a tendency which makes the Catholic form of manifestation of the Church a postulate of her being. This tendency lies in the character of the supernatural. In the conception of the supernatural we shall endeavor to point out the radical conception of Catholicism. The papacy, and the Catholic visible form of the Church mediated by it, is, in our opinion, the necessary consequence of the supernaturality of her being.

Thus far we have sketched in brief outlines the mutual relation of the two sides of Catholicism. We must reserve for a subsequent article the detailed theological proof of that which we have for the present suggested as a new theory. Meanwhile we would like to exhibit, in a few words, the interest which an investigation of this subject claims for itself at this particular period of time.

II.

The distinction between an exterior and interior catholicity of the Church is but slightly touched upon in our books of dogmatic instruction. No one need wonder at this circumstance. It is well known that the controversy with Protestantism gave occasion to the usual modern method of treating of the marks of the Church. The {103} method of the great controversialists of the age of the Reformation has, at least in regard to the present question, remained, to a considerable extent, the model for the dogmatic writers of the present time. The theologians of a former time, however, found no necessity for expressly distinguishing between the catholicity of the being of the Church and that of her manifestation. It was enough for their purpose to prove that the Church, in her historical manifestation, is the Catholic Church.

The Protestantism of the epoch of the Reformation claimed for its congregations the honor of having actualized the true idea of the Church. The churches of Wittenberg, Zurich, and Geneva each pretended to be the true copy of the evangelical primitive Church. It was easy for Catholic polemics to destroy this pretension. It was only necessary to inspect the particular Protestant churches a little closely. Such a reconnoissance conducted necessarily to the indubitable conclusion that none of those communions had the marks of the true Church upon it, and that these were realized only in the Church in communion with the Pope.

Modern Protestantism is much more modest in its pretensions. The present champions of the Protestant cause characterize, without disguise, the attempt of the Reformers to bring the essence of the true Church historically into manifestation in their communions as a gross error and a backsliding into Catholicism. They will have it, that the characteristic principle of Protestantism lies precisely in the acknowledgment that the true essence of the Church can find its correlative expression in none of the existing churches. The true Church, according to this notion, remains an unattainable ideal as long as the world stands. Not to actualize the idea of the Church, only to strive after its actualization, is the task of a religious communion. The Protestantism of the day accordingly recognizes it as its vocation "to give Christianity precisely the expression and form which best corresponds to the necessities of the time, the demands of an advanced science and culture, the grade of intellectual and moral development of the Christian nations." [Footnote 33]

[Footnote 33: Schenkel, "Essence of Prot.," p. 4.]

Protestant polemic theology makes the following use of this view. Over against the magnificent historical manifestation of the Catholic Church, the torn and rent condition of the Protestant religious community presents a striking contrast. The proximate conclusion that the true Church can only be found within the circle of Catholicism, they seek now to anticipate on the Protestant side by the observation that already from the outset one makes a false start who would wish to recognize the true Church by her form of historical manifestation. According to the Protestant view, the mark of catholicity verifies itself exclusively in the inner being of the Church, and not in her outward manifestation. For, owing to the constant progress of human development, and the extremely diversified individuality of single nations, the historical manifestation of the Church must be multiform to the same extent as the intellectual and moral wants of the different peoples are various. Nevertheless, in spite of the manifold differences which distinguish the particular churches in their historical manifestation, the members of the same blend themselves together into a great invisible spiritual kingdom. This is the ideal Church.

This is the response which modern Protestantism makes when Catholic criticism places before its eyes the melancholy picture of its inward divisions and the history of its variations. From the historical manifestation of a church to its inner being they say the conclusion is invalid. In order, therefore, to make Catholic polemics effective, the relation between the essence and the manifestation of the Church must be first of all theologically {104} established. It is only after this has been done that the comparison between "the Church and the churches" can be exhibited in its entire argumentative force.

The theory of the ideal church is not yet effectively refuted, when we on the Catholic side content ourselves with proving that the true Church must become visible. This general proposition does not exclude the proposition of our opponents. For, according to the Protestant doctrine, also, the creative power of the spirit of Christianity exhibits itself in the construction of visible congregations, and the gradual actualization of the ideal Church is conditioned by a sensibly apprehensible mediation. The final decision of this question must therefore be sought in the demonstration of the proposition that the inmost being of the Church can only realize itself historically in the one specific form; that a catholicity of the essence of the Church without a catholicity in her manifestation is entirely inconceivable. Only by this demonstration will the retreat of Protestant polemics into the ideal Church be for ever cut off.

Some have argued against the Protestant view, that as Christian truth is one so the visible Church can also be but one. [Footnote 34] The argument is valid only in the prior supposition that there can be but a single form of historical manifestation for the inner being of the Church. This, however, Protestantism denies in the sense, that from its stand-point every particular church represents the idea of the Church, [Footnote 35] even though it may be on one side only. According to the diversified stages of cultivation in the Christian people, so they say, now one, now another side of Christian truth attains to its expression in the particular confessions, but in none the full and entire truth. The contradiction existing between these, therefore, in nowise falls back upon the Christian verity itself. This Protestant evasion can also be alone met in the way above designated, by establishing the relation between the essence and the manifestation of Catholicism.

[Footnote 34: Moehler, "Symbolism."]

[Footnote 35: This is also the theory of High-Church Episcopalianism. Mr. Sewall has defined it more logically than any other writer of that school. According to him, the unity of the Church consists in this, that all churches are formed after one ideal model, or on one principle, and the separate churches of individual bishops are each a perfect organic whole. That is, Catholic unity is an abstract unity, concreted in each particular bishop and diocese. Hence there can be no organized unity of the universal Church, but only union or friendly communion of independent churches. This notion was highly approved by Bishop Whittingham, who expressed it in this way, that the true communion of churches with each other is in speculo Trinitatis. It is pure Congregationalism, bating the difference between a diocese governed by a chief and inferior pastors, and a single congregation under one pastor or several of the same order. But it is the only logical conception of a visible church possible, when the papacy, or principle of universal organic unity, is denied. It is the logical result of the schismatical position of the Greeks, who have no unity among themselves except that which is national, but are divided into several independent bodies. Hence, the so-called "union movement," as clearly shown by Cardinal Patrizi in the Decree sent to the English bishops, is one which proceeds from a denial of Catholic unity, and therefore can never lead to unity, but only aim at union, or voluntary co-operation of distinct churches with each other. The High-Church theory differs from that of the German Protestants in this that the former requires that all churches should be alike, and each one represent completely the ideal Church; but both are based on the same principle, that of an abstract, invisible unity and catholicity, concreted in an individual and not a generic and universal mode.—TRANSLATOR.]

It has been further argued that a Church of the Nations, which the Christian Church must be, according to its idea, is entirely inconceivable without the papacy at its summit. [Footnote 36] Here, also, it is presupposed, as already proved, that the conception of universality which is essentially connected with the idea of the true Church must also necessarily impress itself upon her actual explication of herself in time. But it is precisely against this notion that modern Protestantism contends. Therefore, if our polemic arms are to bring down their man, the affair must begin with a sharper delineation of the mutual relation between the essence and the visible form of the Church.

[Footnote 36: Döllinger, "The Church and the Churches."]

Beside the polemic advantages to be gained in the course which has been suggested, there is another in the interest of pacification. Under the rubbish of the Protestant Church-idea there still lies buried a remnant of {105} Catholic truth. We ought not to shun the trouble of bringing this to light. It is the Christian truth contained in his confession which binds the believing Protestant to it. Catholic theology has to reclaim this as its own property. It has the mission intrusted to it to show how the religious satisfaction, which the deeper Protestant mind thinks it finds in the doctrinal conception of its confession, is imparted to it in richer abundance and morally purified through the dogma of the Church. Through this conciliatory method, an understanding of the Catholic truth can be much more easily and effectually imparted to the unprejudiced Protestant mind than by a rough polemical method. This end is most essentially served by the distinction between the essence and the manifestation of Catholicism.

Protestant piety makes a great boast of its deep spirituality. The modern ideal theory of the Church owes a great share of its popularity to its aptitude of application in this direction. By means of this conception, the Protestant Church is expected to exhibit itself in a new light as the church of the interior and spiritual life. Does one attain the same depth of view from the Catholic stand-point? All doubt on this point must disappear on thorough consideration of what we have above named, the inner side of Catholicism.

There is another ground for the favor with which this ideal theory of the Church is at present received. Protestant theology regards it as a means of its own resuscitation. The old doctrine of justification by faith alone has in great part lost the charm it once exercised over the hearts of the German people. The once mighty battle-cry of inward, subjective faith is no longer to the taste of our age. Therefore, in our time, instead of the antiquated idea of immediate union with Christ, the world-moving power of the mind, the creative power of the idea, is set up as the distinguishing principle of Protestantism. The latter is thus made to appear as the most powerful protector of the liberal aspirations of the age.

Catholic controversy must take some cognizance of this, if it would make its own proper principle prevail. While Protestantism seeks to gain the favor of the contemporary world by obsequiously yielding to the caprices of the spirit of the age, the inner principle of Catholicism raises it above the vacillations which sway particular periods. Only a Church which, thanks to its native principle, is not borne along by intellectual and social periodical currents, can effectually correct their movement. In order, therefore, to measure accurately the influence which the Church, by virtue of her institution, is called to exercise upon human society, we must penetrate into her innermost essence, to the very point where Catholicism has its deepest principle. First from this point can we correctly understand in how far the Church is a social power. From this point of view alone can we comprehend her aptitude to be the teacher of the nations. And precisely of this social and instructive vocation have our contemporaries lost the right understanding to a great extent. It is one of the mightiest tasks of our modern theology to make the minds of men once more capable of apprehending this truth. [Footnote 37]

[Footnote 37: A few sentences rather digressive from the main topic of the article are hero omitted.—TRANSLATOR.]

The high importance of authority in the system of Catholicism is well known. This fundamental principle runs a danger of being placed in a false light, when it is depressed to the level of the historical and exterior side of the Church. Ecclesiastical authority, separated from the ground which lies back of it and which is above the temporal order, may appear even to the well-disposed as a mere brake for the stoppage of all intellectual progress. This suggests a temptation to desire a compromise between the Church and the spirit of the age. When one takes a merely exterior and {106} historical view of church authority, the proper spirit of joyousness which ought to belong to faith is wanting in the submission which is rendered to its decrees. It is very easy, then, to fall into a sort of diplomatic way of acting toward the Church as teacher of doctrine. One seeks to accommodate one's self to her doctrine through subtile distinctions. On the contrary, the boldest scientific mind frankly and cheerfully bows itself under the yoke of the obedience of faith, when it sees that the Church, in her doctrinal decision, is acting from her own interior principle.

Our doctrinal exposition requires now that we should go into a more thorough argument respecting the immanent principle of Catholicism, which we shall first of all undertake to do on Scriptural grounds. This part of the subject will be treated in an ensuing article.

[Continued on

Page 669

]

From The Cornhill Magazine.

MONSIEUR BABOU.

I.

In the immediate vicinity of the capital of the kingdom of Lilliput there is a charming village called "Les Grenouillettes." This rural resort of the citizens of Mildendo consists, mainly, of three hotels, thirty public-houses, and five ponds. The population I should reckon at about ten millions, inclusive of frogs, who are the principal inhabitants, and who make a great noise in the world there.

Hither flock the jocund burgesses, and dance to the sound of harp and viol. …

It occurs to me that, sprightly as I may think it to call Belgium Lilliput, the mystification might possibly become tiresome and inconvenient if persisted in throughout this narrative, beside becoming absolutely unnecessary. As for the village in question, I have a reason or two for not calling it by its right name.

About half-a-dozen years ago, my brother (Captain John Freshe, R.N.), his wife, and I had been wearily jogging all a summer's day in search of country lodgings for a few weeks in the immediate neighborhood of Brussels. Now nothing can be more difficult to find in that locality, except under certain conditions.

You can live at a village hotel, and pay a maximum price for minimum comfort.

You can, possibly, lodge in a public-house, where it will cost you dear, however little you pay.

Or you can, in some villages, hire empty rooms in an entirely empty house, and hire furniture from Brussels, and servants, if you have none, by the month.

This last alternative has the advantage of ennobling your position into a quasi-martyrdom, by, in a measure, compelling you to stay where you are, whether you like it or not.

Toward the end of that longest of the long days, we began to regard life and circumstance with the apathy of despair, and to cease to hope for anything further from them except dinner.

The capital of the kingdom of Lilliput appeared to be partially surrounded by a vast and melancholy campagna of turnips. These wilds, immeasurably spread, seemed lengthening as we went. Village after {107} village had we reached, and explored in vain. Judging by our feelings, I should say we had ransacked at least half-a-hundred of those rural colonies. Almost all these villages possessed at least six public-houses and two ponds. Some few had no ponds, but all had six public-houses. Rural, dusty, cracked public-houses; with frowzy gardens, with rotten, sloppy tables and benches; with beery gorillas playing at quoits and ninepins.

The names of none of these settlements seemed to us pronounceable by human beings, with the exception of two, which sounded like Diggum and Hittumontheback. But our city driver appeared to be acquainted with the Simian tongue, and was directed from village to village by the good-natured apes whom he interrogated.

About sunset we came to a larger and quite civilized place, with a French name, signifying "The Tadpoles"—the place I have described at the commencement of this narrative. Our dusty fly and dejected horse turned into the carriage entrance of the first little hotel we saw. It stood sideways to a picturesque little lake, with green shores. The carriage entrance went through the house. Beyond, we had caught sight of a paved yard or court, and of a vista of green leafiness that looked cool and inviting. We heard the noisy jangling of a barrel-organ playing a polka, and we found a performance going on in the court that absorbed the attention of the whole household. No one seemed to hear, or at least to heed, the sound of our wheels, but, when our vehicle fairly stopped in the paved yard, a fishy-eyed waiter came toward us, jauntily flipping time with his napkin. We begged him to get us dinner instantly.

"Way, Mosou," replied that official, in the sweet Belgian-French language, and let us out of the fly. We had been so long cramped up in it that we were glad to walk, and stand, and look about the court while our food was got ready.

The organ-grinder had not ceased grinding out his polka for a moment. The wiry screams of his infernal machine seemed to charm him as much as they did the rest of the company assembled. He was the usual Savoyard, with a face like a burnt crust; all fire-brown eyes, sable ringlets, and insane grimace. He leaned against a low stone post, and ground out that horrible bray, like a grinning maniac. We walked to a short distance, and took in the scene.

A little sallow young man, having a bushy mustache, stood near a door into the house, with a dish in his hand, as if he had been transfixed in the act of carrying it somewhere. Beside him, on the step of the door, sat a blonde young woman, with large blue eyes and a little mouth—as pretty and as fade as a Carlo-Dolcian Madonna. Evidently these were the landlord and his lady.

On a garden-bench, by the low wall that divided the court from the garden beyond, sat, a little apart, a young person of a decidedly French aspect, dressed quite plainly, but with Parisian precision, in black silk. In her hand and on her lap lay some white embroidery. She was not pretty, but had neat, small features, that wore a pleasant though rather sad smile, as she suspended her work to watch what was going on. An old woman in a dark-blue gown and a clean cap, with a pile of freshly-ironed linen in her arms, stood at the top of some steps leading into a little building which was probably the laundry. She was wagging her old head merrily to the dance tune. Other lookers-on lounged about, but some of them had vanished since our arrival—for instance, the fishy-eyed waiter and a burly individual in a white nightcap.

The centre of attraction remains to be described. Within a few paces of the organ-grinder, a little girl and boy danced indefatigably on the stones, to the unmusical music of his box. The little boy was a small, fair, sickly child, in a linen blouse, and about four years old. He jumped, and stamped, and {108} laughed excitedly. The little girl looked about a year older. She was plump and rosy, dressed in a full pink frock and black silk apron. She had light brown hair, cut short and straight, like a boy's. She danced very energetically, but solemnly, without a smile on her wee round mouth. She poussetted, she twirled—her pink frock spread itself out like a parasol. Her fat little bare arms akimbo, she danced in a gravely coquettish, thoroughly business-like way; now crossing, changing places with her partner; now setting to him, with little pattering feet; now suddenly whisking and whirling off. The little boy watched her, and followed her lead: she was the governing spirit of the dance. Both children kept admirable time. They were dancing the tarantella, though they had never heard of it; but of all the poetry of motion, the tarantella is the most natural measure to fall into.

The organ-grinder ground, and grinned, and nodded; the landlord and his wife exchanged looks of admiration and complacency whenever they could take their eyes off the little dancing nymph: it was easy to see they were her proud parents. The quiet young lady on the bench looked tenderly at the tiny, sickly boy, as he frisked. We felt sure she was his mother. His eyes were light blue, not hazel; but he had the same neat little features.

All of a sudden, down from an open window looking into the court, there came an enormous voice—

"Ah, ah! Bravo! Ah, ah, Monsieur Babébibo-BOU!"

The little boy stopped dancing; so did the little girl, and every one looked up at the window. The little boy, clapping his hands and screaming with glee, ran under it. No one could be seen at that aperture, but we had caught a momentary glimpse of a big blond man in a blue blouse, who had instantly dropped out of sight, and who was crouching on the floor, for we saw, though the child below could not, the top of his straw hat just above the window-edge. The little boy screamed, "Papa, papa!" The great voice, making itself preternaturally gruff, roared out—

"Qui est là? Est-ce par chance Monsieur Babébibo-BOU?" (The first syllables very fast, the final one explosive.)

"Way, way! C'est Mosou Babi—bou!" cried the child, trying to imitate the gruff voice, and jumping and laughing ecstatically.

Out of the window came flying a huge soft ball of many colors, and then another roar: "Avec les compliments du Roi de tous les joujoux, à Monsieur Babébibo-BOU!"

More rapture. Then a large white packet, palpably sugar-plums, "Avec les compliments de la Reine de tous les bonbons, a Mademoiselle Marie, et à Monsieur Babébibo-BOU!"

Rapture inexpressible, except by shrill shrieks and capers. The plump little girl gravely advances and assists at the examination of the packet, popping comfits into her tiny mouth with a placid melancholy, which I have often observed in fat and rosy faces.

Meanwhile, the organ-grinder has at last stopped grinding, has lowered his box, and is eating a plateful of cold meat and bread which the old woman has brought out to him. The landlord and his wife have disappeared. The young Frenchwoman on the garden-bench has risen, and come toward the children; and now, from a doorway leading into the house, issues the big blond man we caught a momentary glimpse of at the window.

The little boy abandons the sugar-plums to his playfellow, and crying "Papa! papa!" darts to the new comer, who stoops and gathers him up to his broad breast, in his large arms and hands, kissing him fondly and repeatedly. The child responds with like effusion. The father's great red face, with its peaked yellow beard, contrasts touchingly, somehow, with the wee pale phiz of his little son. {109} The child's tiny white pads pat the jolly cheeks and pull the yellow beard. Then the man in the blouse sets his son carefully on the ground, and kisses the young Frenchwoman who stands by.

The big man has evidently been absent awhile from his family. "How goes it, my sister?" says he.

"Well, my brother," she answers quietly. "Thou hast seen Auguste dance. Thou hast seen how well, and strong, and happy he is—the good God be thanked."

"And after him, thee, my good sister," says the big man, affectionately.

We had been called in to dinner by this time, but the open window of our eating-room looked into the court close to where the group stood. We observed that Mademoiselle Marie had remained sole possessor of the packet of sweets; and that the little boy, content to have got his papa, made no effort to assert his rights in them. The big papa interfered, saying, "Mais, mais, la petite.… Give at least of the bonbons to thy comrade. It is only fair."

"Let her eat them, Jean," put in his sister, with naive feminine generosity and justice. "They are so unwholesome for Auguste, seest thou?"

The big man laughed, lit his pipe, and the three went away into the little garden, where they strolled, talking in the summer twilight.

We came happily to an anchor here, in this foggy little haven, and finding we could secure, at tolerably moderate charges, the accommodation we required, made up our minds to stay at this little hotel for the few weeks of our absence from Brussels.

II.

Next morning we were breakfasting in the garden under a trellis of hop-leaves, when the big man in the blouse came up the gravel-walk, with his small son on his shoulder.

They were making a tremendous noise. The little boy was pulling his father's great red ear; he affected to bellow with anguish, his roaring voice topped by the child's shrill, gleeful treble. We saluted the new comers in a neighborly manner.

"A beautiful day, Madame," said the big man, in French, taking off his hat and bowing politely to John's wife, at the same time surrounding his son safely with his left arm.

"Madame and these Messieurs are English, is it not?"

"A pretty place," we went on to say, after owning our nationality, "and very pleasant in this hot weather after the glare of Brussels."

"It is that; and I am here as often as possible," returned our new acquaintance. "My sister is staying here for the advantage of this little man. … Monsieur Auguste, at your service. Salute then the society, Auguste. You must know he has the pretension to be a little delicate, this young man. An invalid, if you please; consequently his aunt spoils him! It is a ruse on his part, you perceive. Ah, bah! An invalid! My word, he fatigues my poor arm. Ah—h! I cannot longer sustain him. I faint—I drop him down he goes. … la—a—à!"

Here, lowering him carefully, as if he were crystal, he pretended to let his son suddenly tumble on a bit of grass-plot.

"At present" (grumbling) "here he is, broken to pieces probably; we shall have the trouble of mending him. His aunt must bring her needle and thread."

Monsieur Auguste was so enchanted with this performance that he encored it ecstatically. His father obeyed, and then sent him off running to call out his aunt to breakfast, which was laid under a neighboring trellis.

"He is strong on his legs, is it not, Madame?" said the father, looking after him; his jolly face and light blue eyes a little grave, and wistful. "His spirits are so high, see you? He is {110} too intelligent, too intellectual—he has a little exhausted his strength; that says all. He is well enough; he has no malady; and every day he is getting stouter, plainly to the eye."

Here the aunt and nephew joined us. Our new acquaintance introduced her.

"Ma belle-soeur. Ma chère,—Madame and these Messieurs are English. They are good enough to take an interest in this infant Hercules of ours."

He tossed the child on his shoulder again; established on which throne his little monarch amused himself by ornamenting the parental straw-hat with a huge flaring poppy and some green leaves, beneath which the jovial face bloomed Bacchic.

Meanwhile the quiet young French-woman, smiling affectionately at those playfellows as they went off together, sat down on a chair we offered her, and frankly entered into conversation.

In a few minutes we knew a great deal about this little family. The man in the blouse was a Belgian painter, Jean Baudin, and "well seen in the expositions of Paris and Brussels." "His wife was my sister: we were of Paris. When our little Auguste was born, my poor sister died. She was always delicate. The little one is very delicate. Ah, so delicate, also. It is impossible to be over-careful of him. And his father, who is so strong—so strong! But the little one resembles in every manner his mother. His poor father adores him, as you see. Poor Jean! he so tenderly loved his wife, who died in her first youth. … She had but eighteen years—she had six years less than I. In dying she begged me to be to her infant a mother, and to her poor Jean a sister. Jean is a good brother, bon et brave homme. And for the little one, he is truly a child to be adored—judiciously, it is understood, madame: I spoil him not, believe me. But he is clever to astonish you, that child. So spiritual, and then such a tender little good heart—a disposition so amiable. Hardly he requires correction. … Auguste! how naughty thou art! Auguste! dost thou hear? Jean! take him then off the dusty wall, and wipe him a little. Mon ami, thou spoilest the child; one must be judicious."

We presently left the garden, and, in passing, beheld Monsieur Auguste at breakfast. He was seated between his papa and aunt, and was being adored by both (judiciously and injudiciously) to the heart's content of all three.

We stayed a month at this little hotel at The Tadpoles. The English family soon fraternized with that of Jean Baudin, the Flemish painter, also sojourning there, and the only other resident guests.

John's wife and Mademoiselle became good friends and gossips, and sat at work and chat many a summer hour under the hop trellises. Mademoiselle Rose Leclerc was the Frenchwoman's name, but her name of ceremony was simply "Mademoiselle." John and I used to walked about the country, among the lanes, and woods, and hamlets which diversify the flats on that side of Brussels, accompanying Jean Baudin and his paint-box. We sat under a tree, or on a stone fence, smoking pipes of patience, while Jean made studies for those wonderful, elaborate tiny pictures, the work of his big hands, by which he and his little son lived. I remember, in particular, a mossy old cottage, rough and grey; the front clothed with vines, the quaint long gable running down behind to within a yard of the ground. Baudin sketched that cottage very often; and often used its many picturesque features.

Sometimes it was the rickety, black-timbered porch, garlanded with vine; a sonsy, blond-haired young Flemish maiden sat there, and twirled the bobbins on a lace-cushion, in a warm yellow flicker of sunshine. Sometimes Jean went right into the porch and into the cottage itself, and presently brought us out an old blue-gowned, black-coifed creature, knitting as she kicked the grand-babe's clumsy cradle {111} with her clumsy sabot;—a ray through the leafy little window-hole found the crone's white hair, and the infant cheek. Honest Jean only painted what he saw with his eyes. He could copy such simple poetry as this, and feel it too, though he could indite no original poems on his canvas pages. He was a hearty good fellow, and we soon got to like him, and his kindly, unpretentious, but not unshrewd, talk— that is, when it could be got off the paternal grooves—which, to say the truth, was seldomer than we (who were not ourselves at that period the parents of prodigies) may have secretly desired.

In the summer evenings we used to sit in the garden all together, the ladies graciously permitting us to smoke. We liked to set the children a-dancing again on the grass-plot before us; and I must here confess that they saltated to a mandolin touched by this hand. I had studied the instrument under a ragged maestro of Naples, and flattered myself. I performed on it with credit to both, and to the general delight.

Sometimes Jean Baudin would tie to his cane a little pocket-handkerchief of Monsieur Auguste, and putting this ensign into his hand, cause him to go through a certain vocal performance of a martial and defiant character. The pale little man did it with much spirit, and a truculent aspect, stamping fiercely at particular moments of the strain. I can only remember the effective opening of this entertainment. Thus it began—"Les Belges" (at this point the small performer threw up the staff and flag of his country, and shouted ff) "SONT BRAVES!!" Papa and aunt regarded with pride that ferocious champion of his valiant compatriots, looking round to read our astonishment and rapture in our faces.

We all got on excellently with the hotel folk, ingratiating ourselves chiefly by paying a respectful court to the solid and rosy little princess of the house. Jean Baudin painted her, sitting placid, a little open-mouthed, heavy-lidded, over-fed, with a lapful of cherries. We all made much of her and submitted to her. John's wife presented her with a frock of English print, of a charming apple-green; out of which the fat pink face bloomed like a carnation-bud out of its calyx.

The young landlord would bring us out a dish to our garden dinner-table, on purpose that he might linger and chat about England. That country, and some of its model institutions, appeared to excite in his mind a mixture of awe and curiosity, wonder and horror. For instance, he had heard—he did not altogether believe it (deprecatingly)—that not only were the shops of London closed, with shutters, on the Sunday, but also the theatres; and not only the theatres, but also the expositions, the gardens and salons of dance, of music, of play. How! it was actually the truth?

"Certainly, what Madame was good enough to affirm one must believe. But then what do they? No business, no amusement what then do they, mon Dieu!—"

"They go to church, read the Bible, and keep the Sabbath day holy," asserts Mrs. Freshe, in perfect good faith, and severely and proudly, as becomes a Protestant Britishwoman.

"Tiens, tiens! But it is triste, that—. Is it not that it is triste, Madame? Tiens, tiens! And this is that which is the Protestantism. Since Madame herself affirms it, one can doubt no longer."

And he goes pondering away, to tell his wife; with no increased tendency to the reformed faith.

Even Joseph, the stolid and fishy-eyed waiter, patronized us, and gravely did us a hundred obliging services beyond his official duty.

On a certain evening, Mademoiselle, John, John's wife, and I, sat as usual at book or work under the trellises; while the two children, at healthful play, prattled under the shade of the laurel-bushes hard by. As usual, the solid little Flemish maiden was {112} tyrannizing calmly over her playfellow. We constantly heard her small voice, quiet, slow, and dominating: "Je le veux." "Je ne le veux pas." They had for playthings a little handbell and a toy-wagon, and were playing at railways. Auguste was the porter, trundling up, with shrill cries, heavy luggage-trucks piled with gravel, gooseberry-skins, tin soldiers, and bits of cork. Marie was a rich and haughty lady about to proceed by the next convoi, and paying an immense sum, in daisies, for her ticket, to Auguste, become a clerk. A disputed point in these transactions appeared to be the possession of the bell; the frequent ringing of which was indeed a principal feature of the performance. Auguste contended hotly, but with considerable show of reason, to this effect:—That the instrument belonged to him, in his official capacities of porter and clerk, rather than to the rich and haughty lady, who as a passenger was not, and could not be, entitled to monopolize the bell of the company. Indeed, he declared himself nearly certain that, as far as his experience went, passengers never did ring it at all. But Marie's "Je le veux" settled the dispute, and carried her in triumph, after the crushing manner of her sex, over all frivolous masculine logic.

Mademoiselle sat placid beside us, doing her interminable and elaborate satin-stitch. She was working at a broad white slip, intended, I understood, to form the ornamental base of a petticoat. It was at least a foot wide, of a florid and labyrinthine pattern, full of oval and round holes, which appeared to have been cut out of the stuff in order that Mademoiselle might be at the pains of filling them up again with thready cobwebs. She would often with demure and innocent complacency display this fabric, in its progress, to John's wife (who does not herself, I fancy, excel in satin-stitch), and relate how short a time (four months, I think) she had taken to bring it so near completion. Mrs. Freshe regarded this work of art with feminine eyes of admiration, and slyly remarked that it was really beautiful enough "même pour un trousseau." At the same time she with difficulty concealed her disapproval of the waste of precious time incurred by the authoress of the petticoat-border. Not that Mademoiselle could be accused of neglecting the severer forms of her science; such as the construction of frocks and blouses for Monsieur Auguste—adorned, it must be admitted, with frivolous and intricate convolutions of braid. And the exquisite neatness of the visible portions of Monsieur Jean's linen also bore honorable testimony to Mademoiselle's more solid labors.

Into the midst of this peaceful garden-scene entered a new personage. A man of middle height, with a knapsack at his back, came up the gravel-walk: a handsome brown-faced fellow of five-and-thirty, with a big black beard, and a neat holland blouse, and a grey felt hat.

Mademoiselle and he caught sight of each other at the same instant.

Both gave a cry. Her rather sallow little face flushed like a rose. She started up; down dropped her petticoat-work; she ran forward, throwing out her hands; she stopped short—shy, and bright, and pretty as eighteen! The man made a stride and took her in his arms.

"Ma Rose! ma Rose! Enfin!" cried he in a strangled voice.

She said nothing, but hung at his neck, her two little hands on his shoulders, her face on his breast.

But that was only for a moment. Then Mademoiselle disengaged herself, and glanced shamefacedly at us. Then she came quickly up—came to John's wife, slid an arm round her neck, and said rapidly, tremulously, with sparkling, tearful eyes:

"C'est Jules, Madame. C'est mon fiancé depuis quatre ans. Ah, Madame, j'ai honte—mais,"—and ran back to him. She was transformed. In place of that staid, almost old-maidish {113} little person we knew, lo! a bashful, rosy, smiling girl, tripping, skipping, beside herself with happy love! And her little collar was all rumpled, and so were her smooth brown braids. Monsieur Jules took off his felt hat, and bowed politely when she came to us, guessing that he was being introduced. His brown face blushed a little, too: it was a happy and honest one, very pleasant to see.

The children had left off playing, and stared wide-eyed at these extraordinary proceedings. Mademoiselle ran to her little nephew, and brought him to Jules.

"I recognize well the son of our poor Lolotte," said he, softly, lifting and kissing him. "And that dear Jean, where is he?"

Even as he spoke there came a familiar roar from that window overlooking the court-yard, by which the painter sat at his easel almost all day. "Ohé! Monsieur Ba-Bou!" The little boy nearly jumped out of his new friend's arms.

"Papa! papa! Laissez-moi, done, Mosou!—Papa!"

"Is it that thou art by chance this monsieur whom they call?" laughed Jules, as he put him down.

"Way, way!" cried the little man as he pattered off, with that gleeful shriek of his. "C'est moi, Mosou Ba-Bou! Ba-Bou!"

"Thou knowest that great voice of our Jean," said Mademoiselle; "when he has finished his day's labor he always calls his child like that. Having worked all day for the little one, he goes now to make himself a child to play with him. He calls that to rest himself. And truly the little one idolizes his father, and for him will leave all other playfellows—even me. Come, then, Jules, let us seek Jean."

And with a smiling salute to us the happy couple went arm-in-arm out of the garden.

III.

We did not see much of our friends the next day. After their early dinner, Jean came up the garden all alone, to smoke a pipe, and stretch his legs before he returned to his work. We thought his good-natured face was a little sad, in spite of his cheerful abord, as he came to our garden parlor and spoke to us.

"It is a pleasure to see them, is it not?" said he, looking after the lovers, just vanishing under the archway of the court-yard, into the sunny village road. Mademoiselle had left off her sober black silk, and floated in the airiest of chintz muslins.

"My good little Rose merits well her happiness. She sent that brave Jules marching four years ago, because she had promised my poor wife not to abandon her helpless infant. Truly she has been the best of little mothers to my Auguste. Jules went away angry enough; but without doubt he must have loved her all the better when he came to reflect. He has been to Italy, to Switzerland, to England—know I where? He is artist-painter, like me—of France always understood. Me, I am Flemish, and very content to be the compatriot of Rubens, of Vandyke. But Jules has very much talent: he paints also the portraits, and has made successes. He is a brave boy, and deserves his Rose."

"Will the marriage take place now, at last?" we ventured to ask.

"As I suppose," answered Jean, his face clouding perceptibly.

"But you will not separate; you will live together, perhaps," suggested John's wife.

"Ah, Madame, how can that be? Jules is of France and I of Belgium. When I married I brought my wife to Brussels; naturally he will carry his to Paris. C'est juste."

"Poor little Auguste will miss his aunt," said John's wife, involuntarily, "and she will hardly bear to leave him, I think."

"Ah, Madame," said Jean, with ever so little bitterness in his tone, "what would you? The little one must come second now; the husband will {114} be first. Yes, yes, and it is but fair! Auguste is strong now, and I must find him a good bonne. I complain not. I am not so ungrateful. My poor Rose must not be always the sacrifice. She has been an angel to us. See you, she has saved the life of us both. The little one must have died without her, and apparently I must have died without the little one. C'est simple, n'est ce pas?" smiling. Then he gave a sigh, truly as if he could not repress it, and walked away hastily. "We looked after him, compassion in our hearts.

"That sickly little boy will hardly live if his aunt leaves him," said Mrs. Freshe, "and his father knows it."

"But what a cruel sacrifice if she stayed!" said John.

"And can her lover be expected to wait till Auguste has grown up into a strong man?" I put in.

The day after was Sunday. Coming from an early walk, I heard a tremendous clamor, of woe or merriment, proceeding from a small sitting-room that opened into the entrance passage. The door was wide, and I looked in. Jean Baudin was jammed up in a corner, behind a barricade of chairs, and was howling miserably, entreating to be let out. His big sun-browned face was crowned by a white coif made of paper, and a white apron was tied round his great waist over his blue blouse. Auguste and Marie danced about the barricade with shrill screams, frantic with joy.

When Baudin saw me he gave a dismal yell, and piteously begged me to come to his assistance. "See, then, my dear young gentleman, how these bandits, these rebels, these demons, maltreat their poor bonne! Help, help!" and suddenly, with a roar like a small Niagara, he burst out of his prison and took to his heels, round and round the court and up the garden, the children screaming after him—the noise really terrific. Presently it died away, and he came back to the doorstep where I stood, Auguste on his shoulder and the little maiden demurely trotting after. "At present, I am the bonne," said he. "Rose and her Jules are gone to church; so is our hostess. In the meanwhile, I undertake to look after the children. Have you ever seen a little bonne more pretty? with my coquette cap and my neat apron—hein?"

That evening the lovers went out in a boat on the great pond, or little lake, at the back of the hotel. They carried Auguste with them. We all went to the water's edge; the rest remained a while, leaning over the rails that partly skirted the parapet wall except Jean, who strolled off with his tiny sketch-book. A very peaceful summer picture was before us, which I can see now if I shut my eyes—I often see it. A calm and lovely August evening near sunset; a few golden feathers afloat in the blue sky. Below, the glassy pond that repeats blue sky, red-roofed cottages, green banks, and woody slopes—repeats, also, the solitary boat rowed by Jules, the three light-colored figures it contains, and a pair of swans that glide stately after. The little boy is throwing bits of bread or cake to them.

As we stood there and admired this pretty little bright panorama, John's wife observed that the child was flinging himself dangerously forward, in his usual eager, excited way, at every cast he made.

"I wonder," said she, "that his aunt takes no notice. She is so absorbed in talk with Jules she never turns her head. Look! look! A—h!"

A dreadful shriek went up from lake and shore. The poor little fellow, had overbalanced himself, and had gone headlong into the lake. Some one had flashed over the parapet wall at the same moment, and struck the water with a splash and a thud. Some one was tearing through it like a steam-engine, toward the boat. It was my brother John. We saw and heard Jules, frantic, and evidently impotent to save; we saw him make a vain clutch at something that rose to the surface. At the same time we {115} perceived that he had scarce power to keep Rose with his left hand from throwing herself into the water.

Hardly three minutes had yet passed, yet half the population seemed thronging to the lake-side, here, where the village skirted it.

And suddenly we beheld a terrible—a piteous sight. A big, bareheaded man, that burst through the people, pale, furious, awful; his teeth set, his light blue eyes flaring. He seemed to crash through the crowd, splintering it right and left, like a bombshell through a wall, and was going crazy and headlong over the parapet into the water. He could swim no more than Jules.

"Sauvé! sauvé!" cried John's wife, gripping his hand and hanging to it as he went rushing past. "My husband has found him. See! see there, Jean Baudin! He holds up the dear child."

She could not have kept him back a moment—probably he did not feel her touch; he was only dragging her with him. But his wild eyes, fixed and staring forward, had seen for themselves what he never heard her say.

Fast, fast as one arm could oar him, my brother was bringing Jean his little one, held above water by the other hand. Then that poor huge body swayed and shivered; the trembling hands went out, the face unlocked a little, there came a hoarse sob, and like a thin, strangled cry in a dream—

"Mon petit! mon petit!"

But strong again, and savage with love, how he snatched the pale little burden from John, and tore up the bank to the hotel. There were wooden back-gates that opened into the court on the lake-side, but which were unused and locked. At one mighty kick they yawned open before Jean, and he rushed on into the house. Here all had been prudently prepared, and the little dripping body was quickly stripped and wrapped in hot blankets. The village doctor was already there, and two or three women. Jean Baudin helped the doctor and the women with a touching docility. All his noisy roughness was smoothed. He tamed his big voice to a delicate whisper. He spoke and moved with an affecting submissive gentleness, watching what there was he could do, and doing it exactly as he was bid. Now and then he spoke a word or two under his breath—"One must be patient, I know, Monsieur le Médecin; yes, yes." And now and then he muttered piteously "Mon petit! mon petit!" But he was as gentle as a lamb, and touchingly eager to be helpful.

In half an hour his pain got the better of him a little.

"Mais, mon Dieu, mon Dieu!" he moaned, "how I suffer! Ah, Monsieur, is it not that he breathes a little, my dear little one? Ah, my God, save me him! Mon petit! mon petit!"

He went into a corner of the room, and stood with his forehead against the wall, his shoulders heaving with silent sobs. Then he came back quiet and patient again.

"Priez, priez pour moi, Madame," said he, once, to John's wife.

"I am praying without ceasing, my poor friend," said she. And once she hastily laid a handkerchief soaked in essence on his forehead, for she thought he was surely going to faint, when the hope, long, long deferred, began to turn his heart sick.

All this time John and I lingered in the dusky passage, in which that door ajar made a cleft of yellow light. Every now and then a dim figure stole up to us with an eager sad whisper, asking, "How goes it? how goes it?" and slipped away down-stairs with the comfortless answer.

It was poor Jules, who could do nothing for his Rose but this. She had thrown herself on the floor in a darkening room, and lay there moaning. Her dire anguish, sharp as a mother's for the little one, was cruelly and unduly aggravated by self-reproach, and by the self-inflicted agony of her exile from that room up-stairs. She dared not enter Jean's presence. She felt that he must for ever abhor the sight of her; she was afraid he {116} might curse her! She rejected all kindness, all sympathy, especially from Jules, whom she quite fiercely ordered to quit her. But when it got quite dark, the poor fellow took in a candle, and set it on a table; and he spent the time in going up and down-stairs to fetch her that whisper of news, which, perhaps, he sweetened with a little false hope before he offered it to her.

At last we outside heard a movement—a stifled exclamation; and then one of the women ran out.

"The child has opened his eyes!" said she, as she hurried down-stairs for some article required.

Presently we heard a man sobbing softly; and then—yes, a faint tiny voice. And after that—nothing, for a long while. But at last at last! a miserable, awful cry, and a heavy, heavy fall. And then came out John's wife, at sight of whose face we turned sick at heart, and followed her silently down-stairs. We knew what had happened: the little one was dead.

He had opened his eyes, and had probably known his father; for the light that his presence always kindled there had come into the little white face. Jean, too ready to clutch the delusive hope, fell a-sobbing with rapture, and kissing the little fair head. The child tried to speak, and did speak, though but once.

"He said, 'Ba-Bou' quite distinctly," said John's wife, "and then such a pretty smile came; and it's—it's there still, on his little dear dead face, John."

Here she broke down, and went into a passion of tears, sobbing for "poor Jean! poor Jean!"

He had fainted for the first time in his strong life, and so that blessed unconsciousness was deadening the first insupportable agony of his dreadful wound. They carried him out, and laid him on his bed, and I believe the doctor bled him. They hoped he would sleep afterward from sheer exhaustion.

Presently poor Jules came to us, crying like a child, and begging us to go to his Rose to try to rouse her, if only to make her weep. She had fallen into a dry depth and abyss of despair—an icy crevasse, where even his love could not reach her.

Since she had known the child was dead, she had not stirred, except to resist, moaning, every attempt to lift her from the floor, where she had cast herself, and except that she shuddered and repulsed Jules, especially, whenever he went near her.

We went into the room where she lay. My good brother stooped, and spoke to her in his tender, manly fashion, and lifted her, with a resolution to which she yielded, and seated her on a sofa beside his wife, whose kind arms closed round her suffering sister.

And suddenly some one had come in whom Rose could not see, for her eyes were pressed to that womanly bosom. John's wife made a little warning gesture that kept us others silent.

It was poor Jean himself; he came in as if in search of somewhat; he was deadly pale, and perhaps half unconscious what he did. He was without shoes, and his clothes and blond hair and beard were tumbled and disordered—just as when they had laid him on his bed. When he saw Rose, he came straight up to her, and sat down on her other side.

"Ma pauvre Rose," said he piteously—

She gave a cry and start of terror, and turned and saw him. The poor fellow's broken heart was in his face; she could not mistake the sweet-natured anguish there. Half bewildered by his inconceivable grief, he had gone to her, instinctively, like a child, for sympathy and comfort.

"Ma pauvre Rose," said he, brokenly; "notre petit—"

Passionately she took his great head between her hands, and drew it down on her bosom, and kissed it passionately weeping at last.

And we all came out softly, and left them—left them to that Pity which sends us the wholesome agony of such tears.

{117}

CARDINAL WISEMAN IN ROME.

"It was in the year 1863," says Monsignore Manning, in his funeral oration on the great prince of the Church whose loss the whole Catholic world is now deploring, "that the sovereign pontiff, speaking of the cardinal, described him as 'the man of divine Providence for England.'" And truly it seems to us that the direct inspiration of the Holy Ghost has seldom been so clearly apparent in the choice of a bishop as it was in the case of him who has filled the cathedral chair of Westminster for the last fifteen years. When we remember the peculiar circumstances under which he began his pastorship—the reaction which was steadily, though as yet almost imperceptibly, going on in favor of the Church; the doubt and perplexity and wavering with which a crowd of wandering souls were groping in darkness for the portals of divine truth; and then the outburst of anger with which the nation at large read the bulls of the Holy Father, raising up the English Church from the humiliation in which she had lain for three hundred years, we shall readily understand that a rare union of qualities was required in the man who should understand and direct those honest seekers after truth, and breast successfully that storm of popular fury. That Nicholas Wiseman, who had left England at the age of sixteen, and passed twenty years of his youth and early manhood at Rome—absorbed, just at the time when the character is most liable to be moulded by external associations, in the theological studies and ceremonies and sacred traditions of the ecclesiastical capital—that he, we say, should have displayed such a remarkable fitness for both these works, is not only an indication of the great qualities of the man, but an instructive commentary on the school in which he had been formed. It shows us that a Roman education, while it enlarges the view and sweeps away local prejudices, yet leaves untouched the salient points of national character. For his success in dealing with the Catholic movement which followed the emancipation act of 1829, Cardinal Wiseman was largely indebted to the quickness and accuracy of perception in theological matters which he had acquired during his long residence at the centre of the Christian Church; what helped him most in his victory over the burst of Protestant fury which followed the restoration of the English hierarchy, and found official expression in the ecclesiastical titles bill, was his thorough English boldness and honesty of speech and manly bearing. He appealed to his countrymen's traditional love of fair-play; they heard him; and before long all classes learned to love and respect him.

Of the twenty years' schooling by which he prepared himself for his work in England, the cardinal has left us some admirable sketches, scattered through his books. Dr. Manning alluded briefly to the influence of his Roman education. We propose to gather up what the cardinal himself has said about it; to paint with his own pencil a picture of his life of preparation; leaving other hands, if they will, to paint his subsequent life of labor.

Nicholas Wiseman was born at Seville, in Spain, on the second of August, 1802. His father was an English merchant, his mother an Irish lady. He lost his father in infancy, and at the age of six, in consequence of those wars of invasion which for a time made Spain no longer habitable, was taken to Ireland to be educated. After spending one or two years at a boarding-school near Waterford, his mother went with him to England, and {118} placed him at St. Cuthbert's college, Ushaw, near Durham. Dr. Lingard was then vice-president of the college, "and I have retained upon my memory," wrote the cardinal, nearly fifty years afterward, "the vivid recollection of specific acts of thoughtful and delicate kindness, which showed a tender heart, mindful of its duties amidst the many harassing occupations just devolved on him through the death of the president and his own literary engagements; for he was reconducting his first great work through the press. But though he went from college soon after, and I later left the country, and saw him not again for fifteen years, yet there grew up an indirect understanding first, and by degrees a correspondence and an intimacy which continued to the close of his life." [Footnote 38]

[Footnote 38: Recollections of the Last Four Popes. Leo XII. Chap. vii.]

It was in the course of the eight years which he passed at this reverend seat of learning—lineal descendant of the old English college of Douay—that he determined to become a priest. Here he first began to manifest that deep affection for the city of St. Peter which distinguished him down to the end of his life. "Its history," he says, "its topography, its antiquities, had formed the bond of a little college society devoted to this queen of cities, while the dream of its longings had been the hope of one day seeing what could then only be known through hearsay tourists and fabulous plans." But the hope was fulfilled soon and unexpectedly. In 1818, Pope Pius VII. restored the English college at Rome, "after it had been desolate and uninhabited during almost the period of a generation." Nicholas Wiseman was one of a band of young men sent out to colonize it. He gives a charming description of the arrival of the little party at their Roman home, and the delight and surprise with which they roamed, alone and undirected, through the solemn building, with its wide corridors; its neat and cheerful rooms; its wainscotted refectory, from whose groined ceiling looked down St. George and the dragon; its library heaped with tumultuous piles of unorganized volumes; its garden, glowing with the lemon and orange, and presenting to one's first approach a perspective in fresco by Pozzi; and, above all, its chapel, illuminated from floor to roof with saints of England and celestial glories;—or, better still, adjoining the college, the old roofless church of the Holy Trinity, where in generations long past many a pilgrim from the British Isles had knelt to pray when the good priests of his nation fed and lodged him on his visit to the tomb of the apostles. Pleasant must have been the meeting, on that December afternoon in the year 1818, between these six young men and their appointed rector Dr. Gradwell, who, being absent when they arrived, came home that evening and found himself at the head of a college, and his frugal meal appropriated by the hungry students.

The happiness of that day casts a glow over the page on which, when he was an old man, the cardinal recorded the incidents. On Christmas eve he was presented, with some of his companions, to the venerable Pius VII. We can imagine the feelings of awe with which he approached this saintly man, released only a few years before from the French captivity. "There was the halo of a confessor round the tiara of Pius that eclipsed all gold and jewels.…… Instead of receiving us, as was customary, seated, the mild and amiable pontiff rose to welcome us, and meet us as we approached. He did not allow it to be a mere presentation, or a visit of ceremony. It was a fatherly reception, and in the truest sense our inauguration into the duties that awaited us. .… The friendly and almost national grasp of the hand, after due homage had been willingly paid, between the head of the Catholic Church, venerable by his very age, and a youth who had nothing even to promise; {119} the first exhortation on entering a course of ecclesiastical study—its very inaugural discourse from him whom he believed to be the fountain of spiritual wisdom on earth;—these surely formed a double tie, not to be broken, but rather strengthened, by every subsequent experience."

Doubtless his early dreams of Rome were now surpassed by the reality of his daily life. It was unalloyed spiritual and intellectual enjoyment. Study was no task; it was only a sort of pleasure; and the hours of relaxation became a source of mental schooling, even while he was pursuing the most delightful recreations. It is not difficult to imagine how he must have spent his holidays—roaming through the field of art, or resting at some seat of the Muses, or wandering along the stream of time, bordered by monuments of past greatness—every footstep awakening the echoes of classic antiquity, or calling up the most sacred memories of the early suffering Church. Even the solitude of buried cemeteries, "where the tombs themselves are buried, where the sepulchres are themselves things decayed and mouldering in rottenness," is no solitude to him; for he peoples it with the shadowy forms of the Scipios and Nasones whose ashes are there deposited. How often, in after years, did he not recur with fond delight to the "images of long delicious strolls, in musing loneliness, through the deserted ways of the ancient city; of climbings among its hills, over ruins, to reach some vantage-ground for mapping the subjacent territory, and looking beyond on the glorious chains of greater and lesser mountains, clad in their imperial hues of gold and purple; and then perhaps of solemn entrance into the cool solitude of an open basilica, where the thought now rests, as the body then did, after the silent evening prayer, and brings forward from many well-remembered nooks every local inscription, every lovely monument of art, the characteristic feature of each, or the great names with which it is associated.…… Thus does Rome sink deep and deeper into the soul, like the dew, of which every separate drop is soft and weightless, but which still finds its way to the root of everything beneath the soil, imparting there to every future plant its own warm tint, its own balmy fragrance, and its own ever rejuvenescent vigor."

Such were his hours of recreation: still more delightful were his hours of study, especially in "the great public libraries, where noiseless monks brought him and piled round him the folios which he required, and he sat as still amidst a hundred readers as if he had been alone." Every day his love, his enthusiasm, for his work seemed to increase. So he passed six or seven years, "lingering and lagging behind others," and revelling in spiritual and intellectual luxury. "Every school-fellow had passed on, and was hard at his noble work at home, was gaining a crown in heaven to which many have passed." Our young student had kissed the feet of the dead Pius VII., as he lay in state in one of the chapels of St. Peter's; had mourned over the departure of the great minister Consalvi; had presented himself to Leo XII., and told him, "I am a foreigner who came here at the call of Pius VII., six years ago; my first patrons, Pius VII., Cardinals Litta, De Pietro, Fontana, and now Consalvi, are dead. I therefore recommend myself to your Holiness's protection, and hope you will be a father to me at this distance from my country." He had obtained the Holy Father's promise. Already he was known for a youth of marvellous talents and learning. He had maintained a public disputation in theology, and been rewarded for his success by the title of D.D. At last came the jubilee-year of 1825. "The aim of years, the goal of long preparation, the longed-for crown of unwavering desires, the only prize thought worthy of being aspired to, was attained in the bright jubilee spring of Rome. It marks a blessed epoch in a {120} life to have had the grace of the priesthood superadded to the exuberant benedictions of that year."

Fortunately for the English college,—and fortunately, perhaps we should add, for England,—he was not yet to depart for the field of his great labor. To use his own modest words, he was found to be at hand in 1826, when some one was wanted for the office of vice-rector of the English college, and so was named to it; and when, in 1828, the worthy rector, Dr. Gradwell, was appointed bishop, Dr. Wiseman was, by almost natural sequence, named to succeed him.

Thus he continued to drink in the spirit of catholicity, and devotion, and steadiness in faith, of which Rome is the fountain on earth. With reverent affection he traced out the mementos of primitive Christianity, the tombs of the martyrs and saints, the altars and hiding-places and sacred inscriptions of the catacombs. These holy retreats had for him a fascination such as no other spot even in Rome possessed. Again and again he recurs to them in his writings, lingering fondly around the hallowed precincts, and inspiring his readers with the love for them that burned so ardently in his own breast. One of the last pieces that came from his pen was the little story of a martyr's tomb, which we have placed in this number of our magazine.

Other studies were not neglected. While his companions were indulging in the mid-day sleep, which almost everybody takes in Rome, he was at his books. Often he passed whole nights in study, or walking to and fro, in meditation, through the corridors of the English college. The seasons of vacation he would often spend collating ancient manuscripts in the Vatican library, and one of the fruits of that labor was his Horae Syriacae, published when he was only twenty-five years old. In the same year (1827), he was appointed—though without severing his connection with the English college—professor of oriental languages in the Roman university. It is no doubt to these two events that he alludes in the following extract from his "Recollections" of Leo XII., though he tells the story as if he had been only a witness of the circumstances: "It so happened," he says, "that a person connected with the English college was an aspirant to a chair in the Roman university. He had been encouraged to compete for it, on its approaching vacancy, by his professors. Having no claims of any sort, by interest or connection, he stood simply on the provision of the papal bull, which threw open all professorships to competition. It was but a secondary and obscure lectureship at best; one concerning which, it was supposed, few would busy themselves or come forward as candidates. It was, therefore, announced that this rule would be overlooked, and a person every way qualified, and of considerable reputation, would be named. The more youthful aspirant unhesitatingly solicited an audience, at which I was present. He told the Pope frankly of his intentions and of his earnest wish to have carried out, in his favor, the recent enactments of his Holiness. Nothing could be more affable, more encouraging, than Leo's reply. He expressed his delight at seeing that his regulation was not a dead letter, and that it had animated his petitioner to exertion. He assured him that he should have a fair chance, 'a clear stage and no favor,' desiring him to leave the matter in his hands.

"Time wore on; and as the only alternative given in the bull was proof, by publication of a work, of proficiency in the art or science that was to be taught, he quietly got a volume through the press—probably very heavy; but sprightliness or brilliancy was not a condition of the bull. When a vacancy arrived, it was made known, together with the announcement that it had been filled up. All seemed lost, except the honor of the pontiff, to which alone lay any appeal. Another audience was asked, and {121} instantly granted, its motive being, of course, stated. I was again present, and shall not easily forget it. It was not necessary to re-state the case. 'I remember it all,' the Pope said most kindly; 'I have been surprised. I have sent for C——, through whom this has been done; I have ordered the appointment to be cancelled, and I have reproved him so sharply that I believe it is the reason why he is laid up to-day with fever. You have acted fairly and boldly, and you shall not lose the fruits of your industry. I will keep my word with you and the provisions of my constitution.' With the utmost graciousness he accepted the volume—now treasured by its author, into whose hands the copy has returned—acknowledged the right to preference which it had established, and assured its author of fair play.

"The Pope had, in fact, taken up earnestly the cause of his youthful appellant; instead of annoyance, he showed earnestness and kindness; and those who had passed over his pretensions with contempt were obliged to treat with him and compromise with him on terms that satisfied all his desires. Another audience for thanksgiving was kindly accorded, and I witnessed the same gentle and fatherly temper, quietly cheerful, and the same earnest sympathy with the feelings of him whose cause had been so graciously carried through. If this young client gained no new energies, gathered no strength from such repeated proofs of interest and condescension; if these did not both direct and impel, steer and fill, the sails of his little bark through many troubled waters; nay, if they did not tinge and savor his entire mental life, we may write that man soulless and incapable of any noble emotions."

We must not suppose, however, that all this while he was so lost among his books as to have forgotten that land for whose conversion he was destined to labor through the best part of his life. He told a dear friend how, having to wait one day at the Sapienza for the Hebrew lecture, he went into the Church of St. Eustachio to pray; and there, before the altar of the Blessed Sacrament and the altar of the Holy Virgin Mother, the thought came into his mind that, as his native country, in the oath which she imposes upon the chief personages of the state, solemnly abjures these sacred mysteries, it was his duty to devote himself to the defense and honor of those very doctrines in England. And no one who has read his sermons and lectures and pastorals can have failed to notice the burning love for the Eucharist and the Blessed Virgin which inspired him.

The time was not yet for his mission to England; and it is so hard, when the mind has been long running in one groove, to break out of it and take a totally different course, that perhaps he might have come in time to look upon the Roman theological schools as the ultimate sphere of usefulness for which God had destined him, had he not been suddenly called forth from his studious retirement by the voice of the supreme pontiff. It was in 1827 that Leo XII. determined to institute in the church of Gesù e Maria a course of English sermons, to be attended by all colleges and religious communities that spoke the language, and by as many other persons as chose to listen. It was intended, of course, principally for the benefit of strangers. His Holiness appointed Dr. Wiseman preacher. "The burden was laid there and then," says the cardinal, describing the audience at which he received this commission, "with peremptory kindness, by an authority that might not be gainsaid. And crushingly it pressed upon the shoulders. It would be impossible to describe the anxiety, pain, and trouble which this command cost for many years after. Nor would this be alluded to were it not to illustrate what has been kept in view through this volume—how the most insignificant life, temper, and mind may be moulded by the action of a {122} great and almost unconscious power. Leo could not see what has been the influence of his commission, in merely dragging from the commerce with the dead to that of the living one who would gladly have confined his time to the former,—from books to men, from reading to speaking. Nothing but this would have done it. Yet supposing that the providence of one's life was to be active, and in contact with the world, and one's future duties were to be in a country and in times where the most bashful may be driven to plead for his religion or his flock, surely a command overriding all inclination and forcing the will to undertake the best and only preparation for those tasks, may well be contemplated as a sacred impulse and a timely direction to a mind that wanted both. Had it not come then, it never more could have come; other bents would have soon become stiffened and unpliant; and no second opportunity could have been opened after others had satisfied the first demand."

From this time it would seem as if England had a stronger hold upon his heart than ever. The noble purpose—which worldly men have since laughed at as a wild dream—of devoting himself to the conversion of England, became the ruling idea of his life. And often alone at night in the college chapel he would "pour out his heart in prayer and tears, full of aspirations and of a firm trust; of promptings to go, but fear to outrun the bidding of our divine Master." He offered himself to the Pope for this great work; but still the time was not come; and he was told to wait.

But if he was not to go yet himself, he had his part to perform in making others ready. He well knew that to fit his pupils for their work, he must teach them something beside theology. Englishmen were a sort of Brahmins; the missionary who went among them must go as one versed in all learning, or he would not be listened to. He saw how the natural sciences were growing to be the favorite pursuit—we may almost say the hobby—of modern scholars, and in a preface to a thesis by a student of the English college he insisted on the necessity of uniting general and scientific knowledge to theological pursuits. As another instance of the personal influence which several successive pontiffs exercised over his studies, and the many kind marks of interest which contributed to attach him so strongly to their persons, we may repeat an anecdote which he tells in reference to this little essay. He went to present it to Pius VIII., but the Holy Father had it already before him, and said, "You have robbed Egypt of its spoil, and shown that it belongs to the people of God." The same idea which he briefly exposed in this essay, he developed more fully and with great wealth of illustration in a course of lectures on the Connection between Science and Revealed Religion, delivered first to his pupils and afterward to a distinguished audience at the apartments of Cardinal Weld. It was partly with a view to the revision and publication of these lectures that he visited England in 1835.

During his stay in London, he preached a series of controversial discourses in the Sardinian chapel during the Advent of 1835, and another in St. Mary's, Moorfields, in Lent, 1836. The latter were published under the title of Lectures on the Principal Doctrines and Practices of the Catholic Church. They exhibit in a remarkable degree the qualities, so rare in polemical literature, of kindness, moderation, and charity for all men. The odium theologicum, indeed, has less place at Rome than anywhere else in the Christian world. It was at the very centre and chief school of the science of divinity that he learned to fight against error without temper, and expose falsehood without hard language. "I will certainly bear willing testimony," he says, "to the absence of all harsh words and uncharitable insinuations against others in public lectures or private teaching, or even {123} in conversation at Rome. One grows up there in a kinder spirit, and learns to speak of errors in a gentler tone than elsewhere, though in the very centre of highest orthodox feeling." Dr. Wiseman went back to the English college, leaving among his countrymen at home an enviable reputation for honesty, learning, and good sense.

A few years more passed in frequent contact with the Holy Father, and under the continuous influence of the sacred associations with which eighteen centuries have peopled the Christian capital, and Nicholas Wiseman was then ready to go forth to his work. The recollection of numberless favors and kind words from the supreme pontiff went with him, and strengthened him, and colored his thoughts. He has told of the cordial and paternal treatment with which he was honored by Gregory XVI. in particular. "An embrace would supply the place of ceremonious forms on entrance. At one time a long, familiar conversation, seated side by side; at another a visit to the penetralia of the pontifical apartment (a small suite of entresols, communicating by an internal staircase) occupied the time. …… What it has been my happiness to hear from him in such visits, it would be betraying a sacred trust to reveal; but many and many words there spoken rise to the mind in times of trouble, like stars, not only bright in themselves, but all the brighter in their reflection from the brightness of their mirror. They have been words of mastery and spell over after events, promises, and prognostics which have not failed, assurances and supports that have never come to naught." [Footnote 39]

[Footnote 39: He gives an amusing account of a perplexing situation from which this same Pope once unwittingly delivered him, while he was engaged in his course of lectures on Science and Revealed Religion at the apartments of Cardinal Weld. "On one of the days of delivery," says he, "I had been prevented from writing the lecture in time, and was laboring to make up for my delay, but in vain. Quarter after quarter of each hour flew rapidly on, and my advance bore no proportion to the matter before me. The fatal hour of twelve was fast approaching, and I knew not what excuse I could make, nor how to supply, except by a lame recital, the important portion yet unwritten of my task—for an index to the lectures had been printed and circulated. Just as the last moment arrived, a carriage from the palace drove to the door, with a message that I would step into it at once, as His Holiness wished to speak to me. This was, indeed, a deus ex machina—the only and least thought of expedient that could have saved me from my embarrassment. A messenger was despatched to inform the gathering audience of the unexpected cause of necessary adjournment of our sitting till the next day. The object of my summons was one of very trifling importance, and Gregory little knew what a service he had unintentionally rendered me."]

In 1840 it was determined to increase the number of vicars apostolic in England from four to eight, and Dr. Wiseman, at the same time, was appointed coadjutor to Bishop Walsh at Wolverhampton. "It was a sorrowful evening," he says, "at the beginning of autumn, when, after a residence in Rome prolonged through twenty-two years, till affection clung to every old stone there, like the moss that grew into it, this strong but tender tie was cut, and much of future happiness had to be invested in the mournful recollections of the past."

Here we leave him. It was not until ten years later that he became cardinal, but though from 1840 to 1850 he filled only a subordinate position, he was working hard and well during this period, and fast rising to be the foremost man of all the Catholics of England. And his work never ceased. He lived to see the hierarchy established, and the conversion of his countrymen making steady if not rapid progress; but his energy never flagged when a part of his task was done; he passed on from one labor to another, until that last day, when "he entered into the sanctuary of God's presence, from which he never again came forth."

{124}

From All The Year Bound.

THE NICK OF TIME.

Let us suppose a case that might occur if it has not occurred.

John Mullet, immersed (say) in the button trade at Birmingham, has made money in business. He bequeaths his property by will, and is in due time gathered to his fathers. His two sons, Jasper and Josiah, take certain portions; and other portions are to go either to the family of Jasper or to that of Josiah, according as either one of those brothers survives the other. Jasper remains in England; but Josiah goes out to Australia, to establish something that may make his children great people over there. Both brothers, twelve thousand miles apart, die on the same day, May 1st, one at noon (Greenwich time), the other at noon (Sydney time). Jasper's children have been on pleasant cousinly terms with Josiah's; but they are aware of the fact that it would be better for them that Josiah should die before their own father, Jasper. Josiah's children, on the other hand, be they few or many, although they always liked uncle Jasper, cannot and do not ignore the fact that their interests would be better served by the survivorship of Josiah than that of Jasper. The two sets of cousins, therefore, plunge into a contest, to decide the question of survivorship between the two sons of old John Mullet.

This is one variety of a problem which the courts of law and equity are often called upon to settle. Occasionally the question refers to two persons who die at the same time, and in each other's company. For instance: Toward the close of the last century, George Netherwood, his children by his first wife, his second wife, and her son, were all wrecked during a voyage from Jamaica to England. Eight thousand pounds were left by will, in such a way that the relations of the two wives were greatly interested in knowing whether the second Mrs. Netherwood did or did not survive her husband, even by one single minute—a matter which, of course, could not be absolutely proved. Again, in 1806, Mr. Mason and one son were drowned at sea; his remaining eight children went to law, some of them against the others; because, if the father died before the son, £5,000 would be divided equally among the other eight children; whereas, if the son died before the father, the brothers only would get it, the sisters being shut out. A few years afterward Job Taylor and his wife were lost in a ship wrecked at sea; they had not much to leave behind them; but what little there was was made less by the struggles of two sets of relatives, each striving to show that one or other of the two hapless persons might possibly have survived the other by a few minutes. In 1819 Major Colclough, his wife, and four children, were drowned during a voyage from Bristol to Cork; the husband and wife had both made wills; and there arose a pretty picking for the lawyers in relation to survivorships and next of kin, and trying to prove whether the husband died first, the wife first, or both together. Two brothers, James and Charles Corbet, left Demerara on a certain day in 1828, in a vessel of which one was master and the other mate; the vessel was seen five days afterward, but from that time no news of her fate was ever received. Their father died about a month after the vessel was last seen. The ultimate disposal of his property depended very much on the question whether he survived his two sons or they survived him. Many curious arguments were used in court. Two or three captains stated that from August to January are hurricane {125} months in the West Indian seas, and that the ship was very likely to have been wrecked quite early in her voyage. There were, in addition, certain relations interested in James's dying before Charles; and they urged that, if the ship was wrecked, Charles was likely to have outlived by a little space his brother James, because he was a stronger and more experienced man. Alas for the "glorious uncertainty!" One big-wig decided that the sons survived the father, and another that the father survived the sons. About the beginning of the present reign, three persons, father, mother, and child, were drowned on a voyage from Dublin to Quebec; the husband had made a will, leaving all his property to his wife; hence arose a contest between the next of kin and the wife's relations, each catching at any small fact that would (theoretically) keep one poor soul alive a few minutes longer than the other. About ten years ago, a gentleman embarked with his wife and three children for Australia: the ship was lost soon after leaving England; the mate, the only person who was saved among the whole of the crew and passengers, deposed that he saw the hapless husband and wife locked in each other's arms at the moment when the waves closed over them. There would seem to be no question of survivorship here; yet a question really arose; for there were two wills to be proved, the terms of which would render the relatives much interested in knowing whether husband or wife did really survive the other by ever so small a portion of time.

These entangled contests may rest in peace, so far as the actual decisions are concerned. And so may others of a somewhat analogous nature. Such, for instance, as the case of an old lady and her housekeeper at Portsmouth. They were both murdered one night. The lady had willed all her property to the housekeeper, and then, the lawyers fought over the question as to which of the women died first. Or, the case of a husband who promised, on his marriage-day, to settle £1,200 on his wife "in three or four years." They were both drowned about three years after the marriage; and it was not until after a tough struggle in chancery that the husband's relatives conquered those of the wife—albeit, the money had nearly vanished in law expenses by that time. Or, the case of a man who gave a power of attorney to sell some property. The property was sold on the 8th of June, but the man was never seen after the 8th of the preceding March, and was supposed to have been wrecked at sea; hence arose a question whether the man was or was not dead on the day when the property was sold—a question in which the buyer was directly interested. The decisions in these particular cases we pass over; but it is curious to see how the law sometimes tries to guess at the nick of time in which either one of two persons dies. Sometimes the onus of proof rests on one of the two sets of relations. If they cannot prove a survivorship, the judgment is that the deaths were simultaneous. Sometimes the law philosophizes on vitality and decay. The Code Napoleon lays down the principle that of two persons who perish by the same calamity, if they were both children, the elder probably survived the younger by a brief space, on account of having superior vital energy; whereas, if they were elderly people, the younger probably survived the elder. The code also takes anatomy and physiology into account, and discourses on the probability whether a man would or would not float longer alive than a woman, in the event of shipwreck. The English law is less precise in this matter. It is more prone to infer simultaneous death, unless proof of survivorship be actually brought forward. Counsel, of course, do not fail to make the best of any straw to catch at. According to the circumstances of the case, they argue that a man, being usually stronger than a woman, probably survives her a little in a case of {126} simultaneous drowning; that, irrespective of comparative strength, her greater terror and timidity would incapacitate her from making exertions which would be possible to him; that a seafaring man has a chance of surviving a landsman, on account of his experience in salt-water matters; that where there is no evidence to the contrary, a child may be presumed to have outlived his father; that a man in good health would survive one in ill health; and so forth.

The nick of time is not less an important matter in reference to single deaths, under various circumstances. People are often very much interested in knowing whether a certain person is dead or not. Unless under specified circumstances, the law refuses to kill a man—that is, a man known to have been alive at a certain date is presumed to continue to live, unless and until proof to the contrary is adduced. But there are certain cases in which the application of this rule would involve hardship. Many leases are dependent on lives; and both lessor and lessee are concerned in knowing whether a particular life has terminated or not. Therefore, special statutes have been passed, in relation to a limited number of circumstances, enacting that if a man were seen alive more than seven years ago, and has not since been seen or heard of, he may be treated as dead.

The nick of time occasionally affects the distribution or amount of property in relation to particular seasons. Some years ago the newspapers remarked on the fact that a lord of broad acres, whose rent-roll reached something like £40,000 a year, died "about midnight" between the 10th and 11th of October; and the possible consequences of this were thus set forth: "His rents are payable at 'old time,' that is, old Lady-day and old Michaelmas-day. Old Michaelmas-day fell this year on Sunday, the 11th instant. The day begins at midnight. Now, the rent is due upon the first moment of the day it becomes due; so that at one second beyond twelve o'clock of the 10th instant, rent payable at old Michaelmas-day is in law due. If the lord died before twelve, the rents belong to the parties taking the estates; but if after twelve, then they belong to and form part of his personal estate. The difference of one minute might thus involve a question on the title to about £20,000." We do not know that a legal difficulty did arise; the facts only indicate the mode in which one might have arisen. Sometimes that ancient British institution, the house clock, has been at war with another British institution, the parish church clock. A baby was born, or an old person died, just before the house clock struck twelve on a particular night, but after the church clock struck. On which day did the birth or death take place—yesterday or to-day? And how would this fact be ascertained, to settle the inheritance of an estate? We know an instance (not involving, however, the inheritance to property) of a lady whose relations never have definitely known on which day she was born; the pocket watch of the accoucheur who attended her mother pointed to a little before twelve at midnight, whereas the church clock had just struck twelve. Of course a particular day had to be named in the register; and as the doctor maintained that his watch was right, there were the materials for a very pretty quarrel if the parties concerned had been so disposed. It might be that the nick of time was midnight exactly, as measured by solar or sun-dial time: that is, the sun may have been precisely in the nadir at that moment; but this difficulty would not arise in practice, as the law knows only mean time, not sun-dial time. If Greenwich time were made legal everywhere, and if electric clocks everywhere established communication with the master clock at the observatory, there might be another test supplied; but under the conditions stated, it would be a nice matter of Tweedledum and Tweedledee {127} to determine whether the house clock, the church clock, or a pocket watch, should be relied upon. All the pocket watches in the town might be brought into the witness-box, but without avail; for if some accorded with the house clock, others would surely be found to agree better with the church clock.

This question of clocks, as compared with time measured by the sun, presents some very curious aspects in relation to longitude. What's o'clock in London will not tell you what's o'clock in Falmouth, unless you know the difference of longitude between the two places. The sun takes about twenty minutes to go from the zenith of the one to the zenith of the other. Local time, the time at any particular town, is measured from the moment of noon at that town; and noon itself is when the sun comes to the meridian of that place. Hence Falmouth noon is twenty minutes after London noon, Falmouth midnight twenty minutes after London midnight; and so on. When it is ten minutes after midnight, on the morning of Sunday, the 1st of January, in London, it is ten minutes before midnight, on Saturday, the 31st of December, at Falmouth. It is a Sabbath at the one place, a working-day at the other. That particular moment of absolute time is in the year 1865 at the one, and 1864 at the other. Therefore, we see, it might become a ticklish point in what year a man died, solely on account of this question of longitude, irrespective of any wrong-going or wrong-doing of clocks, or of any other doubtful points whatever. Sooner or later this question will have to be attended to. In all our chief towns, nearly all our towns indeed, the railway-station clocks mark Greenwich time, or, as it is called, "railway time;" the church clocks generally mark local time; and some commercial clocks, to serve all parties, mark both kinds of time on the same dial-face, by the aid of an additional index hand. Railway time is gradually beating local time; and the law will by-and-by have to settle which shall be used as the standard in determining the moment of important events. Some of the steamers plying between England and Ireland use Greenwich time in notifying the departures from the English port, and Dublin time in notifying those from the Irish port; a method singularly embarrassing to a traveller who is in the habit of relying on his own watch. Does a sailor get more prog, more grog, more pay, within a given space of absolute time when coming from America to England, or when going from England to America? The difference is far too slight to attract either his attention or that of his employers; yet it really is the case that he obtains more good things in the former of these cases than in the latter. His days are shorter on the homeward than on the outward voyage; and if he receive so much provisions and pay per day, he interprets day as it is to him on shipboard. When in harbor, say at Liverpool, a day is, to him as to every one else who is stationary like himself, a period of definite length; but when he travels Eastward or Westward, his days are variable in length. When he travels West, he and the sun run a race; the sun of course beats; but the sailor accomplishes a little, and the sun has to fetch up that little before he can complete what foot-racers call a lap. In other words, there is a longer absolute time between noon and noon to the sailor going West, than to the sailor ashore. When he travels East, on the contrary, he and the sun run toward each other; insomuch that there is less absolute time in the period between his Monday's noon and Tuesday's noon than when he was ashore. The ship's noon is usually dinner-time for the sailors; and the interval between that and the next noon (measured by the sun, not by the chronometer) varies in length through the causes just noticed. Once now and then there are facts recorded in the newspapers which bring this {128} truth into prominence—a truth demonstrable enough in science, but not very familiar to the general public. When the Great Eastern made her first veritable voyage across the Atlantic in June, 1860, she left Southampton on the 17th, and reached New York on the 28th. As the ship was going West, more or less, all the while, she was going with or rather after the sun; the interval was greater between noon and noon than when the ship was anchored off Southampton; and the so-called eleven days of the voyage were eleven long days. As it was important, in reference to a problem in steam navigation, to know how many revolutions the paddles made in a given time, to test the power of the mighty ship, it was necessary to bear in mind that the ship's day was longer than a shore day; and it was found that, taking latitude and longitude into account, the day on which the greatest run was made was nearly twenty-four and a half hours long; the ship's day was equal to half an hour more than a landsman's day. The other days varied from twenty-four to twenty-four and a half. On the return voyage all this was reversed; the ship met the sun, the days were less than twenty-four ordinary hours long, and the calculations had to be modified in consequence. The sailors, too, got more food in a homeward week than an outward week, owing to the intervals between the meals being shorter albeit, their appetites may not have been cognizant of the difference.

And this brings us back to our hypothetical Mullets. Josiah died at noon (Sydney time), and Jasper died on the same day at noon (Greenwich time). Which died first? Sydney, although not quite at the other side of the world, is nearly so; it is ten hours of longitude Eastward of Greenwich; the sun rises there ten hours earlier than with us. It is nearly bed-time with Sydney folks when our artisans strike work for dinner. There would, therefore, be a reasonable ground for saying that Josiah died first. But had it been New Zealand, a curious question might arise. Otago, and some other of the settlements in those islands, are so near the antipodes of Greenwich, that they may either be called eleven and three-quarter hours East, or twelve and a quarter hours West, of Greenwich, according as we suppose the navigator to go round the Cape of Good Hope or round Cape Horn. At six in the morning in London, it is about six in the evening at New Zealand. But of which day? When it is Monday morning in London, is it Sunday evening or Monday evening in New Zealand? This question is not so easy to solve as might be supposed. When a ship called at Pitcairn Island several years ago, to visit the singular little community that had descended from the mutineers of the Bounty, the captain was surprised to find exactly one day difference between his ship's reckoning and that of the islanders; what was Monday, the 26th, to the one, was Tuesday, the 27th, to the other. A voyage East had been the origin of one reckoning, a voyage West that of the other. Not unlikely we should have to go back to the voyage of the Bounty itself, seventy-seven years ago, to get to the real origin of the Pitcairners' reckoning. How it may be with the English settlers in New Zealand, we feel by no means certain. If the present reckoning began with some voyage made round Cape Horn, then our Monday morning is New Zealand Sunday evening; but if with some voyage made round the Cape of Good Hope, then our Monday morning is New Zealand Monday evening. Probabilities are perhaps in favor of the latter supposition. We need not ask, "What's o'clock at New Zealand?" for that can be ascertained to a minute by counting the difference of longitude; but to ask, "What day of the week and of the month is it at New Zealand?" is a question that might, for aught we can see, involve very important legal consequences.

{129}

From the Dublin Review.

RECENT DISCOVERIES IN THE CATACOMBS.

The chromo-lithographic press, established at Rome by the munificence of Pius IX., has issued its first publication, four sheets in large folio, Imagines Selectae Deiparae Virginis in Caemeteriis Suburbanis Udo depictae, with about twenty pages of text from the pen of the Cavaliere G. B. de Rossi. The subject and the author are amply sufficient to recommend them to the Christian archaeologist, and the work of the artists employed is in every way worthy of both. It is by no means an uncommon idea, even among Catholics who have visited Rome and done the catacombs, that our Blessed Lady does not hold any prominent place in the decorations of those subterranean cemeteries. Protestant tourists often boldly publish that she is nowhere to be found there. The present publication will suffice to show, even to those who never leave their own homes, the falsehood of this statement and impression. De Rossi has here set before us a selection of four different representations of Holy Mary, as she appears in that earliest monument of the Christian Church; and, in illustrating these, he has taken occasion to mention a score or two of others. Moreover, he has vindicated for them an antiquity and an importance far beyond what we were prepared to expect; and those who have ever either made personal acquaintance with him, or have studied his former writings, well know how far removed he is from anything like uncritical and enthusiastic exaggerations. Even such writers as Mr. Burgon ("Letters from Rome") cannot refrain from bearing testimony to his learning, moderation, and candor; they praise him, often by way of contrast with some Jesuit or other clerical exponent of the mysteries of the catacombs, for all those qualities which are calculated to inspire us with confidence in his interpretations of any nice points of Christian archaeology. But we fear his Protestant admirers will be led to lower their tone of admiration for him, and henceforward to discover some flaw in his powers of criticism, when they find him, as in these pages, gravely maintaining, concerning a particular representation of the Madonna in the catacombs, that it is of Apostolic, or quasi-Apostolic antiquity. It is a painting on the vaulted roof of an arcosolium in the cemetery of St. Priscilla, and it is reproduced in the work before us in its original size. The Blessed Virgin sits, her head partially covered by a short slight veil, holding the Divine Infant in her arms; opposite to her stands a man, holding in one hand a volume, and with the other pointing to a star which appears between the two figures. This star almost always accompanies our Blessed Lady in ancient paintings or sculptures, wherever she is represented either with the Magi offering their gifts, or by the manger's side with the ox and the ass; but with a single figure, as in the present instance, it is unusual. Archaeologists will probably differ in their interpretation of this figure; the most obvious conjecture would, of course, fix on St. Joseph; there seem to be solid reasons, however, for preferring (with De Rossi) the prophet Isaias, whose predictions concerning the Messias abound with imagery borrowed from light, and who may be identified on an old Christian glass by the superscription of his name. But this question, interesting as it is, is not so important as the probable date of the painting itself; and here no abridgment or analysis of' De Rossi's arguments can do justice to the moderation, yet irresistible force, with which he accumulates proofs of {130} the conclusion we have already stated, viz., that the painting was executed, if not in Apostolic times and as it were under the very eyes of the Apostles themselves, yet certainly within the first 150 years of the Christian era. He first bids us carefully to study the art displayed in the design and execution of the painting; he compares it with the decorations of the famous Pagan tombs discovered on the Via Latina in 1858, and which are referred to the times of the Antoninuses; with the paintings in the pontifical cubiculum in the cemetery of St. Callixtus, and with others more recently discovered in the cemetery of Pretextatus, to both of which a very high antiquity is conceded by all competent judges; and he justly argues that the more classical style of the painting now under examination obliges us to assign to it a still earlier date. Next, he shows that the catacomb in which it appears was one of the oldest,—St. Priscilla, from whom it receives its name, having been the mother of Pudens and a contemporary of the Apostles (the impress of a seal, with the name Pudens Felix, is repeated several times on the mortar round the edge of a grave in this cemetery); nay, further still, it can be shown that the tombs of Sts. Pudentiana and Praxedes, and therefore, probably, of their father St. Pudens himself, were in the immediate neighborhood of the very chapel in which this Madonna is to be seen; moreover, the inscriptions which are found there bear manifest tokens of a higher antiquity than can be claimed by any others from the catacombs: there is the complete triple nomenclature of pagan times, e.g., Titus Flavius Felicissimus; the epitaphs are not even in the usual form, in pace, but simply the Apostolic salutation, Pax tecum, Pax tibi; and finally, the greater number of them are not cut on stone or marble slabs, but written with red paint on the tiles which close the graves—a mode of inscription of which not a single example, we believe, has hitherto been found in any other part the catacombs. This is a mere outline of the arguments by which De Rossi establishes his conclusion respecting the age of this painting, and they are not even exhibited in their full force in the present publication at all. For a more copious induction of facts, and a more complete elucidation both of the history and topography of the catacombs, we must be content to wait till the author's larger work on Roma Sotterranea shall appear.

The most recent painting of the Madonna which De Rossi has here published is that with which our readers will be the most familiar. It is the one to which the late Father Marchi, S.J., never failed to introduce every visitor to the catacomb of St. Agnes, and has been reproduced in various works; the Holy Mother with her hands outstretched in prayer, the Divine Infant on her bosom, and the Christian monogram on either side of her and turned toward her. This last particular naturally directs our thoughts to the fourth century as the date of this work; and the absence of the nimbus and some other indications lead our author to fix the earlier half of the century in preference to the later. Between these two limits, then, of the first or second, and the fourth century, he would place the two others which are now published; he distinguishes them more doubtfully, as belonging respectively to the first and second half of the third century. In one, from the cemetery of Domitilla, the Blessed Virgin sits holding the Holy Child on her lap, whilst four Magi offer their gifts; the other, from the catacomb of Sts. Peter and Marcellinus, represents the same scene, but with two Magi only. In both there is the same departure from the ancient tradition of the number of the wise men, and from the same cause, viz., the desire to give a proper balance and proportion to the two sides of the picture, the Virgin occupying the middle place. Indeed, in one of them, it is still possible to trace {131} the original sketch of the artist, designing another arrangement with the three figures only; but the result did not promise to be satisfactory, and he did what thousands of his craft have continued to do ever since, sacrificed historic truth to the exigencies of his art.

We trust our readers will be induced to get this valuable work and to study it for themselves; the text may be procured either in French or in Italian, so that it is readily accessible to all. At the same time we would take the opportunity of introducing to them another work by the same indefatigable author, which is also published both in French and in Italian. At least, such is the announcement of a prospectus now lying before us, which states that the French translation is published by Vives, in Paris. We have ourselves only seen the original Italian. It is a short monthly periodical, illustrations, Bollettino di Archeologia Cristiana, and is addressed not merely to savans, Fellows of Royal Societies, and the like, but rather to all educated men who care for the history of their religion and are capable of appreciating its evidences. De Rossi claims for the recent discoveries in the Roman catacombs the very highest place among the scientific events of the day which have an important religious bearing, and we think that the justice of his plea must be admitted. Unfortunately, however, the vastness of the subject, the multiplied engagements of the author, and (not least) the political vicissitudes of the times, have hitherto prevented the publication of these discoveries in a complete and extended form. We are happy to know that the work is satisfactorily progressing; but meanwhile he has been persuaded by the suggestions of many friends, and by the convenience of the thing itself, to publish this monthly periodical, which will keep us au courant with the most important additions that are being made from time to time to our knowledge of those precious memorials of primitive Christianity, and also supply much interesting information on other archaeological matters. In these pages the reader is allowed to accompany, as it were, the author himself in his subterranean researches, to assist at his discoveries, to trace the happy but doubtful conjecture of a moment through all its gradual stages, until it reaches the moral certainty of a conclusion which can no longer be called in question; e.g., the author gives us a portion of a lecture which he delivered on July 3, 1852, to the Roman Pontifical Academy of Archaeology. In this lecture he maintained, in opposition to the usual nomenclature of the catacombs, and entirely on the strength of certain topographical observations, that a particular cemetery, into which a very partial opening had been made in 1848, was that anciently called by the name of Pretextatus, and in which were buried St. Januarius, the eldest of the seven sons of St. Felicitas, Felicissimus and Agapitus, deacons of St. Sixtus, Pope Urban, Quirinus, and other famous martyrs. Five years passed away, and this opinion had been neither confirmed nor refuted; but in 1857, excavations undertaken for another purpose introduced our author into a crypt of this cemetery, of unusual size and richness of ornament, where one of the loculi bore an inscription on the mortar which had secured the grave-stone, invoking the assistance of "Januarius, Agatopus (for Agapitus), and Felicissimus, martyrs!" This, of course, was a strong confirmation of the conjecture which had been published so long before; but this was all which he could produce in the first number of his Bollettino in January, 1863. In the second number he could add that, as he was going to press (February 21), small fragments of an inscription on marble had been disinterred from the same place, of which only single letters had yet been found, but which, he did not hesitate to say, had been written by Pope Damasus and contained his name, as well as the name of {132} St. Januarius. In March he published the twelve or fourteen letters which had been discovered, arranging them in the place he supposed them to have occupied in the inscription, which he conjecturally restored, and which consisted altogether of more than forty letters. In April he was able still further to add, that they had now recovered other portions; amongst the rest, a whole word, or rather the contraction of a word (episcop. for episcopus), exactly in accordance with his conjecture, though, at the time he made the conjecture, only half of one of the letters had yet come to light.

We need not pursue the subject further. Enough has been said to satisfy those of our readers who have any acquaintance with the catacombs, both as to the kind and the degree of interest and importance which belong to this publication. Its intelligence, however, is by no means confined to the catacombs. The basilica of San Clemente; the recent excavations at San Lorenzo, fuori le mura; the postscript of St. Pamphilus the Martyr at the end of one of his manuscript copies of the Bible, reproduced in the Codex Sinaiticus lately published by Tischendorf; the arch of Constantine; ancient scribblings on the wall (graffiti) of the palace of the Caesars on the Palatine, etc., etc., are subjects of able and learned articles in the several numbers we have received. With reference to the graffiti, one singular circumstance mentioned by De Rossi is worth repeating here. Most of our readers are probably acquainted with the graffiti from this place, published by P. Garrucci, in which one Alessamenus is ridiculed for worshipping as his God the figure of a man, but with the head of an ass, nailed to a cross. P. Garrucci had very reasonably conjectured that this was intended as a blasphemous caricature of the Christian worship; and recently other graffiti in the very same place have been discovered with the title Episcopus, apparently given in ridicule to some Christian youth; for that the room on whose walls these scribblings appear was used for educational purposes is abundantly proved by the numerous inscriptions announcing that such or such a one exit de paedagogio. We seem, therefore, in deciphering these rude scrawls, to assist, as it were, at one of the minor scenes of that great struggle between paganism and Christianity, whereof the sufferings of the early martyrs, the apologies of Justin Martyr, etc., were only another but more public and historical phase. History tells us that Caracalla, when a boy, saw one of his companions beaten because he professed the Christian faith. These graffiti seem to teach us that there were many others of the same tender age, de domo Caesaris, who suffered more or less of persecution for the same cause. Other interesting details of the same struggle have been brought together by De Rossi, carefully gleaned from the patrician names which appear on some of the ancient grave-stones, sometimes as belonging to young virgins or widows who had dedicated themselves to the service of Christ under the discipline of a religious community. That such a community was to be found early in the fifth century, in the immediate neighborhood of S. Lorenzo fuori le mura, or, at least, that the members of such a community were always buried about that time in that cemetery, is one of the circumstances which may be said to be clearly proved by the recent discoveries. The proofs are too numerous and minute for abridgment, but the student will be interested in examining them as they appear in the Bollettino.

Another feature in this archaeological publication is its convenience as a supplement to the volume of Christian Inscriptions published by the same author. That volume, as our readers are already aware, contains only such inscriptions of the first six centuries as bear a distinct chronological note by the names of the chief magistrates, or in some other way. Additional specimens of these are not unfrequently discovered in the excavations still {133} in progress on various sides of the city; and these De Rossi is careful to chronicle, and generally also to illustrate by notes, in the pages of his Bollettino. The chief value of these additions, perhaps, is to be found in the corroboration they uniformly give to the conclusions which De Rossi had already deduced, the canons of chronological distinction and distribution which he had established, from the larger collection of inscriptions in the work referred to—whether as to the style of writing or of diction and sentiments, etc.—canons, the full importance of which will only be recognized when he shall have published the second volume of the collection of epitaphs bearing upon questions of Christian doctrine and practice.

In the earlier numbers of the Bollettino for the present year there is a very interesting account of the recent discoveries in the Ambrosian basilica of Milan, where there seems no room to doubt but that they have brought to light the very sarcophagus in which the relics of the great St. Ambrose, as well as those of the martyrs Sts. Gervasius and Protasius, have rested for more than ten centuries. The history of the discovery is too long to be inserted here, and too interesting to be abridged. One circumstance, however, connected with it is too important to be omitted. The sarcophagus itself has not yet, we believe, been opened; but, from the two sepulchres below and on either side of it, where the bishop and the martyrs were originally deposited, and where they remained until their translation in the ninth century, many valuable relics have been gleaned. We will only mention one of them--viz., portions of an ampulla such as are found in the catacombs, and concerning which Dr. Biraghi, the librarian of the Bibliotheca Ambrosiana (to whose zeal we are indebted for the whole discovery, and for the account of it to his learning), assures us that it has been subjected to a chemical examination, and is shown to have contained blood. This, as De Rossi truly remarks, is the most notable instance which has yet come before us of this ampulla having been placed in the sepulchre of famous and historical martyrs, and it is of very special importance as throwing a flood of light on those words of St. Ambrose about these relics so often quoted in the controversy on this subject—Sanguine, tumulus madet; apparent cruoris triumphales notae; inviolatae reliquiae loco suo et ordine repertae. And it is certainly singular that this discovery should have been made at a moment when the validity of these ampullae, as sure signs of martyrdom, has been so much called in question. The Sacred Congregation of Rites had only recently reaffirmed their former sentence on this matter; and this fact now comes most opportunely from Milan to add further weight to their decision, by giving a historical basis to an opinion which before had been thought by some rather to rest upon theory and conjecture. It will go far, we should think, toward rehabilitating in the minds of Christian archaeologists the pious belief of former ages upon this subject, wherever it may have been shaken.

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MISCELLANY.

SCIENCE.

The Mason-Spider of Corfu.—A correspondent of a London journal gives an interesting account of certain habits of this insect, which belongs to the mygalidae family. The mygales are chiefly found in hot climates, and include the largest specimens of spiders known. They are called mason-spiders, from the curious manner in which they build their houses. "The mygale nest," says the correspondent, "varies much in size, from one inch in length to three or four, and even six or seven inches. In the West Indies, where the spiders are crab-like, the insects measure six inches over. One nest, especially mentioned and minutely described by Mr. Oudouin, was three inches and a quarter long and eight-tenths of an inch wide. The nest, of cylindrical form, is made by boring into the earth; making his excavation, the next thing, having decided upon the dimensions of his habitation, is to furnish it, and most beautiful are his paper-hangings. The whole of the interior is lined with the softest possible silk, a tissue which the 'major domo' spins all over the apartment until it is padded to a sufficient thickness and made soft enough. Silk lining like this gives the idea of the mygale having a luxurious turn. This done, and the interior finished, the mygale shows his peculiarity by taking steps to keep out the of intruders by making not only a door, and that self-closing, but a door with swinging hinge, and sometimes one at each end of his nest, which shows that he has a very good opinion of his own work within, and knows how to take care of it. Not having met with any case where any one had seen the positive operation of making the door of these nests, I thought the details would be interesting, the more so as they corroborated preconceived ideas of their construction, and were noticed by a friend quartered at Corfu, who brought home the nest with him. The following is the description he gave me:

"Lying out in one of the sandy plateaux covered with olive groves with which Corfu abounds, enjoying his cigar and lounging about in the sandy soil, he came to a spider's nest. Examining it, he found the lid or door would not open, and seemed held firmly within by the proprietor—as if Jack were at home—so he applied forthwith the leverage of a knife-blade, upon which the inmate retired to his inner chamber. The aggressor decided not to disturb him any more that day, but marking the place—most necessary thing to do—thought he would explore further the next day, if fine.

"Accordingly, the next day my friend called early, intending to take off the door and to watch the progress of restoration, and how it would be accomplished. After waiting a long time, out came Monsieur Mygale, and looking carefully round, and finding all quiet, commenced operations by running his web backward and forward across the orifice of his nest, till there was a layer of silken web; upon this he ejected a gluten, over which he scratched the fine sand in the immediate neighborhood of his nest; this done, he again set to work—webbing, then gluten, sand; then again web, gluten, sand, about six times; this occupied in all about eight hours. But the puzzling part was that this time he was cementing and building himself out from his own mansion, when, to the astonishment and delight of his anxious looker-on, he began the finishing stroke by cutting and forming the door by fixing his hind legs in the centre of the new covering, and from these as a centre he began cutting with his jaws right through the door he had made, striking a clear circle round, and leaving about one-eighth of the circumference as a hinge. This done, he lifted the door up and walked in. My friend then tried to open the door with a knife, but the insect pulled it tight from the inside. He therefore dug round him and took him off bodily—mygale and nest complete. The hinge is most carefully and beautifully formed; and there appears to be an important object in view when the spider covers over the whole of the orifice, for immediately the door is raised it springs back as soon as released; and this is caused by the elasticity of the web on the hinge and the peculiar formation of the lid or door, which is made thicker on the lower side, so that its {135} own weight helps it to be self-closing, and the rabbeting of the door is wonderfully surfaced. Bolts and Chub locks with a latch-key the mygale family do not possess, but as a substitute the lower part of the door has clawholding holes, so that a bird's beak or other lever being used, Mons. Mygale holds on to the door by these, and with his legs against the sides of his house, offers immense resistance against all comers."

Instinct of Insects.—One of the regular course of free scientific lectures delivered at the Paris Sorbonne this last winter, under the auspices of the Minister of Public Instruction, was by the distinguished naturalist M. Milne-Edwards, on the instinct and intelligence of animals. Taking for his text the saying of Linnaeus, Natura maxime miranda in minimis, he spoke principally of the instinct of insects, and especially of solitary bees. These hymenoptera, in fact, afford one of the most striking examples known of that faculty which impels an animal, either for its own preservation or for the preservation and development of its offspring, to perform the most complicated and intelligent actions, readily and skilfully, yet without having learned how to do them. One species, the carpenter-bee (xylocopa), bores in the trunks of trees galleries running first horizontally and then vertically to a considerable depth. She then collects a quantity of wax and honey. The honey she kneads into a little ball of alimentary matter, in the midst of which she deposits her first egg. With the wax she constructs a horizontal partition, formed of concentric annular layers; this encloses the cell. On this partition she deposits a second egg, enclosed like the first in the provision destined for the support of the future larva; and over it builds another partition of wax; and so on, to the top of the vertical cavity. Then she dies; she never sees her offspring. The latter, so long as they remain larvae, feed upon the honey which the maternal foresight provided for them; and so soon as they have passed through their second metamorphosis and become winged insects, issue forth from their retreat, to perform in their turn a similar labor.

Another species of solitary bee, whose larva is carnivorous, resorts to a still more wonderful, but, it must be confessed, very cruel, expedient to supply the worm-like progeny with food. She constructs a gallery or tunnel in the earth, and crowns it with a chimney curved somewhat like a crosier, so as to keep out the rain. Then she goes a-hunting, and brings back to her den a number of caterpillars. If she kills them at once, they will spoil before her eggs are hatched; if she lets them alone, they will run away. What shall she do? She pierces the caterpillars with her venomous little dart, and injects into them a drop of poison, which Mr. Claude Bernard no doubt will analyze some day. It does not kill, it only paralyzes them; and there they lie, torpid and immovable, till the larvae come into the world and feast off the sweet and succulent flesh at their leisure.

Everybody is familiar with the habits and wonderful industry of hive-bees, wasps, and ants. These insects seem to be governed by something more than blind instinct: it is hardly too much to say that they give indubitable signs of intelligence. They know how to modify their course according to circumstances, to provide against unexpected wants, to avert dangers, and to notify to each other whatever is of consequence to be known by their whole community. Huber, the celebrated bee-keeper of Geneva, relates the following anecdote: One of his hives having been devastated one night by a large sphinx-moth, the bees set to work the next morning and plastered up the door, leaving only a small opening which would just admit them, one at a time, but which the sphinx, with its big body and long wings, could not pass. As soon as the season arrived when the moths terminate their short lives, the bees, no longer fearing an invasion, pulled down their rampart. The next season, as no sphinx appeared to trouble them, they left their door wide open.

Ostrich-keeping.—By late news from the Cape of Good Hope we learn that the farmers of that colony are beginning to find it profitable to keep flocks of ostriches, for the feathers of those birds are worth £25 sterling the pound. For thirty-five ostriches, there must be three hundred acres of grazing-ground. The plucking takes place once in six months; the yield of feathers from each bird being worth from £10 to £12, 10s. The original cost of the young ostriches is said to be £5 each. Some of the {136} farmers who have tried the experiment are of opinion that ostrich-feathers will pay better than any other produce of the colony.

Extraordinary Inland Navigation.—We hear from South America that a steamer built in England for the Peruvian government, for the exploration of rivers, has penetrated the great continent from the Atlantic side to a distance of ninety-five leagues only from the Pacific, or nearly all across. The vessel, which draws seven feet water, steamed seven hundred leagues up the Amazon, two hundred up the Ucayati, and thence into the Pachitea, which had never before been navigated except by native canoes. What a magnificent extent of inland navigation is here opened to commercial enterprise! The mind becomes somewhat bewildered in imagining the future of those vast river-valleys when hundreds of steamers shall navigate the streams, trading among millions of population dwelling on their banks.

Is the Sun getting Bigger?—It is known that various speculations have been put forward as to the cause or source of the sun's heat. Among those who consider that it consists in the falling of asteroids or meteorites into the sun, is Mr. J. R. Mayer, of Heilbronn, who states that the surface of the sun measures 115,000 million square miles, and that the asteroids falling thereon form a mass every minute equal in weight to from 94,000 to 188,000 billion kilogrammes. It might be supposed that this enormous shower would increase the mass and weight of the sun, and by consequence produce an appreciable effect on the motion of the planets which compose our system. For instance, it would shorten our year by a second or something less. But the calculations of astronomers show that this effect does not take place; and Mr. Mayer states that to increase the apparent diameter of the sun a single second by the shower of asteroids would require from 33,000 to 66,000 years.

Teaching the Deaf and Dumb to Speak.—Dr. Houdin, director of an institution for the deaf and dumb at Passy, lately announced to the French Academy, that after twenty-five years' experience he had proved the possibility of communicating the faculty of speech, in a certain degree, to deaf mutes. A commission appointed by the Academy and the Faculty to investigate the subject, reports that the learned doctor has really succeeded in several instances in teaching these unfortunate beings to speak and even comprehend spoken language so well that it is difficult to believe that they are not guided by the ear. The patients conversed with the members of the commission, and answered the different questions put to them. They were found to be perfectly familiar with the use and mechanism of speech, though destitute of the sense of hearing, and they comprehended what was said to them, reading the words upon the lips of the speaker with a marvellous facility. Thus they become fit to enter into society and capable of receiving all manner of instruction.

But here is another case still more wonderful. What would you do if you had to instruct and prepare for first communion a child who was at the same time deaf, dumb, and blind? The case is not an imaginary one; it has occurred in an asylum for deaf-mutes at Notre Dame de Larnay, in the diocese of Poitiers. A nun was there charged with the instruction of a child in this unfortunate state, to whom she could appeal only by the sense of touch. Yet the child, who astonishes everybody by her sensibility and intelligence, has come by that means to a knowledge of the spiritual life, of God and his divine Son, of religion and its mysteries and precepts—has been prepared, in fine, for a worthy reception of the Eucharist.

ART.

The past winter in New York has scarcely kept pace with its immediate predecessor in the number and merit of the collections of pictures opened to public inspection or disposed of at auction. The unprecedented prices obtained for the really excellent collection of Mr. Wolfe, in Christmas week of 1863, seemed to have inoculated art collectors and dealers with what may be called a cacoethes vendendi, and until far into the succeeding summer the picture auctioneers were called upon to knock down dozens of galleries of "private gentlemen about to leave the country," varying in merit from respectable to positively bad. In these sales the moderns had decidedly the best of it, the few {137} "old masters" who ventured to appeal to the sympathies and pockets of our collectors being at last treated with proper contempt. But the prices realized by the Wolfe gallery, even when reduced to a specie basis, were too high to become a recognized standard of value, and gradually the interest in such sales, as well as the bids, declined, until the sellers became aware (the purchasers had become aware some time previous) that the market was overstocked and the demand for pictures had ceased. The contributions of the foreign artists to the New York Sanitary Fair brought probably less than a third of the money that would have been obtained for them had they been sold in January instead of June, and such collections as have been scraped together for sale during the present season have met with but moderate pecuniary success. It is gratifying to know, however, that our resident artists, both native and foreign-born, have for the most part been busily and profitably employed, and that in landscape, and in some departments of genre, their works have not suffered in competition with similar ones by reputable European painters. Without wishing in any respect to recommend or suggest a protective system for fostering native art, we cannot but rejoice that the overthrow of the late exaggerated prices for foreign works will tend to encourage and develop American artists.

The principal art event in anticipation is the opening of next exhibition of the National Academy of Design in the building now hastening to completion at the corner of Fourth avenue and Twenty-third streets. It is to be hoped that the contributions will be worthy of the place and the occasion. Recent exhibitions have not been altogether creditable to the Academy.

Durand, the late president of the Academy, and one of our oldest and most careful landscape painters, has a characteristic work on exhibition at Avery's Art Agency, corner of Fourth street and Broadway. It is called "A Summer Afternoon," and is pervaded by a soft, pensive sentiment of rural repose. In the elaboration of the trees and in the soft, mellow distances the artist shows his early skill, albeit in some of his later pieces the timid handling inseparable from age is discernible.

A collection of several hundred sketches and studies of no special merit, by Hicks, has recently been disposed of at auction. The essays of this gentleman in landscape are not happy, and the specimens in this collection had better, perhaps, have been excluded.

Rossiter's pictures representing Adam and Eve in Paradise, now on exhibition in New York, have excited more remark than commendation. It may be said briefly, that they fail to do justice to the subject.

Curnmings's "Historic Annals of the Academy of Design" have been published, and constitute an interesting addition to the somewhat meagre collection of works illustrating American art history.

Mr. Thomas Ball, the well-known sculptor of Boston, is about to depart for Italy, with the intention of remaining several years in Florence, and executing there in marble a number of plaster models. Among these are a life-size statue of Edwin Forrest in the part of "Coriolanus," and busts of the late Rev. Thomas Starr King and Edward Everett. The latter is said to be an admirable likeness.

M. J. Heade, an American artist, formerly of Boston and Providence, is publishing in London a work upon the humming-birds of Brazil, illustrated from designs by himself.

The United States Senate was recently the scene of a somewhat animated debate on art matters, arising out of a proposition to authorize the artist Powell to "paint a picture for the Capitol at a cost not to exceed $25,000." The scheme was defeated, chiefly through the opposition of Senator Sumner, who thought the present an improper time to devote so large a sum to such a purpose.

A very remarkable picture by Gérôme, the most original, and realistic of living French painters, is now on exhibition at Goupil's, in this city. It is entitled "The Prayer of the Arab in the Desert," and in a small space presents a complete epitome of Oriental life.

In London the General Exhibition of water-color drawings, and collections of works of Holman Hunt, Madox Brown, and the late David Roberts, have recently been opened. The last named contains 900 pictures, drawings, and sketches, showing the amazing industry of the artist, and his skill as a draughtsman.

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A monument to Shakespeare, from penny subscriptions, is to be erected on Primrose Hill, near London.

The sale of the celebrated Pourtalès collection at Paris has been the all-absorbing art topic abroad. The gallery, at last accounts, was daily crowded with representatives from all parts of Europe, and the prices surpassed the estimates of the experts. The value set upon the whole collection was upward of 3,000,000 francs, but that sum will probably fall far short of the real total. The bronzes and terra-cotta occupied four days, and produced over 150,000 francs. The following are among the most remarkable items: A very small statuette of Jupiter, found at Besançon in 1820, 8,000 francs; another small statuette of the same, seated, formerly in the Denon collection, 12,000 francs; the celebrated statuette of Apollo, supposed to date from the sixth century B.C., from the Neri collection, 5,000 francs; small statuette of Minerva, arms missing, found at Besançon, 19,200 francs; armor found at Herculaneum, and presented by the Queen of Naples to Josephine, purchased by the Emperor for 13,000 francs; a small Roman bust, supposed by Visconti to be a Balbus, bought for the Louvre for 4,550 francs; a tripod, found in the ruins of the town of Metapont, and described by Panofka, purchased for the Berlin gallery, 10,000 francs; fine old Roman seat, in bronze, bought for the Louvre, 5,300 francs; vase from Locres, 7,000 francs; another vase, found in one of the tombs of the Vulci, 9,000 francs.

At the sale of the collection of the Marquis de Lambertye, in Paris, a charming work by Meissonier, "Reynard in his Study, reading a Manuscript," was purchased for 12,600 francs; had it not been for the effect of the Pourtalès sale on the art market, the work would have fetched considerably more money. It was purchased of the artist himself, for 16,000 francs, by the late marquis. Another and smaller picture, not six inches by four, also by Meissonier, was sold on the same occasion—subject, "Van de Velde in his Atelier"—for 7,020 francs. In the same collection were four works by Decamps, whose pictures are in great request. One of these, an Eastern landscape, sold for 15,500 francs; another, a small work, a peasant girl in the forest, for 4,240 francs; and two still smaller and less important works, "Tide Out, with Sunset," and "Gorges d'Ollioule," for 1,500 francs each. Three small works by Eugene Delacroix, a "Tiger attacking a Serpent," "Combat between Moors and Arabs," and "The Scotch Ballad," sold, respectively, for 1,820 francs, 1,300 francs, and 2,300 francs. A minute picture by Paul Delaroche, "Jesus on the Mount of Olives," sold for 2,200 francs; Diogenes sitting on the edge of an immense jar, holding his lantern, by Gèrôme, 1,950 francs; and "Arnauts at Prayer," by the same, 3,900 francs. "The Beach at Trouville," by the lately deceased painter, Troyon, 4,000 francs, and "Feeding the Poultry," by the same, 4,850 francs.

At the sale of a collection of the works of M. Cordier, the sculptor, who has earned considerable popularity by his variegated works, composed of marbles, onyx and bronze, and variously tinted and decorated, a marble statue, called "La Belle Gallinara," sold for 4,100 francs; a young Kabyle child carrying a branch loaded with oranges, in Algerian onyx and bronze, and partly colored, 3,000 francs; an Arab woman, a statue of the same materials as the preceding, intended to support a lamp or candelabrum, purchased by the Due de Morny for 6,825 francs.

There is a report that the collections of pictures and curiosities belonging to the Comte de Chambord will shortly be dispersed by the hammer in Paris.

The scaffolding before the north front of the cathedral of Notre Dame, in Paris, has been removed, and the façade, with the magnificent Gothic window, forty feet in diameter, can now be seen to great perfection, all the rich sculptures having been admirably restored.

A Paris letter says: "The celebrated painting of the 'Assassination of the Bishop of Liege,' by Eugene Delacroix, was recently sold at auction at 35,000 francs. The 'Death of Ophelia,' in pencil, by the same painter, was knocked down for 2,020 francs, which was considered a large sum for a sketch. 'St. Louis at the Bridge of Taillebourg,' in water-colors, fetched 3,100 francs. Some copper-plates engraved by Eugene Delacroix himself were likewise sold."

At the sale of the collection of the Chevalier de Knyff, at Brussels, the Virgin with the host and surrounded by angels, by Ingres, was withdrawn at 28,500 francs.

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Among the works of art destroyed in the recent conflagration of the ducal palace at Brunswick was the colossal bronze figure of Brunonia, the patron goddess of the town, standing in a car of victory, drawn by four horses. It was executed by Professor Howaldt and his sons, after a design by Rietschel.

The colossal bronze statue of Hercules, lately exhumed at Rome, has been safely deposited in the Vatican.

BOOK NOTICES.

SERMONS ON OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST, AND ON HIS BLESSED MOTHER. By his Eminence Cardinal Wiseman. 8vo., pp. 421. New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co.

Coming to us almost in the same moment in which we hear of Cardinal Wiseman's death, these sermons will be read with a deep and peculiar interest, now that the eloquent lips which uttered them are closed for ever. Most of them were preached in Rome, some so long ago as 1827. These were addressed to congregations composed partly of ecclesiastics, partly of Catholic sojourners in the Eternal City, and partly of Protestants. At least one was delivered in Ireland in 1858. But although some of the discourses belong to the period of the author's noviceship in the pulpit, and between some there is an interval of more than thirty years, we are struck by no incongruity of either thought or style. The earliest have the finish and elegance of maturity; the latest all the vigor and enthusiasm of youth.

They are not controversial, and hardly any of them can even be called dogmatic sermons. They are addressed more to the heart than directly to the understanding, although reasoning and exhortation are often so skilfully blended that it is hard to say where one begins and the other ends. They are the outpourings, in fact, of a warm and loving heart and a full brain. The argument is all the more effective because the cardinal covers his frame-work of logic with the rich drapery of his brilliant rhetoric. And yet, with all their gorgeous phraseology, they are characterized by a simplicity of thought which brings them down to the level of the commonest intellect.

The greater part of them were preached during the seasons of Lent and Advent, and the subjects will therefore be found especially appropriate to the present period. Here is a beautiful passage in reference to our Lord's agony in the garden:

"There are plants in the luxurious East, my dearly beloved brethren, which men gash and cut, that from them may distil the precious balsams they contain; but that is ever the most sought and valued which, issuing forth of its own accord, pure and unmixed, trickles down like tears upon the parent tree. And so it seems to me, we may without disparagement speak of the precious streams of our dear Redeemer's blood. When forced from his side, in abundant flow, it came mixed with another mysterious fluid; when shed by the cruel inflictions of his enemies, by their nails, their thorns, and scourges, there is a painful association with the brutal instruments that drew it, as though in some way their defilement could attaint it. But here we have the first yield of that saving and life-giving heart, gushing forth spontaneously, pure and untouched by the unclean hand of man, dropping as dew upon the ground. It is the first juice of the precious vine; before the wine-press hath bruised its grapes, richer and sweeter to the loving and sympathizing soul, than what is afterward pressed out. It is every drop of it ours; and alas, how painfully so! For here no lash, no impious palm, no pricking thorn hath called it forth; but our sins, yes, our sins, the executioners not of the flesh, but of the heart of Jesus, have driven it all out, thence to water that garden of sorrows! Oh, is it not dear to us; is it not gathered up by our affections, with far more reverence and love than by virgins of old was the blood of martyrs, to be placed for ever in the very sanctuary, yea, within the very altar of our hearts?"

From the discourse on the "Triumphs of the Cross," we select the closing paragraph:

{140}

"O blessed Jesus, may the image of these sacred wounds, as expressed by the cross, never depart from my thoughts. As it is a badge and privilege of the exalted office, to which, most unworthy, I have been raised, to wear ever upon my breast the figure of that cross, and in it, as in a holy shrine, a fragment of that blessed tree whereon thou didst hang on Golgotha, so much more let the lively image of thee crucified dwell within my bosom, and be the source from which shall proceed every thought, and word, and action of my ministry! Let me preach thee, and thee crucified, not the plausible doctrines of worldly virtue and human philosophy. In prayer and meditation let me ever have before me thy likeness, as thou stretchest forth thine arms to invite us to seek mercy and to draw us into thine embrace. Let my Thabor be on Calvary; there it is best for me to dwell. There thou hast prepared three tabernacles; one for such as, like Magdalen, have offended much, but love to weep at thy blessed feet; one for those who, like John, have wavered in steadfastness for a moment, but long again to rest their head upon thy bosom; and one whereinto only she may enter whose love burns without a reproach, whose heart, always one with thine, finds its home in the centre of thine, fibre intertwined with fibre, till both are melted into one in that furnace of sympathetic love. With these favorites of the cross, let me ever, blessed Saviour, remain in meditation and prayer, and loving affection for thy holy rood. I will venerate its very substance, whenever presented to me, with deep and solemn reverence. I will honor its image, wherever offered to me, with lowly and respectful homage. But still more I will hallow and love its spirit and inward form, impressed on the heart, and shown forth in the holiness of life. And oh! divine Redeemer, from thy cross, thy true mercy-seat, look down in compassion upon this thy people. Pour forth thence abundantly the streams of blessing, which flow from thy sacred wounds. Accomplish within them, during this week of forgiveness, the work which holy men have so well begun, [Footnote 40] that all may worthily partake of thy Paschal feast. Plant thy cross in every heart; may each one embrace it in life, may it embrace him in death; and may it be a beacon of salvation to his departing soul, a crown of glory to his immortal spirit! Amen."

[Footnote 40: Alluding to the mission just closed by the Fathers of the Institute of Charity.]

What follows is from the sermon on the "Veneration of the Blessed Virgin:"

"If, then, any one shall accuse me of wasting upon the mother of my Saviour feelings and affections which he hath jealously reserved for himself. I will appeal from the charge to his judgment, and lay the cause before him, at any stage of his blessed life. I will go unto him at the crib of Bethlehem, and acknowledge that, while, with the kings of the East, I have presented to him all my gold and frankincense and myrrh, I have ventured, with the shepherds, to present an humbler oblation of respect to her who was enduring the winter's frost in an unsheltered stable, entirely for his sake. Or I will meet him, as the holy fugitives repose on their desert-path to Egypt, and confess that, knowing from the example of Agar, how a mother cast forth from her house into the wilderness, for her infant's sake, only loves it the more, and needs an angel to comfort her in her anguish (Gen. xxi. 17), I have not restrained my eyes from her whose fatigues and pain were a hundred-fold increased by his, when I have sympathized with him in this his early flight, endured for my sins. Or I will approach a more awful tribunal, and step to the foot of his cross, and own to him, that while I have adored his wounds, and stirred up in my breast my deepest feelings of grief and commiseration for what I have made him suffer, my thoughts could not refrain from sometimes glancing toward her whom I saw resignedly standing at his feet, and sharing his sorrows; and that, knowing how much Respha endured while sitting opposite to her children justly crucified by command of God (2 Kings xxi. 10), I had felt far greater compassion for her, and had not withheld the emotions, which nature itself dictated, of love, and veneration, and devout affection toward her. And to the judgment of such a son I will gladly bow, and his meek mouth shall speak my sentence, and I will not fear it. For I have already heard it from the cross, addressed to me, to you, to all, as he said: 'Woman, behold thy son;' and again: 'Behold thy mother.' (John xix. 26, 27.)"

An appendix to the volume contains six beautiful pastorals, on devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, in connection with education.

SPIRITUAL PROGRESS. By J. W. Cummings, D.D., LL.D., of St. Stephen's Church, New York City. 12mo., pp. 330. New York: P. O'Shea.

We cannot better state the purpose of this excellent little book than in the words of the author's preface: "Spiritual Progress is a familiar exposition of Catholic morality, which has for its object to tell people of common intelligence what they are expected to do in {141} order to be good Christians, and how they shall do it, and the results that will follow." It is written not for those strong, heroic souls, whose faith is firm, whose devotion is ardent, and who crave strong spiritual food; but for that numerous class of weak Christians, recent converts, honest inquirers, and fervent but uninstructed Catholics, who are not yet prepared to accept the more difficult counsels of perfection; who are ready perhaps to do what God says they must do; but need a little training before they can be brought to do any more. To put an ascetic work into the hands of such persons would often be like giving beef to a young baby: it would hurt, not help them. Dr. Cummings's book, in fact, is a sort of spiritual primer for the use of those who are just beginning their spiritual education. It is simple, straightforward, and practical. There is a charm in the style—so clear, so terse, often almost epigrammatic, and sometimes rising to the poetical—which carries the reader along in spite of himself. The tone is not conversational; yet when you read, it seems as if you were not so much reading as listening. And that argues great literary merit.

Here is an extract from the chapter on "Faults of Conversation:"

"Gossip is the bane of conversation, for it is the name under which injustice makes her entrance into society. There is an element in the breast of the most civilized communities, even in times of great refinement, that explains how man may, under certain circumstances, become a cannibal. It is exhibited in the turns our humor takes in conversation. We are not ill-natured, nor disposed to lay a straw in the way of any one who has not injured us, and yet, when spurred on by the stimulus of talking and being talked to, we can bring ourselves to mimic, revile, and misrepresent others, traduce and destroy their good name, reveal their secrets, and proclaim their faults; and all this merely to follow the lead of others, or for the sake of appearing facetious and amusing, or for the purpose of building up ourselves by running down those whom in our hearts we know and believe to be better than we are.…… But as the gossip attacks the absent because the absent cannot defend himself or herself, shall not we, dear readers, form a society to assist the weak and the persecuted? Shall we not enter into a compact to defend those who cannot defend themselves? Let us answer as a love of fair play suggests. If we are at all influenced by regard for Christian charity, let us remember that it takes two to carry on a conversation against our neighbor, and that if our visitor is guilty of being a gossip, a false witness, or a detractor, we are also guilty by consenting to officiate as listeners."

In a chapter on the "Schooling of the Imagination," Dr. Cummings shows how the imaginative faculty may be made to serve the cause of religion, especially in the practice of meditation, and how dangerous it becomes when it is not held in check:

"We hear songs and the flutters of many wings at Bethlehem, and see the light streaming from heaven upon the face of the new-born Saviour. We look out over the blue waters of the Lake of Genesareth, and see the quaint little bark of Peter as it lay near the shore when Jesus preached to the people from its side, or as it flew before the wind when the sea waxed wroth, and a great storm arose, he meanwhile sleeping and they fearing they would perish. With the aid of this wonderful faculty we see him before us in the hour of his triumph, surrounded by the multitudes singing, 'Hosanna to the son of David,' and in that sad day of his final sorrow, when the same voices swelled the fearful cry, 'Crucify him, crucify him.'"

A GENERAL HISTORY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, FROM THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA UNTIL THE PRESENT TIME. By M. L'Abbé J. E. Darras. First American from the last French edition. With an Introduction and Notes, by the Most Rev. M. J. Spalding, D.D., Archbishop of Baltimore. Parts 1, 2, and 3. 8vo. New York: P. O'Shea.

This valuable work, which Mr. O'Shea, with a laudable spirit of enterprise, is giving us by instalments, is intended for just that class of readers who stand most in need of a readable and pretty full Church history. When completed it will fill four portly volumes, imperial octavo; yet it is a work adapted more especially to family reading than to the use of the scholar in his closet. The Abbé Darras has judiciously refrained from obstructing the flow of his narrative by minute references and quotations, nor has he suffered his pen to run away into long discussions of controverted questions. What he says of the chronology which he has followed, he might have said, if we have read him {142} aright, of his whole work: "We have adopted a system already completed, not that it may perhaps be the most exact in all its details, but because it is the one most generally followed." This seems to be the principle which he has kept before his eyes throughout; and considering the purpose for which he wrote, we think it a good one. With all the simplicity and modesty of his style, however, he shows a thorough knowledge of the intricacies of his subject, and an acquaintance with what the best scholars have written before him. His history, therefore, fills a void which has long been aching.

The translation, made by a lady well known and respected by the Catholics of the United States, reads smoothly, and we doubt not is accurate. It has been revised by competent theologians, and has the special sanction of the Archbishop of Baltimore, beside the approbation of the Archbishops of New York and Cincinnati. The work in the original French received the warmest encomiums from the European clergy, and the author was honored, at the conclusion of his labors, by a kind letter from the Pope.

The mechanical execution of the book is beautiful. The paper is good, and the type large and clear. We thank Mr. O'Shea for giving us so important a work in such a rich and appropriate dress.

THE PROGRESS OF THE AGE, AND THE DANGER OF THE AGE. Two lectures delivered before the St. Xavier Conference of the St. Vincent de Paul Brotherhood in the Hall of St. Louis University. By the Rev. Louis Heylen, S. J. 12mo., pp. 107. Cincinnati: John P. Walsh.

These two lectures formed parts of a course delivered during the winter of 1862-63, by some of the professors of the St. Louis University. They are admirable compositions, redolent of good sense, learning, and ripe thought, and deeply interesting. The style has a true oratorical ring. In the first lecture Father Heylen, after adverting to the fact that every age since the days of Adam has been marked by some special characteristic, examines the claim set forth by our own century to be emphatically the age of progress. In part he admits and in part he denies it. In material progress, and in the natural sciences, especially as applied to the purposes of industry and commerce, it stands at the head of ages. But moral progress is not one of its characteristics. "Here I feel," says he, "that I am entering upon a difficult question. Has there been, in the last fifty years, any marked increase of crime? Is our age, all things considered, really worse than preceding ages? This question I shall not undertake to decide; but there are some forms of crime which appear to me decidedly peculiar to our age." A brief review of these sins of the day leads naturally to the subject of the second lecture. Father Heylen sees our greatest danger in that practical materialism which places material interests and materialistic passions above the interests of the soul and the claims of virtue. He considers successively its extent, its effects, and the means to avert it—the last being, of course, the ennobling and spiritualizing influence of Catholicism.

We advise those who wish to see how a scholar and an orator can throw a fresh charm into a stale subject, to read Father Heylen's review of the startling discoveries of modern science in the first lecture, and his brilliant description in the second of the ruins with which materialism has spread the pages of history and the new life which Catholicism has infused into effete civilizations.

Prefixed to the little volume before us is a short biographical sketch of Father Heylen, who died in 1863.

UNDINE, OR THE WATER-SPIRIT. Also SINTRAM AND HIS COMPANIONS. From the German of Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué. I vol. 12mo., pp. 238. New York: James Miller.

THIODOLF, THE ICELANDER. A Romance. From the German of the Baron de la Motte Fouqué. 12mo., pp. 308. New York: James Miller.

For a man of refined and cultivated taste we know of hardly any more delightful literary recreation than to turn from the novels of our own day to one of the exquisite romances of La Motte Fouqué. There is a nobleness of sentiment in his wild and beautiful fancies which seems to lift us out of this world into a higher sphere. All his writings are pervaded by an ideal Christian chivalry, {143} spiritualizing and refining the supernatural machinery which he is so fond of borrowing from the old Norse legends. No other author has ever treated the Northern mythology so well; because no other has attempted to give us its beauties without its grossness. The gods and heroes of the Norsemen have been very much in fashion of late years; but take almost any of the Scandinavian tales recently translated—tales which, if they have any moral, seem to inculcate the morality of lying and cheating, and the virtue of strong muscles and how immeasurably finer and more beautiful by the side of them appear the fairy legends which Fouqué interweaves with his romances, mingling old superstitions with Christian faith and virtues, in so delicate a manner that we see no incongruity in the association. This mutual adaptation, if we may call it so, he effects partly by transporting us back to those early times when the faith was as yet only half-rooted in the Northern soil, and when even many Christian converts clung almost unconsciously to some of their old pagan beliefs; partly by the genuine religious spirit which inspires every page of his books, no matter what their subject; and partly by the allegorical significance which his romances generally convey. So from tales of water-sprites and evil spirits, devils, dwarfs, and all manner of supernatural appearances, we rise with the feeling that we have been reading a lesson of piety, truth, integrity, and honor. Carlyle calls the chivalry of Fouqué more extravagant than that which we supposed Cervantes had abolished; but we are far from agreeing in such a judgment. A chivalry which rests upon "wise and pious thoughts, treasured in a pure heart," deserves something better to be said of it.

The three tales whose titles are given above are specimens of three somewhat different styles in which Fouqué treats his darling subject of Christian knighthood. The story of "Undine" has always been a pet in every language of Europe. Sir Walter Scott called it "ravishing;" Coleridge expressed unbounded admiration of it; the author himself termed it his darling child. For the tale of "Sintram" we have a particular affection. As a work of art, it is not to be compared with the former: it has but little of that tender aerial fancy which makes the story of the {144} water-sprite so inexpressibly graceful; but there is a sombre beauty in it which is not less captivating. It is a story of temptation and trial, of battle with self and triumph over sin. Its allegorical meaning is more distinct than that of Undine; it speaks more unmistakably of faith and heroic virtue. "Thiodolf, the Icelander," is a picture of Norse and Byzantine manners in the tenth century, and presents an interesting contrast between the rough manliness of the former and the luxury of the court of Constantinople. To the merits of wealth of imagination, skilful delineation of character, and dramatic power of narration, it is said to add historical accuracy.

OUR FARM OF FOUR ACRES, AND THE MONEY WE MADE BY IT. 12mo., pp. 128. New York: James Miller.

It is no slight proof of the merit of this little book that it has gone through at least twelve editions in England, and had so many imitators that it may almost be called the founder of a school of literature. Its popularity is still undiminished, and promises long to continue so. Hardly any one can fail of being interested in this simple narrative of the blunders, mishaps, and final triumphs of two city-bred sisters, in their effort to keep a little farm and make it pay; but to those who, either for health's sake or economy, are about entering on a similar enterprise, we cannot too strongly recommend it. It is so practical that we cannot doubt it is all true—indeed its directness and air of truth and good sense are the secrets of its remarkable success. We commend it to our readers as an interesting exemplification of a truth which ought to be more widely known than it is—that with proper management a small family on a small place in the country can raise all their own vegetables, not only to their great comfort, but with considerable pecuniary profit. Men who spend half-a-year's income in the rent of a city house would do well to take to heart the lessons of this little book.

THE IRVINGTON STORIES. By M. E. Dodge. Illustrated by F. O. C. Darley. 16mo., pp. 256. New York: James O'Kane.

This is a collection of tales for young people, manufactured with considerable {145} taste and neatness. Some of the stories bear a good moral, distinctly brought out.

REPLY TO THE CHRISTIAN EXAMINER ON CATHOLICITY AND NATURALISM. 8vo., pp. 24. Boston: Patrick Donahoe.

The Christian Examiner for January, 1865, contained an article on "The Order of St. Paul the Apostle, and the New Catholic Church," in which the writer, after describing a visit to the Paulist establishment in Fifty-ninth street, and representing Father Hecker and his companions as being engaged in the attempt to found a new Catholic Church, passed on to the consideration of the question what form of religion is best adapted to the wants of the American people. It was a remarkable article—remarkable not only for its graceful diction, but for its curious admissions of the failure of Protestantism as a religious system. "The process of disintegration," says the Examiner, "is going forward with immense rapidity throughout Protestant Christendom. Organizations are splitting asunder, institutions are falling into decay, customs are becoming uncustomary, usages are perishing from neglect, sacraments are deserted by the multitude, creeds are decomposing under the action of liberal studies and independent thought." But from these falling ruins mankind will seek refuge not in the bosom of the Catholic Church, says the Christian Examiner, but in Naturalism. The object of the pamphlet before us is to show, after correcting certain misstatements concerning the congregation of Paulists, that Naturalism is utterly unable to satisfy those longings of the heart which, as the Examiner confesses, no Protestant sect can appease.

PASTORAL LETTER OF THE MOST REV. MARTIN JOHN SPALDING, D. D., ARCHBISHOP OF BALTIMORE, ETC., TOGETHER WITH THE LATE ENCYCLICAL OF THE HOLY FATHER, AND THE SYLLABUS OF ERRORS CONDEMNED. 8vo., pp. 43. Baltimore: Kelly & Piet.

In promulgating the jubilee lately proclaimed by the sovereign pontiff, the Most Rev. Archbishop Spalding takes occasion to make a few timely remarks on the Encyclical, the character of Pius IX., the temporal power of the Popes, and the errors recently condemned. He explains the true purport of the much-abused Encyclical, shows against whom it is directed—namely, the European radicals and infidels—and proves that it never was the intention of the Pope, as has been alleged, to assail the institutions of this country. In view of the absurd mistranslations of the Encyclical which have been published by the Protestant press, Catholics will be glad to have the correct English version of that important document, which is given by way of appendix to the pastoral.

We have received the First Supplement to the Catalogue of the Library of the Young Men's Association of the City of Milwaukee, with the annual report of the Board of Directors for 1863.

THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. I., NO. 2. MAY, 1865.

From the Dublin Review.

HEDWIGE, QUEEN OF POLAND.

Hedwige was the youngest daughter of Lewis, nephew and successor to Casimir the Great, who, on account of the preference he evinced for his Hungarian subjects, drew upon himself the continued ill-will of the nation he was called upon to govern. Finding he was unable to cope with the numerous factions everywhere ready to oppose him, he, not without many humiliating concessions to the nobles of Poland, induced them to elect as his successor his daughter Maria, wife of Sigismund, Marquis of Brandenburg (afterward emperor), and having appointed the Duke of Oppelen regent of the kingdom, retired to his native Hungary, unwilling to relinquish the shadow of the sceptre which continually evaded his grasp.

On his death, which happened in 1382, Poland became the theatre of intestine disorders fomented by the turbulent nobles, who, notwithstanding the allegiance they had sworn to the Princess Maria, refused to allow her even to enter the kingdom. Sigismund was not, however, inclined thus easily to forego his wife's claims; and as the Lord of Mazovia at the same time aspired to the vacant throne, many of the provinces became so desolated by civil war that the leaders of the adverse factions threw down their arms, and simultaneously agreed to offer the crown to the Princess Hedwige, then residing in Hungary under the care of her mother Elizabeth. By no means approving of a plan which thus unceremoniously excluded her eldest daughter from the throne, the queen dowager endeavored to oppose injustice by policy. Hedwige was at the time only fourteen years of age, and the deputies were informed that, as the princess was too young to undertake the heavy responsibilities of sovereignty, her brother-in-law Sigismund must act in her stead until such time as she herself should be considered capable of assuming the reins of government. This stratagem did not succeed; the duke was not allowed to cross the frontiers of Poland, and Elizabeth found herself compelled to part with her daughter, if she would not see the crown placed on the brow of whomever the diet might elect.

Now commenced the trials of the young Hedwige, who was thus early called upon to exercise those virtues of heroic fortitude, patient endurance, and self-denial which rendered her life a sort of continual martyrdom, a sacrifice daily offered up at the shrines of religion and patriotism. At the early age of four years she had been affianced to William, Duke of Austria, {146} who, in accordance with the custom of the times, had been educated in Hungary; his affection for his betrothed growing with his growth, and increasing with his years. Ambition had no charms for Hedwige; her fervent piety, shrinking modesty, and feminine timidity sought to conceal, not only her extraordinary beauty, but those rare mental endowments of which she was possessed. Bitter were the tears shed by this gentle girl, when her mother, alarmed at the menaces of the Polish nobles, informed her she must immediately depart for Cracow, under the protection of Cardinal Demetrius, Bishop of Strigonia, who was pledged to deliver her into the hands of those whom she was disposed to regard rather as her masters than as her subjects. There had been one stipulation made, which, had she been aware of its existence, would have added a sharper pang to the already poignant anguish of Hedwige: the Poles required that their young sovereign should marry only with the consent of the diet, and that her husband should not only reside constantly in Poland, but pledge himself never to attempt to render that country dependent on any other power. Although aware of the difficulties thus thrown in the way of her union with Duke William, her mother had subscribed to these conditions; and Hedwige, having been joyfully received by the prelates and nobles of her adopted country, was solemnly crowned in the cathedral at Cracow, October 15, 1385, being the festival of her patron, St. Hedwige. Her youth, loveliness, grace, and intellectual endowments won from the fierce chieftains an enthusiastic affection which had been denied to the too yielding Lewis; their national pride was flattered, their loyalty awakened, by the innocent fascinations of their young sovereign, and they almost sought to defer the time which, in her husband, would necessarily give them a ruler of sterner mould. Nor was Hedwige undeserving of the exalted station she had been compelled to fill: a worthy descendant of the sainted Lewis, her every word and action waa marked by a gravity and maturity which bore witness to the supernatural motives and heavenly wisdom by which it was inspired; and yet, in the silence of her chamber, many were the tears she shed over the memory of ties severed, she feared, for ever. Amongst the earliest candidates for her hand was Ziemovit, Duke of Mazovia, already mentioned as one of the competitors for the crown after the death of her father; but the Poles, still smarting from the effects of his unbridled ambition, dismissed his messengers with a refusal couched in terms of undisguised contempt. The question of her marriage once agitated, the mind of Hedwige naturally turned to him on whom her heart was unalterably fixed, and whom from her childhood she had been taught to consider as her future husband; but an alliance with the house of Austria formed no part of Polish policy, and neither the wishes nor the entreaties of their queen could induce the diet to entertain the idea for a moment; in short, their whole energy was employed in bringing about a union which, however disagreeable to the young sovereign, was likely to be in every way advantageous to the country and favorable to the interests of religion.

Jagello, the pagan Duke of Lithuania, was from his proximity and the extent of his possessions (comprising Samogitia and a large portion of Russia [Footnote 41]) a formidable enemy to Poland. Fame was not slow in wafting to his ears rumors of the beauty and accomplishments of Hedwige, which being more than corroborated by ambassadors employed to ascertain the truth, the impetuous Jagello determined to secure the prize, even at the cost of national independence. The idolatry of the Lithuanians and the early betrothal of Hedwige to Duke William were the chief obstacles with which he had to contend; but, after a brief {147} deliberation, an embassy was despatched, headed by Skirgello, brother to the grand-duke, and bearing the most costly presents; Jagello himself being with difficulty dissuaded from accompanying them in person. The envoys were admitted into the presence of the council, at which the queen herself presided, and the prince proceeded to lay before the astonished nobles the offers of the barbarian suitor, offers too tempting to be weighed in the balance against such a trifle as a girl's happiness, or the violation of what these overbearing politicians were pleased to term a mere childish engagement, contracted before the parties were able to judge for themselves. After a long harangue, in which Skirgello represented how vainly the most illustrious potentates and the most powerful rulers had hitherto endeavored to effect the conversion of Lithuania, he offered as "a tribute to the charms of the queen" that Jagello and his brothers, together with the princes, lords, and people of Lithuania and Samogitia, should at once embrace the Catholic faith; that all the Christian captives should be restored unransomed; and the whole of their extensive dominions be incorporated with Poland; the grand-duke also pledging himself to reconquer for that country Pomerania, Silesia, and whatever other territories had been torn from Poland by neighboring states; and, finally, promising to make good to the Poles the sum of two hundred thousand florins, which had been sent to William of Austria as the dowry forfeited by the non-fulfilment of the engagement entered into by their late king Lewis. A murmur of applause at this unprecedented generosity ran through the assembly; the nobles hailed the prospect of so unlooked-for an augmentation of national power and security; and the bishops could not but rejoice at the prospect of rescuing so many souls from the darkness of heathenism, and securing at one and the same time the propagation of the Catholic faith and the peace of Poland. But the queen herself shared not these feelings of satisfaction: no sooner had Skirgello ceased than she started from her seat, cast a hasty glance round the assembly, and, as if reading her fate in the countenances of the nobles, buried her face in her hands and burst into a flood of tears. All attempts to soothe and pacify her were in vain: in a strain of passionate eloquence, which was not without its effect, she pleaded her affection for Duke William, the sacred nature of the engagement by which she was pledged to become his wife, pointed to the ring on her finger, and reminded an aged prelate who had accompanied her from Hungary that he had himself witnessed their being laid in the same cradle at the ceremony of their betrothal. It was impossible to behold unmoved the anguish of so gentle a creature; not a few of the younger chieftains espoused the cause of their sovereign; and, at the urgent solicitation of Hedwige, it was finally determined that the Lithuanian ambassadors, accompanied by three Polish nobles, should repair to Buda for the purpose of consulting her mother, the Queen of Hungary.

[Footnote 41: The territories of many of the Russian or Ruthenian dukes which were conquered by the Lithuanian pagans.]

But Elizabeth, though inaccessible to the temptations of worldly ambition, was too pious, too self-denying, to allow maternal affection to preponderate over the interests of religion. Aware that the betrothal of her daughter to the Duke of Austria had never been renewed from the time of their infancy, she, without a moment's hesitation, replied that, for her own part, she desired nothing, but that the queen ought to sacrifice every human feeling for the glory of Christianity and the welfare of Poland. To Hedwige herself she wrote affectionately, though firmly, bidding her lay every natural inclination at the foot of the cross, and desiring her to praise that God who had chosen so unworthy an instrument as the means by which the pure splendor of Catholicity should penetrate the darkness of Lithuania and the other pagan nations. Elizabeth was aware {148} of the real power of religion over the mind of her child, and doubted not but that, after the first paroxysm of grief had subsided, she should be able to overcome by its means the violence of her daughter's repugnance to the proposed measure. In order to give a color of impartiality to their proceedings, a diet was convoked at Cracow, immediately on the return of the embassy, to deliberate on the relative claims of Jagello, William of Austria, and the Dukes of Mazovia and Oppelen, all of whom aspired to the hand of Hedwige and the crown of Poland. The discussion was long and stormy, for amongst those nobles more immediately around the queen's person there were many, including a large body of ecclesiastics, who, although convinced that no lawful impediment existed to the marriage, yet shrank from the cruelty of uniting the gentle princess to a barbarian; and these failed not to insist upon the insult which would be implied by such a choice to the native Catholic princes. The majority, however, were of a different opinion, and at the close of the diet it was decided that an ambassador should be despatched to Jagello, inviting him to Cracow for the purpose of continuing the negotiations in his own person. But William of Austria was too secure in the justice of his cause and the affection of his betrothed to resign his pretensions without an effort; and his ardor being by no means diminished by a letter which he received from the queen herself, imploring him to hasten to her assistance, he placed himself at the head of a numerous retinue, and, with a treasure by which he hoped to purchase the good-will of the adverse faction, appeared so suddenly at Cracow as to deprive his opponents of their self-possession. The determination of Hedwige to unite herself to the object of her early and deep affection was loudly expressed, and, as there were many powerful leaders—among others, Gniewosz, Vice-chamberlain of Cracow—who espoused her cause, and rallied round Duke William, the Polish nobles, not daring openly to oppose their sovereign, were on the point of abandoning the cause of Jagello, when Dobeslas, Castellain of Cracow, one of the staunchest supporters of the Lithuanian alliance, resolved at any risk to prevent the meeting of the lovers, and actually went so far as to refuse the young prince admission into the castle, where the queen at the time was residing, not only drawing his sword, but dragging the duke with him over the drawbridge, which he commanded to be immediately lowered. William, thus repulsed, fixed his quarters at the Franciscan monastery; and Hedwige, fired by the insult, rode forth accompanied by a chosen body of knights and her female attendants, determined by the completion of her marriage to place an insuperable bar between her and Jagello.

In the refectory of the monastery, the queen and the prince at length met; and, after several hours spent in considering how best to avert the separation with which they were threatened, it was arranged that William should introduce himself privately into the castle of Cracow, where they were to be united by the queen's confessor. Some time elapsed before this plan could be carried into execution; for although even Dobeslas hesitated to confine his sovereign within her own palace, the castle gates were kept shut against the entrance of the Duke of Austria. Exasperated at this continued opposition, and her affection augmented by the presence of its object, from whom the arrival, daily expected, of Jagello would divide her for ever, Hedwige determined to admit the prince disguised as one of her household, and a day was accordingly fixed for the execution of this romantic project. By some means or other the whole plan came to the knowledge of the vigilant castellain; the adventurous prince was seized in a passage leading to the royal apartments, loaded with insult, and driven from the palace, within the walls of which the queen now found herself a prisoner. {149} It was in vain she wept, and implored to be allowed to see her betrothed once more, if only to bid him farewell; her letters were intercepted, her attendants became spies on her movements, and, on the young prince presenting himself before the gates, his life was threatened by the barons who remained within the fortress. This was too much; alarmed for her lover's safety, indignant at the restraint to which she was subjected, the passion of the girl triumphed over the dignity of the sovereign. Quitting her apartment, she hurried to the great gate, which, as she apprehended, was secured in such a manner as to baffle all her efforts; trembling with fear, and eager only to effect her escape, she called for a hatchet, and, raising it with both hands, repeatedly struck the locks and bolts that prevented her egress. The childish simplicity of the attempt, the agony depicted in the beautiful and innocent countenance of their mistress, so touched the hearts of the rude soldiery, that, but for their dread of the nobles, Hedwige would through their means have effected her purpose. As it was, they offered no opposition, but stood in mournful and respectful silence; when the venerable Demetrius, grand-treasurer of the kingdom, approached, and falling on his knees, implored her to be calm, and to sacrifice her own happiness, if not to the wishes of her subjects and the welfare of her country, at least to the interests of religion. At the sight of that aged man, whose thin white hairs and sorrowful countenance inspired both reverence and affection, the queen paused, and, giving him her hand, burst into an agony of tears; then, hurrying to her oratory, she threw herself on the ground before an image of the Blessed Virgin, where, after a sharp interior conflict, she succeeded in resigning herself to what she now believed to be the will of God—embracing for his sake the heavy cross which she was to bear for the remainder of her life.

Meanwhile Duke William, to escape the vengeance of the wrathful barons, was compelled to quit Poland, leaving his now useless wealth in the charge of the vice-chamberlain, who still apparently continued his friend. Not long after his departure, Jagello, at the head of a numerous army, and attended by his two brothers, crossed the frontiers, determined, as it seemed, to prosecute his suit. At the first rumor of his approach, the most powerful and influential among the nobles repaired to Cracow, where prayers, remonstrances, and even menaces were employed to induce the queen to accept the hand of the barbarian prince. But to all their eloquence Hedwige turned a deaf ear: in vain did agents, despatched for the purpose, represent the duke as handsome in person, princely and dignified in manner; her conscience was troubled, duty had enlisted on the same side as feeling, and the contest again commenced. Setting inclination aside, how dared she break the solemn compact she had made with the Duke of Austria? She persisted in regarding her proposed marriage with Jagello as nothing short of an act of criminal infidelity; and, independently of the affliction of her heart, her soul became a prey to the most violent remorse. To obtain the consent of Duke William to their separation was of course out of the question; and before the puzzled council could arrive at any decision, Jagello entered Cracow, more in the style of a conqueror than a suitor, and repaired at once to the castle, where he found the queen surrounded by a court surpassing in beauty and magnificence all that his imagination had pictured. Pale as she was from the intensity of her sufferings, he was dazzled, almost bewildered, by the childlike innocence and winning loveliness of Hedwige; and his admiration was expressed the following day by the revenues of a province being laid at her feet in the shape of jewels and robes of the most costly description. But the queen was more obdurate than ever. With her knowledge and consent Duke William had returned to Cracow, though compelled {150} to resort to a variety of disguises to escape the fury of the barons, now determined to put an end to his pretensions and his existence together; and it is said that, in order to avoid his indefatigable enemy, Dobeslas, he was once compelled to seek refuge in a large chimney. Forced eventually to quit the capital without seeing Hedwige, he still loitered in the environs; nor did he return to Austria until her marriage with Jagello terminated those hopes which he had cherished from his earliest infancy. In order to quiet the queen's religious scruples, a letter is said to have arrived from Rome, in which, after pronouncing that the early betrothal involved no impediment to the marriage, the Holy Father placed before her the merits of the offering she was called upon to make, reminding her of the torments so cheerfully suffered by the early martyrs for the honor of God, and calling upon her to imitate their example. This statement, however, is not sufficiently authenticated.

After the severest interior trials, days spent in tears, fasting, and the most earnest petitions to the throne of Divine grace, the queen received strength to consummate the sacrifice demanded from her. Naturally ardent and impulsive, and at an age when every sentiment is freshest and most keen, she was called upon to extirpate from her heart an affection not only deep but legitimate, to inflict a wound on the object of her tenderest love, and, finally, to transfer her devotion to one whom she had hitherto regarded with feelings of unqualified aversion. The path of highest, because self-sacrificing duty, once clear before her, she determined to act with generosity toward a God from whom she had received so much: her beauty, talents, the virtues with which she was adorned, were so many precious gifts to be placed at the disposal of him by whom they had been bestowed. Covering herself with a thick black veil, she proceeded on foot to the cathedral of Cracow, and, repairing to one of the side chapels, threw herself on her knees, where for three hours, with clasped hands and streaming eyes, she wrestled with the violent feeling that struggled in her bosom. At length she rose with a detached heart, having laid at the foot of the cross her affections, her will, her hopes of earthly happiness; offering herself, and all that belonged to her, as a perpetual holocaust to her crucified Redeemer, and esteeming herself happy so that by this sacrifice she might purchase the salvation of those precious souls for whom he had shed his blood. Before leaving the chapel she cast her veil over the crucifix, hoping under that pall to bury all of human infirmity that might still linger round her heart, and then hastened to establish a foundation for the perpetual renewal of this type of her "soul's sorrow." This foundation yet exists: within the same chapel the crucifix still stands, covered by its sable drapery, being commonly known as the Crucifix of Hedwige.

The queen's consent to the Lithuanian alliance endeared her still more to the hearts of her subjects, who regarded her as a martyr to the peace of Poland. On the 14th of February, 1386, her marriage was celebrated with becoming solemnity, Jagello having previously received the sacrament of baptism; shortly afterward he was crowned, in the presence of Hedwige, under his Christian name of Wladislas, which he had taken in deference to the wishes of the Poles. The unassuming piety, gentle disposition, and great learning of the young queen commanded at once the respect and admiration of her husband. So great, indeed, was his opinion of her prudence, that, being obliged to march into Upper Poland to crush the rebellion of the Palatine of Posnia, he took her with him in the capacity of mediatrix between himself and the disaffected leaders who had for months desolated that province. This mission of mercy was most acceptable to Hedwige; after the example of the sainted {151} Elizabeth of Hungary, her generosity toward the widows, orphans, and those who had lost their substance in this devastating war, was boundless; whilst ministering to their wants, she failed not, at the same time, to sympathize with their distress; and, like an angel of peace, she would stand between her husband and the objects of his indignation. On one occasion, to supply the necessities of the court, so heavy a contribution had been laid upon the peasants that their cattle did not escape; watching their opportunity, they, with their wives and children, threw themselves in the queen's path, filling the air with their cries, and conjuring her to prevent their utter ruin. Hedwige, deeply affected, dismounted from her palfrey, and, kneeling by their side, besought her husband not to sanction so flagrant an act of oppression; and when the satisfied peasants retired fully indemnified for their loss, she is said to have exclaimed, "Their cattle are restored, but who will recompense them for their tears?" Having reduced the country to obedience, it was time for Wladislas to turn his attention to his Lithuanian territories, more especially Russia Nigra, which, although governed by its own princes, was compelled to do homage to the house of Jagello. Pomerania, which by his marriage articles he was pledged to recover for Poland, had been usurped by the Teutonic Knights, who, sensible with how formidable an opponent they had to contend, endeavored to frustrate his intentions, first by carrying fire and sword into Lithuania, and then by exciting a revolution in favor of Duke Andrew, to whom, as well as to the heathen nobles, the alliance (by which their country was rendered dependent on Poland) was displeasing. Olgerd, the father of Wladislas, was a fierce pagan, and his thirteen sons, if we except the elder, inherited his cruelty, treachery, and rapacity. The promised revolution in religion was offensive to the majority of the people; and, to their shame be it spoken, the Teutonic Knights (whose order was first established to defend the Christian faith against the assaults of infidels) scrupled not to adopt a crooked policy, and, by inciting the Lithuanians against their sovereign, threw every impediment in the way of their conversion. Before the king had any suspicion of his intentions, the grand-master had crossed the frontiers, the duchy was laid waste, and many important fortresses were already in the hands of the order.

Wladislas, then absent in Upper Poland, despatched Skirgello into Lithuania, who, though haughty, licentious, and revengeful, was a brave and skilful general. Duke Andrew fled before the forces of his brother, and the latter attacked the Knights with an impetuosity that compelled them speedily to evacuate their conquests. The arrival of the king, with a number of learned prelates, and a large body of clergy, proved he was quite in earnest regarding the conversion of his subjects, hitherto immersed in the grossest and most degrading idolatry. Trees, serpents, vipers, were the inferior objects of their adoration; gloomy forests and damp caverns their temples; and the most disgusting and venomous reptiles were cherished in every family as household gods. But, as with the eastern Magi, fire was the principal object of the Lithuanian worship; priests were appointed whose office it was to tend the sacred flame, their lives paying the penalty if it were allowed to expire. At Wilna, the capital of the duchy, was a temple of the sun; and should that luminary chance to be eclipsed, or even clouded, the people fled thither in the utmost terror, eager to appease the deity by rivers of human blood, which poured forth at the command of the Ziutz, or high priest, the victims vying with each other in the severity of their self-inflicted torments.

As the most effectual method of at once removing the errors of this infatuated people, Wladislas ordered the forests to be cut down, the serpents to {152} be crushed under the feet of his soldiers, and, after extinguishing with his own hand the sacred fires, he caused the temples to be demolished; thus demonstrating to the Lithuanians the impotency of their gods. With the cowardice ever attendant on ignorance and superstition, the pagans cast themselves with their faces to the earth, expecting to see the sacrilegious strangers blasted by the power of the profaned element; but, no such results following, they gradually lost confidence in their deities, and of their own free will desired to be instructed in the doctrines of Christ. Their theological knowledge was necessarily confined to the Lord's Prayer and the Creed, and a day was fixed for the commencement of the ceremony of baptism. As, on account of the number of catechumens, it was impossible to administer the sacrament to each individual separately, the nobles and their families, after leaving the sacred font, prepared to act as sponsors to the people, who, being divided into groups of either sex, were sprinkled by the bishops and priests, every division receiving the same name.

Hedwige had accompanied her husband to Lithuania, and was gratified by witnessing the zeal with which he assisted the priests in their arduous undertaking; whilst Wladislas, aware of the value of his young auxiliary, was not disappointed by the degree of enthusiastic veneration with which the new Christians regarded the sovereign who, at the age of sixteen, had conferred upon them peace and the light of the true faith. Hedwige was admirably adapted for this task: in her character there was no alloy of passion, pride, or frivolity; an enemy to the luxury and pomp which her sex and rank might have seemed to warrant, her fasts were rigid and her bodily mortifications severe. Neither did her fervor abate during her sojourn in the duchy. By her profuse liberality the cathedral of St. Stanislas of Wilna was completed. Nor did she neglect the other churches and religious foundations which, by her advice, her husband commenced in the principal cities of his kingdom. Before quitting Lithuania, the queen's heart was wrung by the intelligence she received of a domestic tragedy of the deepest dye. Her mother, the holy and virtuous Elizabeth of Hungary, had during a popular insurrection been put to a cruel death; whilst her sister Maria, who had fallen into the power of the rebel nobles, having narrowly escaped the same fate, was confined in an isolated fortress, subject to the most rigorous and ignominious treatment.

Paganism being at length thoroughly rooted out of Lithuania, a bishopric firmly established at Wilna, and the seven parishes in its vicinity amply supplied with ecclesiastics, Wladislas, preparatory to his return to Poland, appointed his brother Skirgello viceroy of the duchy. This was a fatal error. The proud barbarians, little disposed to dependence on a country they had been accustomed to despoil at pleasure, writhed under the yoke of the fierce tyrant, whose rule soon became odious, and whose vices were rendered more apparent by the contrast which his character presented to that of his cousin Vitowda, whom, as a check upon his well-known ferocity, Wladislas had designated as his colleague. Scarcely had the court returned to Poland, when the young prince, amiable, brave, and generous, by opposing his cousin's unjust and cruel actions, drew upon himself the vengeance of the latter, and, in order to save his life, was obliged to seek refuge in Pomerania, from whence, as his honor and patriotism alike forbade his assisting the Teutonic Knights in their designs upon his country, he applied to the king for protection.

Wladislas, of a weak and jealous disposition, was, however, at the time too much occupied in attending to foul calumnies uttered against the spotless virtue of his queen to give heed to the application. Notwithstanding the prudence of her general conduct, and {153} the tender devotion evinced by Hedwige toward her husband, the admiration which her beauty and sweetness of disposition commanded from all who approached her was a continual thorn in his side. Her former love for the Duke of Austria and repugnance to himself haunted him night and day, until he actually conceived suspicions injurious to her fidelity. In the polluted atmosphere of a court there were not wanting those who, for their own aggrandizement, were base enough to resort to falsehood in order to destroy an influence at which the wicked alone had cause to tremble. It was whispered in the ear of the unfortunate monarch that his queen had held frequent, and of course clandestine, interviews with Duke William, until, half frantic, he one day publicly reproached her, and, turning to the assembled bishops, wildly demanded a divorce. The proud nobles indignantly interposed, many a blade rattled in its sheath, eager to vindicate the innocence of one who, in their eyes, was purity itself; but Hedwige calmly arose, and with matronly dignity demanded the name of her accuser, and a solemn trial, according to the custom of her country. There was a dead silence, a pause; and then, trembling and abashed before the virtue he had maligned, the Vice-chamberlain Gniewosz, before mentioned as the friend of Duke William (whose wealth he had not failed to appropriate), stepped reluctantly forward. A murmur of surprise and wrath resounded through the council-chamber: many a sword was drawn, as though eager for the blood of the offender; but the ecclesiastics having at length calmed the tumult, the case was appointed to be judged at the diet of Wislica.

The queen's innocence was affirmed on oath by herself and her whole household, after which the castellain, John Tenczynski, with twelve knights of noble blood and unsullied honor, solemnly swore to the falsehood of the accusation, and, throwing down their gauntlets, defied to mortal combat all who should gainsay their assertion. None, however, appeared to do battle in so bad a cause; and the convicted traitor, silenced and confounded, sank on his knees, confessed his guilt, and implored the mercy of her he had so foully aspersed. The senate, in deference to the wishes of Hedwige, spared his life; but he was compelled to crouch under a bench, imitate the barking of a dog, and declare that, like that animal, he had dared to snarl against his chaste and virtuous sovereign. [Footnote 42] This done, he was deprived of his office, and banished the court; and Wladislas hastened to beg the forgiveness of his injured wife.

[Footnote 42: This was a portion of the punishment specially awarded by the penal code of Poland to the crime of calumny. Like many other punishments of those ages, it was symbolical in its character. (See the valuable work of Albert du Boys, Histoire du Droit Criminel des Peuples Modernes, liv. ii.; chap. vii.) Similar penalties had been common in Poland from early times. Thus we find Boloslas the Great inviting to a banquet and vapor bath nobles who had been guilty of some transgression; after the bath he administered a paternal reproof and castigation. Hence the Polish proverb, "to give a person a bath."]

Meanwhile Prince Vitowda, despairing of assistance and pressed on all sides, after much hesitation joined the Teutonic Knights in an incursion against Lithuania. The country was invaded by a numerous army, the capital taken by storm, abandoned to pillage, and finally destroyed by fire; no less than fourteen thousand of the inhabitants perishing in the flames, beside numbers who were massacred without distinction of sex or age. Fortunately the upper city was garrisoned by Poles, who determined to hold out to the last. The slight fortifications were speedily destroyed; but, being immediately repaired, the siege continued so long that Skirgello had time to assemble an army before which the besiegers were eventually obliged to retreat. Vitowda, now too deeply compromised to draw back, though thwarted in his designs on Upper Wilna, gained possession of many of the frontier towns, and, encouraged by success, aimed at nothing less than the independent sovereignty of Lithuania. He was, however, opposed during {154} two or three campaigns by Wladislas person, until, wearied of the war, the king had the weakness not only to sue for peace, but to invest Vitowda with the government of the duchy. This, as might be expected, gave great umbrage to Skirgello, and to another brother, Swidrigal, so that Lithuania, owing to the ambition of the rival princes, became for some time the theatre of civil discord.

Among her other titles to admiration, we must not omit to mention that Hedwige was a munificent patroness of learning. She hastened to re-establish the college built by Casimir II., founded and endowed a magnificent university at Prague for the education of the Lithuanian youth, and superintended the translation of the Holy Scriptures into Polish, writing with her own hands the greater part of the New Testament. Her work was interrupted during her husband's absence by the attack of the Hungarians on the frontiers of Poland; and it was then that, laying aside the weakness of her sex, she felt herself called upon to supply his place. A powerful army was levied, of which this youthful heroine assumed the command, directing the councils of the generals, and sharing the privations of the meanest soldier. When she appeared on horseback in the midst of the troops, nothing could exceed the enthusiasm of these hardy warriors; and the simplicity with which they obeyed the slightest order of their queen was touching in the extreme. Hedwige led her forces into Russia Nigra, and, partly by force of arms, partly by skilful negotiations, succeeded in reconquering the whole of that vast province, which her father Lewis had detached from the Polish crown in order to unite it to that of his beloved Hungary. This act of injustice was repaired by his daughter, who thus endeared her name to the memory of succeeding generations. The conquering army proceeded to Silesia, then usurped by the Duke of Oppelen, where they were equally successful; so that Wladislas was indebted for the brightest trophies of his reign to the heroism of his wife.

Encouraged by her past success, he determined to reconduct her into Lithuania, in hopes by her means to settle the dissensions of the rival princes. Accordingly, in the spring of 1393, they proceeded thither, when the disputants, subdued by the irresistible charm of her manners, agreed to refer their claims to her arbitration. Of a solid and mature judgment, Hedwige succeeded in pacifying them; and then, by mutual consent, they entered into a solemn compact that in their future differences, instead of resorting to arms, they would submit their cause unreservedly to the arbitration of the young Queen of Poland.

Notwithstanding its restoration to internal tranquillity, this unfortunate duchy was continually laid waste by the Teutonic Knights; and Wladislas, determined to hazard all on one decisive battle, commanded forces to be levied not only in Lithuania, but in Poland. Before the preparations were completed, an interview was arranged to take place between the king and the grand-master, Conrad de Jungen; but the nobility, fearing lest the irritable temper of Wladislas would prove an insurmountable obstacle to all accommodation, implored him to allow the queen to supply his place. On his consent, Hedwige, accompanied by the ecclesiastics, the barons, and a magnificent retinue, proceeded to the place of rendezvous, where she was met by Conrad and the principal knight-commanders of the order. The terms she proposed were equitable, and more lenient than the Teutonic Knights had any reason to expect; but, under one trifling pretext or another, they refused the restitution of the usurped territories on which the king naturally insisted, and the queen was at length obliged to return, prophesying, says the chronicler, that, after her death, their perversity would receive its deserved punishment at the hands of her husband. Her prediction was fulfilled. Some years afterward, on the plains {155} between Grunnervaldt and Tannenberg, the grand-master, with fifty thousand knights, was slain, and by this decisive victory the order was placed at the mercy of Poland, though, from the usual indecision of its king, the fruits of this splendid action were less than might have been expected.

Until her early death, Hedwige continued the guardian angel of that beloved country for which she had made her first and greatest sacrifice; and it is likely that but for her watchfulness, its interests would have been frequently compromised by the Lithuanian union. Acting on this principle, she refused to recognize the investiture of her husband's favorite, the Palatine of Cracow, with the perpetual fief of Podolia; and, undazzled by the apparent advantages offered by an expedition against the Tartars headed by the great Tamerlane, she forbade the Polish generals to take part in a campaign which, owing to the rashness of Vitowda, terminated so fatally.

It was shortly after her unsuccessful interview with the Teutonic Knights that, by the death of her sister Maria, the crown of Hungary (which ought to have devolved on her husband Sigismund) became again an object of contention. The Hungarians, attracted by the report of her moderation, wisdom, and even military skill—not an uncommon accomplishment in females of those times—determined to offer it to Hedwige; but her brother-in-law, trusting to her sense of justice, hastened to Cracow, praying her not to accept the proposal, and earnestly soliciting her alliance. The queen, whom ambition had no power to dazzle, consented, and a treaty advantageous to Poland was at once concluded.

Hedwige was a good theologian, and well read in the fathers and doctors of the Church; the works of St. Bernard and St. Ambrose, the revelations of St. Bridget, and the sermons of holy men, being the works in which she most delighted. In Church music she was an enthusiast; and not long after the completion of the convent of the Visitation, which she had caused to be erected near the gates of Cracow, she founded the Benedictine abbey of the Holy Cross, where office was daily recited in the Selavonian language, after the custom of the order at Prague. She also instituted a college in honor of the Blessed Virgin, where the Psalms were daily chanted, after an improved method, by sixteen canons.

It was toward the close of the year 1398 that, to the great delight of her subjects, it became evident that the union of Wladislas and Hedwige would at length be blessed with offspring. To see the throne filled by a descendant of their beloved sovereign had been the dearest wish of the Polish people, and fervent had been the prayers offered for this inestimable blessing. The enraptured Wladislas hastened to impart his expected happiness to most of the Christian kings and princes, not forgetting the Supreme Pontiff, Boniface IX., by whom the merits of the young queen were so well appreciated that, six years after her accession, he had addressed to her a letter, written with his own hand, in which he thanked her for her affectionate devotion to the Catholic Church, and informed her that, although it was impossible he could accede to all the applications which might be transmitted to the Holy See on behalf of her subjects, yet, by her adopting a confidential sign-manual, those requests to which she individually attached importance should be immediately granted. The Holy Father hastened to reply in the warmest terms to the king's communication, promising to act as sponsor to the child, who, if a boy, he desired might be named after himself.

Unfortunately, some time before the queen's delivery, it became necessary for her husband to quit Cracow, in order to direct an expedition against his old enemies the Teutonic Knights. During his absence, he wrote a long letter, in which, after desiring that the happy event might be attended with all possible magnificence, he entered {156} into a minute detail of the devices and embroidery to be used in the adornment of the bed and chamber, particularly requesting that the draperies and hangings might not lack gold, pearls, or precious stones. This ostentatious display, though excusable in a fond husband and a powerful monarch about to behold the completion of his dearest wishes, was by no means in consonance with Hedwige's intense love of Christian simplicity and poverty. We find her addressing to her husband these few touching words, expressing, as the result proved, that presentiment of her approaching end which has often been accorded to saintly souls: "Seeing that I have so long renounced the pomps of this world, it is not on that treacherous couch—to so many the bed of death—that I would willingly be surrounded by their glitter. It is not by the help of gold or gems that I hope to render myself acceptable to that Almighty Father who has mercifully removed from me the reproach of barrenness, but rather by resignation to his will, and a sense of my own nothingness." It was remarked after this that the queen became more recollected than ever, spending whole hours in meditation, bestowing large alms, not only on the distressed of her own country, but on such pilgrims as presented themselves, and increasing her exterior mortifications; wearing a hair shirt during Lent, and using the discipline in a manner which, considering her condition, might have been deemed injudicious. She had ever made a point of spending the vigil of the anniversary of her early sacrifice at the foot of the veiled crucifix, but on this occasion, not returning at her usual hour, one of her Hungarian attendants sought her in the cathedral, then but dimly lighted by the massy silver lamp suspended before the tabernacle. It was bitterly cold, the wind was moaning through the long aisles, but there, on the marble pavement, in an ecstacy which rendered her insensible to bodily sufferings, lay Hedwige, she having continued in this state of abstraction from the termination of complin, at which she invariably assisted.

At length, on the 12th of June, 1399, this holy queen gave birth to a daughter, who was immediately baptized in the cathedral of Cracow, receiving from the Pope's legate, at the sacred font, the name of Elizabeth Bonifacia. The babe was weak and sickly, and the condition of the mother so precarious that a messenger was despatched to the army urging the immediate return of Wladislas. He arrived in time to witness the last sigh of his so ardently desired child, though his disappointment was completely merged in his anxiety for his wife. By the advice of the physicians it had been determined to conceal the death of the infant, but their precautions were vain. At the very moment it occurred, Hedwige herself announced it to her astonished attendants, and then humbly asked for the last sacraments of the Church, which she received with the greatest fervor. She, however, lingered until the 17th of July, when, the measure of her merits and good works being full, she went to appear before the tribunal of that God whom she had sought to glorify on earth. She died before completing her twenty-ninth year.

A few days previously she had taken a tender leave of her distracted husband; and, mindful to the last of the interests of Poland, she begged him to espouse her cousin Anne, by whose claim to the throne of the Piasts his own would be strengthened. She then drew off her nuptial ring, as if to detach herself from all human ties, and placed it upon his finger, and although, from motives of policy, Wladislas successively espoused three wives, he religiously preserved this memorial of her he had valued the most; bequeathing it as a precious relic (and a memento to be faithful to the land which Hedwige had so truly loved) to the Bishop of Cracow, who had saved his life in battle. Immediately after her funeral, he retired to his Russian {157} province, nor could he for some time be prevailed upon to return and assume the duties of sovereignty.

There was another mourner for her loss, William of Austria, who, notwithstanding the entreaties of his subjects, had remained single for her sake. He was at length prevailed upon to espouse the Princess Jane of Naples, but did not long survive the union.

The obsequies of Hedwige were celebrated by the Pope's legate with becoming magnificence. All that honor and respect from which she had sensitively shrunk during life was lavished on her remains; she was interred in the cathedral of Cracow on the left of the high altar; her memory was embalmed by her people's love, and was sanctified in their eyes. Numerous miracles are said to have been performed at her tomb: thither the afflicted in mind and body flocked to obtain through her intercession that consolation which during her life she had so cheerfully bestowed. Contrary to the general expectation, she was never canonized; [Footnote 43] her name, however, continued to be fondly cherished by the Poles, and by the people who under God were indebted to her for their first knowledge of Christianity, and of whom she might justly be styled the apostle. On her monument was graven a Latin inscription styling her the "Star of Poland," enumerating her virtues, lamenting her loss, and imploring the King of Glory to receive her into his heavenly kingdom.

[Footnote 43: Polish writers give her the title of saint, though her name is not inserted in the Martyrologies.—Butler's Lives of the Saints, October 17th.]

The life of Hedwige is her best eulogium. As it has been seen, she combined all the qualities not only of her own, but of a more advanced age. The leisure which she could snatch from the affairs of government she employed in study, devotion, and works of charity. True to her principles, she at her death bequeathed her jewels and other personal property in trust to the bishop and castellain of Cracow, for the foundation of a college in that city. Two years afterward her wishes were carried into effect, and the first stone was laid of the since celebrated university.

Wladislas survived his wife thirty-five years. In his old age he was troubled by a return of his former jealousy, thereby continually embittering the life of his queen, a Lithuanian princess, who, although exculpated by oath, as Hedwige had formerly been, was less fortunate, inasmuch as she was the continual victim of fresh suspicions. The latter years of his reign were much disturbed by the hostilities of the Emperor Sigismund, and by the troubles occasioned in Lithuania by the rebels, who had again combined with the Teutonic Knights.

Wladislas died in 1434, at the age of eighty years. It is said that he contracted his mortal sickness by being tempted to remain exposed too long to the night air, captivated by the sweet notes of a nightingale. Notwithstanding his faults, this monarch had many virtues; his piety was great, and he practised severe abstinences; and although he at times gave way to a suspicious temper, his general character was trusting, frank, and generous even to imprudence. His suspicions, in fact, did not originate with himself. They sprang, in the case of both his wives, from the tongues of calumniators, to whom he listened with a hasty credulity. He raised the glory and extended and consolidated the dominion of Poland. He was succeeded by his son, a child of eleven years, who had previously been, elected to the throne, but not until Jagello had confirmed and even enlarged the privileges of the nobles. His tardy consent, at the diet of Jedlin, roused their pride, so that it was not until four years later that they solemnly gave their adhesion.

It has not been our purpose to give more than a page out of the Polish annals illustrative of the patriotic and Christian spirit of sacrifice for which Poland's daughters have, down to the {158} present day, been no less noted than her sons. The mind naturally reverts to the late cruel struggle in which this generous people has once more succumbed to the overwhelming power of Russia, and her unscrupulous employment of the gigantic forces at her command. Europe has looked on apathetically, and, after a few feeble diplomatic remonstrances, has allowed the sacrifice to be completed. But the cause of Poland is essentially the cause of Catholicism and of the Church; and this, perhaps, may account for the small degree of sympathy it has awakened in European governments. Russia's repression of her insurgent subjects became from the first a religious persecution. Her aim is not to Russify, but to decatholicize Poland. The insurrection, quenched in blood, has been followed by a wholesale deportation of Poles into the eastern Russian provinces, where, with their country, it is hoped they will, ere long, lose also their faith. These are replaced by Russian colonists transplanted into Poland. To crush, extirpate, and deport the nobility—to leave the lower class alone upon the soil, who, deprived of their clergy—martyred, exiled, or in bonds—may become an easy conquest to the dominant schism—such is the plan of the autocrat, as we have beheld it actively carried out with all its accompanying horrors of sacrilege and ruthless barbarity. One voice alone—that of the Father of Christendom—has been raised to stigmatize these revolting excesses, and to reprove the iniquity of "persecuting Catholicism in order to put down rebellion." [Footnote 44] The same voice has exhorted us to pray for our Polish brethren, and has encouraged that suffering people to seek their deliverance from the just and compassionate Lord of all.

[Footnote 44: The terms of the Holy Father's address have been strangely exaggerated in many continental journals, where he is made to refer to the subject politically, and loudly to proclaim the justice of the Polish insurrection in that regard. The Pope entirely restricted his animadversions on the Czar to his persecution of the faith of his subjects.]

From The Lamp.

MONKS AMONG THE MONGOLS.

In tracing the progress of the various branches of science during the Middle Ages, there is nothing more striking than the slow stages by which a knowledge of the truth was reached on the subject of the earth's form, and the relative positions of the various countries which compose it. Though from the very earliest period the subject necessarily occupied a considerable amount of attention, and though facts began to be observed bearing upon it in the first ages after the diffusion of mankind, and were largely multiplied in proportion as the formation of colonies and intercommunication for purposes of commerce or war became more frequent, yet we find very little advance made in geographical knowledge from the days of Ptolemy, when the observations of the ancients were most systematically collected and arranged, till some centuries after, when the maritime enterprise of the Portuguese impelled them to the series of discoveries which led to the doubling of the Cape of Good Hope, and incited the genius of Columbus to the discovery of a new world.

The cause of this slow advance of geographical, in comparison with other branches of knowledge, was owing in some measure to the absence of any exact records of the discoveries made, by which they might have been communicated to others, and become the {159} starting-point for further investigations; but still more to the imperfect means of navigation in existence, and to those barbarian uprisings and migrations which for centuries, at least, were perpetually changing the state of Europe and Asia, and, by removing the landmarks of nations, obliging geography to begin as it were anew. During the whole of this period, however, we find evidences of the patient cultivation of this, as of all other branches of human knowledge, within the walls of those monastic institutions which ignorant prejudice still regards as the haunts of idleness, but to which the learned of all creeds and countries acknowledge their deep debt of obligation. Formal accounts of some distant land, either written by the traveller himself or recorded from the oral information he communicated; historical chronicles, in which not alone the events, but all that was known of the country is recorded, and maps in which the position of various places is attempted to be laid down, were to be found in every monastery both on the continent and in our own island. The holy men, too, who preached the gospel to pagan nations were usually careful also to enlarge their contemporaries' knowledge concerning the places and the people among whom they labored. Thus the great St. Boniface not only converted the Sclavonic nations to Catholic truth, but, at the special injunction of the Pope, wrote an account of them and of their country. St. Otho, bishop of Bamberg, did the same for the countries upon the shores of the Baltic; the holy monk Anscaire for Scandinavia, where he carried on his apostolic labors; and many others might be mentioned.

Among the most valuable of the contributions to the geography of the Middle Ages were those furnished by some monks of the order of St. Francis, who in the middle of the thirteenth century penetrated into the remote east, on special missions to the barbarian hordes that then threatened the very existence of religion and civilization, and whose enterprises, embarked in at the call of duty, are in many respects interesting.

History, whether ancient or modern, has few chapters so remarkable as that which records the rise of the Mongol power. A great chief, who had ruled over an immense horde of this hitherto pastoral people, died, leaving his eldest son an infant, and unable to command the adhesion of his rude subjects. The young chief, as he grew to man's estate, found his horde dispersed, and only a few families willing to acknowledge his sway. Determined, however, to regain his power and carry out the ambitious design which he had formed of conquering the world, he caused an assembly of the whole people to be summoned on the banks of the Selinga. At this assembly one of the wise men of the tribes announced that he had had a vision, in which he saw the great God, the disposer of kingdoms, sitting upon his throne in council, and heard him decree that the young chief should be "Zingis Khan," or "Greatest Chief" of the earth. The shouts of the Mongols testified their readiness to accept the decree; Zingis Khan was raised to supreme power over the whole Mongol race. He soon subdued the petty opposition of his neighbors, and, establishing the seat of his empire at Karakorum, spread his conquests in every direction with extraordinary rapidity, and died the ruler of many nations, bequeathing his power to sons and grandsons as warlike and ambitious as himself. One of these, Batoo Khan, invaded Europe with an immense army. He overran Russia, taking Moscow and its other principal places; subdued Poland and burnt Cracow; defeated the king of Hungary in a great battle; penetrated to Breslau, which he burned; and defeated, near Liegnitz, an army composed of Christian volunteers from all lands;—one of the bloodiest battles ever fought against the eastern hordes.

It was four years after this great battle, namely, in 1246, and when all {160} Europe was trembling at the expectation of another invasion of the Mongols (who, having devastated the country with fire and sword, had retired loaded with spoils), that two embassies were despatched by the Pope, Innocent IV., to endeavor to induce them to stop their progress into Europe, and to embrace Christianity. These important missions were intrusted to monks of the Franciscan order; Jean du Plan Carpini being despatched toward the north-east, where the camp of Batoo was fixed, and Nicholas Ascelin, the year after, sent into Syria and Persia.

Ascelin's mission, which comprised three other monks of the same order beside himself, was the most rapidly terminated. Following the south of the Caspian Sea, the party traversed Syria, Mesopotamia, and Persia, and at length reached the Mongol or Tatar encampment of Baiothnoy Khan. Being asked their object as they approached, the holy men boldly but undiplomatically declared that they were ambassadors from the head of the Christian world, and that their mission was to exhort the Tatars to repent of their wicked and barbarous attacks upon God's people. Being asked what presents they brought to the khan, according to eastern custom, they further replied that the Pope, as the vicar of God, was not accustomed to purchase a hearing or favor by such means, especially from infidels. The Mongols were astonished at this bold language used toward a race accustomed to strike terror into all who came into contact with them. They were still more astonished when the holy men refused, as a reprehensible act of idolatry, to make the usual genuflexions on being admitted to the presence of the khan, unless he first became a Catholic and acknowledged the Pope's supremacy, when they offered to do so for the honor of God and the Church. Hitherto the barbarians had borne patiently the display of what they doubtless regarded as the idiosyncrasies of the good friars, but this last refusal incited their rage; the ambassadors and their master the Pope were insulted and threatened, and it was debated in council whether they should not be flayed alive, their skins stuffed with hay, and sent back to the Pope. The interposition of the khan's mother saved their lives, however; but the Mongols could never understand how the Holy Father, who they found from Ascelin kept no army and had gained no battles, could have dared to send such a message to their victorious master, whom they styled the Son of Heaven. Ascelin and his companions were treated during their stay with scant courtesy, and were dismissed with a letter to the Pope from Baiothnoy Khan, commanding him, if he wished to remain in possession of his land and heritage, to come in his own person and do homage to him who held just sway over the whole earth. They reached as speedily as possible the nearest Syrian port, and embarked for France. They brought back to Europe some valuable information respecting the country of the Mongols, though small compared with that of the other ambassadors whom we have to mention.

Carpini was a man better fitted the office of ambassador, and able, without sacrificing his principles or his dignity, to become "all things to all men." He travelled with a numerous suite through Bohemia and Poland to Kiow, then the Russian capital. A quantity of skins and furs was given him in the northern capitals, as presents to the Tatar chiefs, and all Europe watched with interest the result of the embassy. On the banks of the Dnieper they first encountered the barbarians. The purpose of their journey being demanded, they replied that they were messengers from the Pope to the chief of the Tatar people, to desire peace and friendship between them, and request that they would embrace the faith of Christ, and desist from the slaughter of the Pope's subjects, who had never injured or attempted to injure them. Their {161} bearing made a very favorable impression. They were conducted to the tent of the chief, where they did not hesitate to make the usual salutations; and by his command post-horses and a Mongol escort were given them to conduct them to Batoo Khan. They found him at a place on the borders of the Black Sea; and, before being admitted to an audience, had to pass between two fires, as a charm to nullify any witchcraft or evil intention on their parts. They found Batoo seated on a raised throne with one of his wives, and surrounded by his court. They again made the usual genuflexions, and then delivered their letters, which Batoo Khan read attentively, but without giving them any reply. For some months they were "trotted about," with a view to show them the wealth, power, and magnificence of the people they were among; and in order that they might communicate at home what they saw. The holy men passed Lent among the Mongols; and, notwithstanding the fatigues they had passed through, observed a strict fast, taking, as their only food for the forty days, millet boiled in water, and drinking only melted snow. They witnessed the imposing ceremony of the investiture of a Tatar chief, at which a large number of feudatory princes were present, with no less than four thousand messengers bearing tribute or presents from subdued or submitted states. After the investiture, they also were ushered into the presence; but, alas, the gifts intrusted to them and their whole substance were already consumed. The Tatars, however, considerately dispensed with this usual part of the proceedings; for the coarse garb of the monks, contrasting as it did with the rich silks and garments of gold and silver which they describe as being worn generally during the ceremonies, must have marked them as men who possessed little of this world's goods.

The ceremonials of investiture over, Carpini was at length called upon to deliver his message to the newly-appointed khan; and a reply was given, which he was desired to translate into Latin, and convey to the Pope. It contained only meaningless expressions of good-will; but the fact was, that the khan intended to carry the war into Europe, though he did not desire to give notice of his intent. He offered to send with them an ambassador to the Pope; but Carpini seems to have surmised his purpose, and that this ambassador would really be only a spy; and he therefore found means to evade the offer. They returned homeward through the rigors of a Siberian winter, accompanied by several Genoese, Pisan, and Venetian traders, who, following the papal envoys, had found their way, in pursuit of commerce, to the Tatar encampment. The hardships the good men endured on the return journey were of the most fearful kind. Often, in crossing the extensive steppes of that country, they were forced to sleep all night upon the snow, and found themselves almost buried in snow-drifts in the morning. Kiow was at length reached; and its people, who had given up the adventurous travellers as lost, turned out to welcome them, as men returned from the grave. The rest of Carpini's life was spent in similar hardships, while preaching the gospel to the savage peoples of Bohemia, Hungary, Denmark, and Norway; and death came to him with his reward, at an advanced age, in the midst of his apostolic labors.

A few years after the missions of Ascelin and Carpini, another Franciscan, named William Van Ruysbroeck, better known as Rubriquis, a native of Brabant, was sent by Saint Louis of France on a similar errand to the Mongols, one of whose khans, it was reported, had embraced Christianity. He found the rumor void of foundation; and, though received courteously, as Carpini had been, could perceive not the slightest disposition among the barbarians to receive or even hear the truth. At the camp of Sartach Khan, Rubriquis was commanded to appear before the chief in his priestly vestments, and did so, carrying a missal {162} and crucifix in his hands, an attendant preceding him with a censer, and singing the Salve Regina. Everything he had with him was examined very attentively by the khan and his wives, especially the crucifix; but nothing came of this curiosity. Like Carpini, the party were frequently exposed to great privations, both at the encampments and on their journeys; and on one occasion Rubriquis piously records: "If it had not been for the grace of God, and the biscuit which we had brought with us, we had surely perished." On one journey from camp to camp, they travelled for five weeks along the banks of the Volga, nearly always on foot, and often without food. Rubriquis' companion Barthelemi broke down under the fatigues of the return journey; but Rubriquis persevered alone, and traversed an immense extent of country, passing through the Caucasus, Armenia, and Syria, before he took ship for France, to report the failure of his mission to the pious king.

Bootless as these journeys proved, so far as their main object was concerned, there is no doubt that in many ways they effected a large amount of good. The religious creed of the Mongols appears to have been confined to a belief in one God, and in a place of future rewards and punishments. For other doctrines, or for ceremonies of religion, they appear to have cared little. They trampled the Caliph of Bagdad, the "successor of the Prophet," beneath their horses' hoofs at the capture of that city; and they tolerated at their camps our Christian monks, as well as a number of professors of the Nestorian heresy. It was only on becoming Mohammedans that they, and the kindred but rival race of Ottomans, became intolerant. But it is to be observed that Islamism, which allowed polygamy, and avoided interference with their other national habits and customs, would be likely to attract them, in consequence of their religious indifference, as naturally as Christianity, which sought to impose restraints upon their ferocity and sensualism, would repel them. It is no wonder, therefore, that the efforts of the zealous Franciscans were unsuccessful. But their zeal and disinterestedness, their irreproachable lives and simple manners, were not without producing an effect upon the savage men with whom their embassies brought them into contact; and by their intercourse, and that mercantile communication for which their travels pioneered the way, the conduct of the Mongols toward the Christian races was sensibly affected beneficially, while on the other side they taught Europe to regard the Mongols as a people to be feared indeed, and guarded against, but not as the demons incarnate they had been pictured by the popular imagination. The benefit these devoted monks conferred upon the progress of science and civilization is scarcely to be over-estimated; as not only did they acquaint Europe with a number of minute, and in the main accurate, details respecting a vast tract of country previously unknown, and the peoples by whom it was inhabited, but they opened up new realms to commerce, in the exploring of which Marco Polo, Clavijo, and subsequent travellers, pushed onward to China, Japan, and India, and prepared the way for the great maritime discoveries of the succeeding century.

{163}

From The Month.

CONSTANCE SHERWOOD.

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

BY LADY GEORGIANA FULLERTON.

CHAPTER III.

As I entered the library, which my father used for purposes of business as well as of study, I saw a gentleman who had often been at our house before, and whom I knew to be a priest, though he was dressed as a working-man of the better sort and had on a riding coat of coarse materials. He beckoned me to him, and I, kneeling, received his blessing.

"What, up yet, little one?" he said; "and yet thou must bestir thyself betimes to-morrow for prayers. These are not days in which priests may play the sluggard and be found abed when the sun rises."

"At what hour must you be on foot, reverend father?" my mother asked, as sitting down at a table by his side she filled his plate with whatever might tempt him to eat, the which he seemed little inclined to.

"Before dawn, good Mrs. Sherwood," he answered; "and across the fields into the forest before ever the laboring men are astir; and you know best when that is."

"An if it be so, which I fear it must," my father said, "we must e'en have the chapel ready by two o'clock. And, goodwife, you should presently get that wench to bed."

"Nay, good mother," I cried, and threw my arms round her waist, "prithee let me sit up to-night; I can lie abed all to-morrow." So wistfully and urgently did I plead, that she, who had grown of late somewhat loth to deny any request of mine, yielded to my entreaties, and only willed that I should lie down on a settle betwixt her chair and the chimney, in which a fagot was blazing, though it was summer-time, but the weather was chilly. I gazed by turns on my mother's pale face and my father's, which was thoughtful, and on the good priest's, who was in an easy-chair, wherein they had compelled him to sit, opposite to me on the other side of the chimney. He looked, as I remember him then, as if in body and in mind he had suffered more than he could almost bear.

After some discourse had been ministered betwixt him and my father of the journey he had been taking, and the friends he had seen since last he had visited our house, my mother said, in a tremulous voice, "And now, good Mr. Mush, an if it would not pain you too sorely, tell us if it be true that your dear daughter in Christ, Mrs. Clitherow, as indeed won the martyr's crown, as some letters from York reported to us a short time back?"

Upon this Mr. Mush raised his head, which had sunk on his breast, and said, "She that was my spiritual daughter in times past, and now, as I humbly hope, my glorious mother in heaven, the gracious martyr Mrs. Clitherow, has overcome all her enemies, and passed from this mortal life with rare and marvellous triumph into the peaceable city of God, there to receive a worthy crown of endless immortality and joy." His eye, that had been before heavy and dim, now shone with sudden light, and it seemed as if the cord about his heart was loosed, and his spirit found vent at last in words after a long and painful silence. More eloquent still was his countenance than his words as he exclaimed, "Torments overcame her not, nor the sweetness of life, nor her vehement affection for {164} husband and children, nor the flattering allurements and deceitful promises of the persecutors. Finally, the world, the flesh, and the devil overcame her not. She, a woman, with invincible courage entered combat against them all, to defend the ancient faith, wherein both she and her enemies were baptized and gave their promise to God to keep the same until death. O sacred martyr!" and, with clasped hands and streaming eyes, the good father went on, "remember me, I beseech thee humbly, in thy perfect charity, whom thou hast left miserable behind thee, in time past thy unworthy father and now most unworthy servant, made ever joyful by thy virtuous life, and now lamenting thy death and thy absence, and yet rejoicing in thy glory."

A sob burst from my mother's breast, and she hid her face against my father's shoulder. There was a brief silence, during which many quickly-rising thoughts passed through my mind. Of Daniel in the lions' den, and the Machabees and the early Christians; and of the great store of blood which had been shed of late in this our country, and of which amongst the slain were truly martyrs, and which were not; of the vision in the sky which had been seen at Lichfield; and chiefly of that blessed woman Mrs. Clitherow, whose virtue and good works I had often before heard of, such as serving the poor and harboring priests, and loving God's Church with a wonderful affection greater than can be thought of. Then I heard my father say, "How was it at the last, good Mr. Mush?" I oped my eyes, and hung on the lips of the good priest even as if to devour his words as he gave utterance to them.

"She refused to be tried by the country," he answered, in a tremulous voice; "and so they murthered her."

"How so?" my mother asked, shading her eyes with her hand, as if to exclude the mental sight of that which she yet sought to know.

"They pressed her to death," he slowly uttered; "and the last words she was heard to say were 'Jesu, Jesu, Jesu! have mercy on me!' She was in dying about a quarter of an hour, and then her blessed spirit was released and took its flight to heaven. May we die the death of the righteous, and may our last end be like hers!"

Again my mother hid her face in my father's bosom, and methought she said not "Amen" to that prayer; but turning to Mr. Mush with a flushed cheek and troubled eye, she asked, "And why did the blessed Mrs. Clitherow refuse to be tried by the country, reverend father, and thereby subject herself to that lingering death?"

"These were her words when questioned and urged on that point," he answered, "which sufficiently clear her from all accusation of obstinacy or desperation, and combine the rare discretion and charity which were in her at all times: 'Alas!' quoth she, 'if I should have put myself on the country, evidence must needs have come against me touching my harboring of priests and the holy sacrifice of the mass in my house, which I know none could give but only my children and servants; and it would have been to me more grievous than a thousand deaths if I should have seen any of them brought forth before me, to give evidence against me in so good a cause and be guilty of my blood; and, secondly,' quoth she, 'I know well the country must needs have found me guilty to please the council, who so earnestly seek my blood, and then all they had been accessory to my death and damnably offended God. I therefore think, in the way of charity, for my part to hinder the country from such a sin; and seeing it must needs be done, to cause as few to do it as might be; and that was the judge himself.' So she thought, and thereupon she acted, with that single view to God's glory and the good of men's souls that was ever the passion of her fervent spirit."

"Her children?" my mother murmured in a faint voice, still hiding her face from him. "That little Agnes {165} you used to tell us of, that was so dear to her poor mother, how has it fared with her?"

Mr. Mush answered, "Her happy mother sent her hose and shoes to her daughter at the last, signifying that she should serve God and follow her steps of virtue. She was committed to ward because she would not betray her mother, and there whipped and extremely used for that she would not go to the church and hear a sermon. When her mother was murthered, the heretics came to her and said that unless she would go to the church, her mother should be put to death. The child, thinking to save the life of her who had given her birth, went to a sermon, and thus they deceived her."

"God forgive them!" my father ejaculated; and I, creeping to my mother's side, threw my arms about her neck, upon which she, caressing me, said:

"Now thou wilt be up to their deceits, Conny, if they should practice the same arts on thee."

"Mother," I cried, clinging to her, "I will go with thee to prison and to death; but to their church I will not go who love not our Blessed Lady."

"So help thee God!" my father cried, and laid his hand on my head.

"Take heart, good Mrs. Sherwood," Mr. Mush said to my mother, who was weeping; "God may spare you such trials as those which that sweet saint rejoiced in, or he can give you a like strength to hers. We have need in these times to bear in mind that comfortable saying of holy writ, 'As your day shall your strength be.'"

"'Tis strange," my father observed, "how these present troubles seem to awake the readiness, nay the wish, to suffer for truth's sake. It is like a new sense in a soul heretofore but too prone to eschew suffering of any sort: 'tis even as the keen breezes of our own Cannock Chase stimulate the frame to exertions which it would shrink from in the duller air of the Trent Valley."

"Ah! and is it even so with you, my friend?" exclaimed Mr. Mush. "From my heart I rejoice at it: such thoughts are oftentimes forerunners of God's call to a soul marked out for his special service."

My mother, against whom I was leaning since mention had been made of Mrs. Clitherow's daughter, began to tremble; and rising said she would go to the chapel to prepare for confession. Taking me by the hand, she mounted the stairs to the room which was used as such since the ancient faith had been proscribed. One by one that night we knelt at the feet of the good shepherd, who, like his Lord, was ready to lay down his life for his sheep, and were shriven. Then, at two of the clock, mass was said, and my parents and most of our servants received, and likewise some neighbors to whom notice had been sent in secret of Mr. Mush's coming. When my mother returned from the altar to her seat, I marvelled at the change in her countenance. She who had been so troubled before the coming of the Heavenly Guest into her breast, wore now so serene and joyful an aspect, that the looking upon her at that time wrought in me a new and comfortable sense of the greatness of that divine sacrament. I found not the thought of death frighten me then; for albeit on that night I for the first time fully arrived at the knowledge of the peril and jeopardy in which the Catholics of this land do live; nevertheless this knowledge awoke in me more exultation than fear. I had seen precautions used, and reserves maintained, of which I now perceived the cause. For some time past my parents had prepared the way for this no-longer-to-be-deferred enlightenment. The small account they had taught me to make of the wealth and comforts of this perishable world, and the histories they had recounted to me of the sufferings of Christians in the early times of the Church, had been directed unto this end. They had, as it were, laid the wood on the altar of my heart, which they prayed might one day burn into {166} a flame. And now when, by reason of the discourse I had heard touching Mrs. Clitherow's blessed but painful end for harboring of priests in her house, and the presence of one under our roof, I took heed that the danger had come nigh unto our own doors, my heart seemed to beat with a singular joy. Childhood sets no great store on life: the passage from this world to the next is not terrible to such as have had no shadows cast on their paths by their own or others' sins. Heaven is not a far-off region to the pure in heart; but rather a home, where God, as St. Thomas sings,

    "Vitam sine termino
  Nobis donet in patria."

But, ah me! how transient are the lights and shades which flit across the childish mind! and how mutable the temper of youth, never long impressed by any event, however grave! Not many days after Mr. Mush's visit to our house, another letter from the Countess of Surrey came into my hand, and drove from my thoughts for the time all but the matters therein disclosed.

"SWEET MISTRESS CONSTANCE"
(my lady wrote),—"In my last letter I made mention, in an obscure fashion, of a secret which my lord had told me touching a matter of great weight which Higford, his grace's steward, had let out to him; and now that the whole world is speaking of what was then in hand, and that troubles have come of it, I must needs relieve my mind by writing thereof to her who is the best friend I have in the world, if I may judge by the virtuous counsel and loving words her letters do contain. 'Tis like you have heard somewhat of that same matter, Mistress Constance; for much talk has been ministered anent it since I wrote, amongst people of all sorts, and with various intents to the hindering or the promoting thereof. I mean touching the marriage of his grace the Duke of Norfolk with the Queen of Scots, which is much desired by some, and very little wished for by others. My lord, as is reasonable in one of his years and of so noble a spirit, and his sister, who is in all things the counterpart of her brother, have set their hearts thereon since the first inkling they had of it; for this queen had so noted a fame for her excellent beauty and sweet disposition that it has wrought in them an extraordinary passionate desire to title her mother, and to see their father so nobly mated, though not more than he deserves; for, as my lord says, his grace's estate in England is worth little less than the whole realm of Scotland, in the ill state to which the wars have reduced it; and when he is in his own tennis-court at Norwich, he thinks himself as great as a king.

"As a good wife, I should wish as my lord does; and indeed this marriage, Mistress Constance, would please me well; for the Queen of Scots is Catholic, and methinks if his grace were to wed her, there might arise some good out of it to such as are dependent on his grace touching matters of religion; and since Mr. Martin has gone beyond seas, 'tis very little I hear in this house but what is contrary to the teaching I had at my grandmother's. My lord saith this queen's troubles will be ended if she doth marry his grace, for so Higford has told him; but when I spoke thereof to my Lady Lumley, she prayed God his grace's might not then begin, but charged me to be silent thereon before my Lord Arundel, who has greatly set his heart on this match. She said words were in every one's mouth concerning this marriage which should never have been spoken of but amongst a few. 'Nan,' quoth she, 'if Phil and thou do let your children's tongues wag anent a matter which may well be one of life and death, more harm may come of it than can well be thought of.' So prithee, Mistress Constance, do you be silent as the grave on what I have herein written, if so be you have not heard {167} of it but from me. My lord had a quarrel with my Lord Essex, who is about his own age, anent the Queen of Scots, a few days since, when he came to spend his birthday with him; for my lord was twelve years old last week, and I gave him a fair jewel to set in his cap, for a love-token and for remembrance. My lord said that the Queen of Scots was a lady of so great virtue and beauty that none else could be compared with her; upon which my lord of Essex cried it was high treason to the queen's majesty to say so, and that if her grace held so long a time in prison one who was her near kinswoman, it was by reason of her having murthered her husband and fomented rebellion in this kingdom of England, for the which she did deserve to be extremely used. My lord was very wroth at this, and swore he was no traitor, and that the Queen of Scots was no murtheress, and he would lay down his head on the block rather than suffer any should style her such; upon which my lord of Essex asked, 'Prithee, my Lord Surrey, were you at Thornham last week when the queen's majesty was on a visit to your grandfather, my Lord Arundel?' 'No,' cried my lord, 'your lordship being there yourself in my Lord Leicester's suite, must needs have noticed I was absent; for if I had been present, methinks 'tis I and not your lordship would have waited behind her majesty's chair at table and held a napkin to her.' 'And if you had, my lord,' quoth my Lord Essex, waxing hot in his speech, 'you would have noticed how her grace's majesty gave a nip to his grace your father, who was sitting by her side, and said she would have him take heed on what pillow he rested his head.' 'And I would have you take heed,' cries my lord, 'how you suffer your tongue to wag in an unseemly manner anent her grace's majesty and his grace my father and the Queen of Scots, who is kinswoman to both, and even now a prisoner, which should make men careful how they speak of her who cannot speak in her own cause; for it is a very inhuman part, my lord, to tread on such as misfortune has cast down.' There was a nobleness in these words such as I have often taken note of in my lord, though so young, and which his playmate yielded to; so that nothing more was said at that time anent those matters, which indeed do seem too weighty to be discoursed upon by young folks. But I have thought since on the lines which 'tis said the queen's majesty wrote when she was herself a prisoner, which begin,

'O Fortune! how thy restless, wavering state
Hath fraught with cares my troubled wit;
Witness this present prison, whither fate
Could bear me, and the joys I quit'—

and wondered she should have no greater pity on those in the same plight, as so many be at this time. Ah me! I would not keep a bird in a cage an I could help it, and 'tis sad men are not more tender of such as are of a like nature with themselves!

"My lord was away some days after this at Oxford, whither he had been carried to be present at the queen's visit, and at the play of Palamon and Arcite, which her majesty heard in the common hall of Christ's Church. One evening, as my lady Margaret and I (like two twin cherries on one stalk, my lord would say, for he is mightily taken with the stage-plays he doth hear, and hath a trick of framing his speech from them) were sitting at the window near unto the garden practising our lutes and singing madrigals, he surprised us with his sweet company, in which I find an ever increasing content, and cried out as he approached, 'Ladies, I hold this sentence of the poet as a canon of my creed, that whom God loveth not, they love not music.' And then he said that albeit Italian was a very harmonious and sweet language which pleasantly tickleth the ear, he for his part loved English best, even in singing. Upon which, finding him in the humor for discreet {168} and sensible conversation, which, albeit he hath good parts and a ready wit, is not always the case, by reason of his being, as boys mostly are, prone to wagging, I took occasion to relate what I had heard my Lord of Arundel say touching his visit to the court of Brussels, when the Duchess of Parma invited him to a banquet to meet the Prince of Orange and most of the chief courtiers. The discourse was carried on in French; but my lord, albeit he could speak well in that language, nevertheless made use of an interpreter. At the which the Prince of Orange expressed his surprise to Sir John Wilson, who was present, that an English nobleman of so great birth and breeding should be ignorant of the French tongue, which the earl presently hearing, said, 'Tell the prince that I like to speak in that language in which I can best utter my mind and not mistake.' And I perceive, my lord,' I said, 'that you are of a like mind with his lordship, and no lover of new-fangled and curious terms.'

"Upon which my dear earl laughed, and related unto us how the queen had been pleased to take notice of him at Oxford, and spoke merrily to him of his marriage. 'And prithee, Phil, what were her highness's words?' quoth his prying sister, like a true daughter of Eve. At which my lord stroked his chin, as if to smooth his beard which is still to come, and said her majesty had cried, 'God's pity, child, thou wilt tire of thy wife afore you have both left the nursery.' 'Alack,' cried Meg, 'if any but her highness had said it, thy hand would have been on thy sword, brother, and I'll warrant thou didst turn as red as a turkey-cock, when her majesty thus titled thee a baby. Nay, do not frown, but be a good lord to us, and tell Nan and me if the queen said aught else.' Then my lord cleared his brow, and related how in the hunting scene in the play, when the cry of the hounds was heard outside the stage, which was excellently well imitated, some scholars who were seated near him, and he must confess himself also, did shout, 'There, there—he's caught, he's caught!' upon which her grace's majesty laughed, and merrily cried out from her box, 'Those boys in very troth are ready to leap out of the windows!' 'And had you such pleasant sports each day, brother?' quoth our Meg. 'No, by my troth,' my lord answered; 'the more's the pity; for the next day there was a disputation held in physic and divinity from two to seven; and Dr. Westphaling held forth at so great length that her majesty sent word to him to end his discourse without delay, to the great relief and comfort of all present. But he would not give over, lest, having committed all to memory, he should forget the rest if he omitted any part of it, and be brought to shame before the university and the court.' 'What said her highness when she saw he heeded not her commands?' Meg asked. 'She was angered at first,' quoth my lord, 'that he durst go on with his discourse when she had sent him word presently to stop, whereby she had herself been prevented from speaking, which the Spanish Ambassador had asked her to do; but when she heard the reason it moved her to laughter, and she titled him a parrot.'

"'And spoke not her majesty at all?' I asked; and my lord said, 'She would not have been a woman, Nan, an she had held her tongue after being once resolved to use it. She made the next day an oration in Latin, and stopped in the midst to bid my Lord Burleigh be seated, and not to stand painfully on his gouty feet. Beshrew me, but I think she did it to show the poor dean how much better her memory served her than his had done, for she looked round to where he was standing ere she resumed her discourse. And now, Meg, clear thy throat and tune thy pipe, for not another word will I speak till thou hast sung that ditty good Mr. Martin set to music for thee.' I have set it down here, Mistress Constance, with the notes as {169} she sung it, that you may sing it also; and not like it the less that my quaint fancy pictures the maiden the poet sings of, in her 'frock of frolic green,' like unto my sweet friend who dwells not far from one of the fair rivers therein named.

    A knight, as antique stories tell,
    A daughter had named Dawsabel,
        A maiden fair and free;
    She wore a frock of frolic green,
    Might well become a maiden queen,
        Which seemly was to see.

    The silk well could she twist and twine,
    And make the fine March pine,
    And with the needle work;
    And she could help the priest to say
    His matins on a holy day,
    And sing a psalm in kirk.

    Her features all as fresh above
    As is the grass that grows by Dove,
    And lythe as lass of Kent;
    Her skin as soft as Leinster wool,
    And white as snow on Penhisk Hull,
    Or swan that swims on Trent.

    This maiden on a morn betime
    Goes forth when May is in its prime,
    To get sweet setywall,
    The honeysuckle, the hurlock,
    The lily and the lady-smock,
    To deck her father's hall.

"'Ah,' cried my lord, when Meg had ended her song, beshrew me, if Monsieur Sebastian's madrigals are one-half so dainty as this English piece of harmony.' And then,—for his lordship's head is at present running on pageants such as he witnessed at Nonsuch and at Oxford,—he would have me call into the garden Madge and Bess, whilst he fetched his brothers to take part in a May game, not indeed in season now, but which, he says, is too good sport not to be followed all the year round. So he must needs dress himself as Robin Hood, with a wreath on his head and a sheaf of arrows in his girdle, and me as Maid Marian; and Meg, for that she is taller by an inch than any of us, though younger than him and me, he said should play Little John, and Bess Friar Tuck, for that she looks so gleesome and has a face so red and round. 'And Tom,' he cried, 'thou needst not be at pains to change thy name, for we will dub thee Tom the piper.' 'And what is Will to be?' asked my Lady Bess, who, since I be titled Countess of Surrey, must needs be styled My Lady William Howard.' 'Why, there's only the fool left,' quoth my lord, 'for thy sweetheart to play, Bess.' At the which her ladyship and his lordship too began to stamp and cry, and would have sobbed outright, but sweet Madge, whose face waxes so white and her eyes so large and blue that methinks she is more like to an angel than a child, put out her little thin hands with a pretty gesture, and said, 'I'll be the fool, brother Surrey, and Will shall be the dragon, and Bess ride the hobby-horse, an it will please her.' 'Nay, but she is Friar Tuck,' quoth my lord, 'and should not ride.' 'And prithee wherefore no?' cried the forward imp, who, now she no more fears her grandam's rod, has grown very saucy and bold; 'why should not the good friar ride, an it doth pleasure him?'

"At the which we laughed and fell to acting our parts with no little merriment and noise, and sundry reprehensions from my lord when we mistook our postures or the lines he would have us to recite. And at the end he set up a pole on the grass-plat for the Maying, and we danced and sung around it to a merry tune, which set our feet flying in time with the music:

    Now in the month of maying,
    When the merry lads are playing,
        Fa, la, la.

    Each with his bonny lasse,
    Upon the greeny grasse,
        Fa, la, la.

Madge was not strong enough to dance, but she stole away to gather white and blue violets, and made a fair garland to set on my head, to my lord's great content, and would have me unloose my hair on my shoulders, which fell nearly to my feet, and waved in the wind in a wild fashion; which he said was beseeming for a bold outlaw's bride, and what he had seen in the Maid Marian, who had played in the pageant at Nonsuch. Mrs. Fawcett misdoubted that this sport of ours should be approved by Mr. Charke, who calls all {170} stage-playing Satan's recreations, and a sure road unto hell; and that we shall hear on it in his next preachment; for he has held forth to her at length on that same point, and upbraided her for that she did suffer such foolish and profane pastimes to be carried on in his grace's house. Ah me! I see no harm in it; and if, when my lord visits me, I play not with him as he chooses, 'tis not a thing to be expected that he will come only to sing psalms or play chess, which Mr. Charke holds to be the only game it befits Christians to entertain themselves with. 'Tis hard to know what is right and wrong when persons be of such different minds, and no ghostly adviser to be had, such as I was used to at my grandmother's house.

"All, Mistress Constance! when I last wrote unto you I said troubles was the word in every one's mouth, and ere I had finished this letter—which I was then writing, and have kept by me ever since—what, think you, has befallen us? 'Tis anent the marriage of his grace with the Queen of Scots; which I now do wish it had pleased God none had ever thought of. Some weeks since my lord had told me, with great glee, that the Spanish ambassador was about to petition her majesty the queen for the release of her highness's cousin; and Higford and Bannister, and the rest of his grace's household—whom, since Mr. Martin went beyond seas, my lord spends much of his time with, and more of it methinks than is beseeming or to the profit of his manners and advancement of his behavior—have told him that this would prepare the way for the greatly-to-be-desired end of his grace's marriage with that queen; and my lord was reckoning up all the fine sports and pageants and noble entertainments would be enacted at Kenninghall and Thetford when that right princely wedding should take place; and how he should himself carry the train of the queen-duchess when she went into church; who was the fairest woman, he said, in the whole world, and none ever seen to be compared with her since the days of Grecian Helen. But when, some days ago, I questioned my lord touching the success of the ambassador's suits, and the queen's answer thereto, he said: 'By my troth, Nan, I understand that her highness sent away the gooseman, for so she entitled Senor Guzman, with a flea in his ear; for she said he had come on a fool's errand, and gave him for her answer that she would advise the Queen of Scots to bear her condition with less impatience, or she might chance to find some of those on whom she relied shorter by a head.' Oh, my lord,' I cried; 'my dear Phil! God send she was not speaking of his grace your father!' 'Nan,' quoth he, 'she looked at his grace the next day with looks of so great anger and disdain, that my lord of Leicester—that false and villainous knave—gave signs of so great triumph as if his grace was even on his way to the Tower. Beshrew me, if I would not run my rapier through his body if I could!' 'And where is his grace at present?' I asked. 'He came to town night,' quoth my lord, 'with my Arundel, and this morning went Kenninghall.' After this for some days I heard no more, for a new tutor came to my lord, who suffers him not to stay in the waiting-room with his grace's gentlemen, and keeps so strict a hand over him touching his studies, that in his brief hours of recreation he would rather play at quoits, and other active pastimes, than converse with his lady. Alack! I wish he were a few years older, and I should have more comfort of him than now, when I must needs put up with his humors, which be as changeful, by reason of his great youth, as the lights and shades on the grass 'neath an aspen-tree. I must be throwing a ball for hours, or learning a stage-part, when I would fain speak of the weighty matters which be on hand, such as I have told you of. Howsoever, as good luck would have it, my Lady Lumley sent for me to spend {171} the day with her; and from her ladyship I learnt that his grace had written to the queen that he had withdrawn from the court because of the pain he felt at her displeasure, and his mortification at the treatment he had been subjected to by the insolence of his foes, by whom he has been made a common table talk; and that her majesty had laid upon him her commands straightway to return to court. That was all was known that day; but at the very time that I was writing the first of these woeful tidings to you, Mistress Constance, his grace— whom I now know that I do love dearly, and with a true daughter's heart, by the dreadful fear and pain I am in—was arrested at Burnham, where he had stopped on his road to Windsor, and committed to the Tower. Alack! alack! what will follow? I will leave this my letter open until I have further news to send.

"His grace was examined this day before my Lord-keeper Bacon, and my Lords Northampton, Sadler, Bedford, and Cecil; and they have reported to her majesty that the duke had not put himself under penalty of the law by any overt act of treason, and that it would be difficult to convict him without this. My Lord of Arundel, at whose house I was when these tidings came, said her majesty was so angered at this judgment, that she cried out in a passion, 'Away! what the law fails to do my authority shall effect;' and straightway fell into a fit, her passion was so great; and they were forced to apply vinegar to restore her. I had a wicked thought come into my mind, Mistress Constance, that I should not have been concerned if the queen's majesty had died in that fit, which I befear me was high treason, and a mortal sin, to wish for one to die in a state of sin. But, alack! since I have left going to shrift I find it hard to fight against bad thoughts and naughty tempers; and when I say my prayers, and the old words come to my lips, which the preachments I hear do contradict, I am sometimes well-nigh tempted to give over praying at all. But I pray to God I may never be so wicked; and though I may not have my beads (which were taken from me), that the good Bishop of Durham gave me when I was confirmed, I use my fingers in their stead; and whilst his grace was at the Tower I did say as many 'Hail Maries' in one day as I ever did in my life before; and promised him, who is God's own dear Son and hers, if his grace came out of prison, never to be a day of my life without saying a prayer, or giving an alms, or doing a good turn to those which be in the same case, near at hand or throughout the world; and I ween there are many such of all sorts at this time.

"Your loving servant to command, whose heart is at present heavier than her pen,
"ANN SURREY."

"P. S. My Lord of Westmoreland has left London, and his lady is in a sad plight. I hear such things said on all sides touching Papists as I can scarce credit, and I pray to God they be not true. But an if they be so bad as some do say, why does his grace run his head into danger for the sake of the Popish queen, as men do style her? They have arrested Higford and Bannister last night, and they are to taste of the rack to-day, to satisfy the queen, who is so urgent on it. My lord is greatly concerned thereat, and cried when he spoke of it, albeit he tried to hide his tears. I asked him to show me what sort of pain it was; whereupon he twisted my arm till I cried out and bade him desist. God help me! I could not have endured the pain an instant longer; and if they have naught to tell anent these plots and against his grace, they needs must speak what is false when under the rack. Oh, 'tis terrible to think what men do suffer and cause others to suffer!"

This letter came into my hand on a day when my father had gone into Lichfield touching some business; and {172} he brought with it the news of a rising in the north, and that his Grace of Northumberland and my Lord of Westmoreland had taken arms on hearing of the Duke of Norfolk's arrest; and the Catholics, under Mr. Richard Norton and Lord Latimer, had joined their standard, and were bearing the cross before the insurgents. My father was sore cast down at these tidings; for he looked for no good from what was rebellion against a lawful sovereign, and a consorting with troublesome spirits, swayed by no love of our holy religion but rather contrary to it, as my Lord of Westmoreland and some others of those leading lords. And he hence foreboded fresh trials to all such as were of the ancient faith all over England; which was not long in accruing even in our own case; for a short time after, we were for the first time visited by pursuivants, on a day and in such a manner as I will now briefly relate.

CHAPTER IV.

On the Sunday morning which followed the day on which the news had reached us of the rising in Northumberland, I went, as was my wont, into my mother's dressing-room, to crave her blessing, and I asked of her if the priest who came to say mass for us most Sundays had arrived. She said he had been, and had gone away again, and that she greatly feared we should have no prayers that day, saving such as we might offer up for ourselves; "together," she added after a pause, "with a bitter sacrifice of tears and of such sufferings as we have heard of, but as yet not known the taste of ourselves."

Again I felt in my heart a throbbing feeling, which had in it an admixture of pain and joy—made up, I ween, of conflicting passions—such as curiosity feeding on the presentment of an approaching change; of the motions of grace in a soul which faintly discerns the happiness of suffering for conscience sake; and the fear of suffering natural to the human heart.

"Why are we to have no mass, sweet mother?" I asked, encircling her waist in my arms; "and wherefore has good Mr. Bryan gone away?"

"We received advice late last evening," she answered, "that the queen's pursuivants have orders to search this day the houses of the most noted recusants in this neighborhood; and 'tis likely they may begin with us, who have never made a secret of our faith, and never will."

"And will they kill us if they come?" I asked, with that same trembling eagerness I have so often known since when danger was at hand.

"Not now, not to-day, Conny," she answered; "but I pray to God they do not carry us away to prison; for since this rising in the north, to be a Catholic and a traitor is one and the same in their eyes who have to judge us. We must needs hide our books and church furniture; so give me thy beads, sweet one, and the cross from thy neck."

I waxed red when my mother bade me unloose the string, and tightly clasped the cross in both my hands "Let them kill me, mother," I cried; "but take not off my cross."

"Maybe," she said, "the queen's officers would trample on it, and injure their own souls in dishonoring a holy symbol." And as she spoke she took it from me, and hid it in a recess behind the chimney; which no sooner was done, than we heard a sound of horses' feet in the approach; and going to the window, I cried out, "Here is a store of armed men on horseback!" Ere I had uttered the words, one of them had dismounted and loudly knocked at the door with his truncheon; upon which my mother, taking me by the hand, went down stairs into the parlor where my father was. It seemed as if those knocks had struck on her heart, so great a trembling came over her. My father bade the servants throw {173} open the door; and the sheriff came in, with two pursuivants and some more men with him, and produced a warrant to search the house; which my father having read, he bowed his head, and gave orders not to hinder them in their duty. He stood himself the while in the hall, his face as white as a smock, and his teeth almost running through his lips.

One of the men came into the library, and pulling down the books, scattered them on the floor, and cried:

"Look ye here, sirs, what Popish stuff is this, fit for the hangman's burning!" At the which another answered:

"By my troth, Sam, I misdoubt that thou canst read. Methinks thou dost hunt Popery as dogs do game, by the scent. Prithee spell me the title of this volume."

"I will have none of thy gibing, Master Sevenoaks," returned the other. "Whether I be a scholar or not, I'll warrant no honest gospeller wrote on those yellow musty leaves, which be two hundred years old, if they be a day."

"And I'll warrant thee in that credence, Master Samuel, by the same token that the volume in thy hand is a treatise on field-sports, writ in the days of Master Caxton; a code of the laws to be observed in the hunting and killing of deer, which I take to be no Popish sport, for our most gracious queen—God save her majesty!—slew a fat buck not long ago in Windsor Forest with her own hand, and remembered his grace of Canterbury with half her prey;" and so saying, he drew his comrade from the room; I ween with the intent to save the books from his rough handling, for he seemed of a more gentle nature than the rest and of a more moderate disposition.

When they had ransacked all the rooms below, they went upstairs, and my father followed. Breaking from my mother's side, who sat pale and still as a statute, unable to move from her seat, I ran after him, and on the landing-place I heard the sheriff say somewhat touching the harboring of priests; to the which he made answer that he was ready to swear there was no priest in the house. "Nor has been?" quoth the sheriff; upon which my father said:

"Good sir, this house was built in the days of Her majesty's grandfather, King Henry VII.; and on one occasion his majesty was pleased to rest under my grandfather's roof, and to hear mass in that room," he said, pointing to what was now the chapel, "the church being too distant for his majesty's convenience: so priests have been within these walls many times ere I was born."

The sheriff said no more at that time, but went into the room, where there were only a few chairs, for that in the night the altar and all that appertained to it had been removed. He and his men were going out again, when a loud knocking was heard against the wall on one side of the chamber; at the sound of which my father's face, which was white before, became of an ashy paleness.

"Ah!" cried one of the pursuivants, "the lying Papist! The egregious Roman! an oath is in his mouth that he has no priest in his house, and here is one hidden in his cupboard."

"Mr. Sherwood!" the sheriff shouted, greatly moved, "lead the way to the hiding-place wherein a traitor is concealed, or I order the house to be pulled down about your ears."

My father was standing like one stunned by a sudden blow, and I heard him murmur, "'Tis the devil's own doing, or else I am stark, staring mad."

The men ran to the wall, and knocked against it with their sticks, crying out in an outrageous manner to the priest to come out of his hole. "We'll unearth the Jesuit fox," cried one; "we'll give him a better lodging in Lichfield gaol," shouted another; and the sheriff kept threatening to set fire to the house. Still the knocking from within went on, as if {174} answering that outside, and then a voice cried out, "I cannot open: I am shut in."

"'Tis Edmund!" I exclaimed; "'tis Edmund is in the hiding-place." And then the words were distinctly heard, "'Tis I; 'tis Edmund Genings. For God's sake, open; I am shut in." Upon which my father drew a deep breath, and hastening forward, pressed his finger on a place in the wall, the panel slipped, and Edmund came out of the recess, looking scared and confused. The pursuivants seized him; but the sheriff cried out, surprised, "God's death, sirs! but 'tis the son of the worshipful Mr. Genings, whose lady is a mother in Israel, and M. Jean de Luc's first cousin! And how came ye, Mr. Edmund, to be concealed in this Popish den? Have these recusants imprisoned you with some foul intent, or perverted you by their vile cunning?" Edmund was addressing my father in an agitated voice.

"I fear me, sir," he cried, clasping his hands, "I befear me much I have affrighted you, and I have been myself sorely affrighted. I was passing through this room, which I have never before seen, and the door of which was open this morn. By chance I drew my hand along the wall, where there was no apparent mark, when the panel slipped and disclosed this recess, into which I stepped, and straightway the opening closed and I remained in darkness. I was afraid no one might hear me, and I should die of hunger."

My father tried to smile, but could not. "Thank God," he said, "'tis no worse;" and sinking down on a chair he remained silent, whilst the sheriff and the pursuivants examined the recess, which was deep and narrow, and in which they brandished their swords in all directions. Then they went round the room, feeling the walls; but though there was another recess with a similar mode of aperture, they hit not on it, doubtless through God's mercy; for in it were concealed the altar furniture and our books, with many other things besides, which they would have seized on.

Before going away, the sheriff questioned Edmund concerning his faith, and for what reason he abode in a Popish house and consorted with recusants. Edmund answered he was no Papist, but a kinsman of Mrs. Sherwood, unto whose house his father had oftentimes sent him. Upon which he was counselled to take heed unto himself and to eschew evil company, which leads to horrible defections, and into the straight road to perdition. Whereupon they departed; and the officer who had enticed his companion from the library smiled as he passed me, and said:

"And wherefore not at prayers, little mistress, on the Lord's day, as all Christian folks should be?"

I ween he was curious to see how I should answer, albeit not moved thereunto by any malicious intent. But at the time I did not bethink myself that he spoke of Protestant service; and being angered at what passed, I said:

"Because we be kept from prayers by the least welcome visit ever made to Christian folks on a Lord's morning." He laughed and cried:

"Thou hast a ready tongue, young mistress; and when tried for recusancy I warrant thou'lt give the judge a piece of thy mind."

"And if I ever be in such a presence, and for such a cause," I answered, "I pray to God I may say to my lord on the bench what the blessed apostle St. Peter spoke to his judges: 'If it be just in the sight of God to hear you rather than God, judge ye.'" At which he cried:

"Why, here is a marvel indeed—a Papist to quote Scripture!" And laughing again, he went his way; and the house was for that time rid of these troublesome guests.

Then Edmund again sued for pardon to my father, that through his rash conduct he had been the occasion of so great fear and trouble to him.

{175}

"I warrant thee, my good boy," quoth my father, "thou didst cause me the most keen anguish, and the most sudden relief from it, which can well be thought of; and so no more need be said thereon. And as thou must needs be going to the public church, 'tis time that thou bestir thyself; for 'tis a long walk there and back, and the sun waxing hot."

When Edmund was gone, and I alone with him, my father clasped me in his arms, and cried:

"God send, my wench, thou mayest justify thy sponsors who gave thee thy name in baptism; for 'tis a rare constancy these times do call for, and such as is not often seen, saving in such as be of a noble and religious spirit; which I pray to God may be the case with thee."

My mother did not speak, but went away with her hand pressed against her heart; which was what of late I had often seen her to do, as if the pain was more than she could bear.

One hour later, as I was crossing the court, a man met me suited as a farmer; who, when I passed him, laid his hand on my shoulder; at the which I started, and turning round saw it was Father Bryan; who, smiling as I caught his hand, cried out:

"Dost know the shepherd in his wolf's clothing, little mistress?" and hastening on to the chapel he said mass, at the which only a few assisted, as my parents durst not send to the Catholics so late in the day. As soon as mass was over, Mr. Bryan said he must leave, for there was a warrant issued for his apprehension; and our house famed for recusancy, so as he might not stay in it but with great peril to himself and to its owners. We stood at the door as he was mounting his horse, and my father said, patting its neck:

"Tis a faithful servant this, reverend father; many a mile he has carried thee to the homes of the sick and dying since our troubles began."

"Ah! good Mr. Sherwood," Mr. Bryan replied, as he gathered up the bridle, "thou hast indeed warrant to style the poor beast faithful. If I were to shut my eyes and let him go, no doubt but he would find his way to the doors of such as cleave to the ancient faith, in city or in hamlet, across moor or through thick wood. If a pursuivant bestrode him, he might discover through his means who be recusants a hundred miles around. But I bethink me he would not budge with such a burthen on his back; and that he who made the prophet's ass to speak, would, give the good beast more sense than to turn informer, and to carry the wolf to the folds of the lambs. And prithee, Mistress Constance," said the good priest, turning to me, "canst keep a secret and be silent, when men's lives are in jeopardy?"

"Aye," cried my father quickly, "'tis as much as worthy Mr. Bryan's life is worth that none should know he was here to-day."

"More than my poor life is worth," he rejoined; "that were little to think of, my good friends. For five years I have made it my prayer that the day may soon come—and I care not how soon—when I may lay it down for his sake who gave it. But we must e'en have a care for those who are so rash as to harbor priests in these evil times. So Mistress Constance must e'en study the virtue of silence, and con the meaning of the proverb which teacheth discretion to be the best part of valor."

"If Edmund Genings asketh me, reverend father, if I have heard mass to-day, what must I answer?"

"Say the queen's majesty has forbidden mass to be said in this her kingdom; and if he presseth thee more closely thereon, why then tell him the last news from the poultry-yard, and that the hares have eat thy mignonette; which they be doing even now, if my eyes deceive me not," said the good father, pointing with his whip to the flower-garden.

So, smiling, he gave us a last blessing, and rode on toward the Chase, and I went to drive the hares away {176} from the flower-beds, and then to set the chapel in fair order. And ever and anon, that day and the next, I took out of my pocket my sweet Lady Surrey's last letter, and pictured to myself all the scenes therein related; so that I seemed to live one-half of my life with her in thought, so greatly was my fancy set upon her, and my heart concerned in her troubles.

CHAPTER V.

Not many days after the sheriff and the pursuivants had been at our house, and Mr. Bryan, by reason of the bloody laws which had been enacted against Papists and such as harbor priests, had left us,— though intending to return at such times as might serve our commodity, and yet not affect our safety,—I was one morning assisting my mother in the store-room, wherein she was setting aside such provisions as were to be distributed to the poor that week, together with salves, medicines, and the like, which she also gave out of charity, when a spasm came over her, so vehement and painful, that for the moment she lost the use of speech, and made signs to me to call for help. I ran affrighted into the library for my father, and brought him to her, upon which, in a little time, she did somewhat recover, but desired he would assist her to her own chamber, whither she went leaning on his arm. When laid on her bed she seemed easier; and smiling, bade me leave them for awhile, for that she desired to have speech with my father alone.

For the space of an hour I walked in the garden, with so oppressive a grief at my heart as I had never before experienced. Methinks the great stillness in the air added thereunto some sort of physical disorder; for the weather was very close and heavy; and if a leaf did but stir, I started as if danger was at hand; and the noise of the chattering pies over my head worked in me an apprehensive melancholy, foreboding, I doubt not, what was to follow. At about eleven o'clock, hearing the sound of a horse's feet in the avenue, I turned round, and saw Edmund riding from the house; upon which I ran across the grass to a turning of the road where he would pass, and called to him to stop, which he did; and told me he was going to Lichfield for his father, whom my mother desired presently to see. "Then thou shouldst not tarry," I said; and he pushed on and left me standing where I was; but the bell then ringing for dinner, I went back to the house, and, in so doing, took notice of a bay-tree on the lawn which was withered and dried-up, though the gardener had been at pains to preserve it by sundry appliances and frequent watering of it. Then it came to my remembrance what my nurse used to say, that the dying of that sort of tree is a sure omen of a death in a family; which thought sorely disturbed me at that time. I sat down with my father to a brief and silent meal; and soon after the physician he had sent for came, whom he conducted to my mother's chamber, whereunto I did follow, and slipped in unperceived. Sitting on one side of the bed, behind the curtains, I heard her say, in a voice which sounded hollow and weak, "Good Master Lawrenson, my dear husband was fain to send for you, and I cared not to withstand him, albeit persuaded that I am hastening to my journey's end, and that naught that you or any other man may prescribe may stay what is God's will. And if this be visible to you as it is to me, I pray you keep it not from me, for it will be to my much comfort to be assured of it."

When she had done speaking, he did feel her pulse; and the while my heart beat so quick and, as it seemed to me, so loud as if it must needs impede my hearing; but in a moment I heard him say: "God defend, good madam, I should deceive you. While there is life, there is hope. Greater {177} comfort I dare not urge. If there be any temporal matter on your mind, 'twere better settled now, and likewise of your soul's health, by such pious exercises as are used by those of your way of thinking."

At the hearing of these his words, my father fetched a deep sigh; but she, as one greatly relieved, clasped her hands together, and cried, "My God, I thank thee!"

Then, stealing from behind the curtain, I laid my head on the pillow nigh unto hers, and whispered, "Sweet mother, prithee do not die, or else take me with thee."

But she, as one not heeding, exclaimed, with her hands uplifted, "O faithless heart! O selfish heart! to be so glad of death!"

The physician was directing the maids what they should do for her relief when the pain came on, and he himself stood compounding some medicine for her to take. My father asked of him when he next would come; and he answered, "On the morrow;" but methinks 'twas even then his belief that there would be no morrow for her who was dying before her time, like the bay-tree in our garden. She bade him farewell in a kindly fashion; and when we were alone, I lying on the bed by her side, and my father sitting at its head, she said, in a low voice, "How wonderful be God's dealings with us, and how fatherly his care; in that he takes the weak unto himself, and leaves behind the strong to fight the battle now at hand! My dear master, I had a dream yesternight which had somewhat of horror in it, but more methinks of comfort." My father breaking out then in sighs and tears as if his heart would break, she said, "Oh, but thou must hear and acknowledge, my loved master, how gracious is God's providence to thy poor wife. When thou knowest what I have suffered—not in body, though that has been sharp too, but in my soul—it will reconcile thine own to a parting which has in it so much of mercy. Thou dost remember the night when Mr. Mush was here, and what his discourse did run on?"

"Surely do I, sweet wife," he answered; "for it was such as the mind doth not easily lose the memory of; the sufferings and glorious end of the blessed martyr Mrs. Clitherow. I perceived what sorrowful heed thou didst lend to his recital; but has it painfully dwelt in thy mind since?"

"By day and by night it hath not left me; ever recurring to my thoughts, ever haunting my dreams, and working in me a fearful apprehension lest in a like trial I should be found wanting, and prove a traitor to God and his Church, and a disgrace and heartbreak to thee who hast so truly loved me far beyond my deserts. I have bragged of the dangers of the times, even as cowards are wont to speak loud in the dark to still by the sound of their own voices the terrors they do feel. I have had before my eyes the picture of that cruel death, and of the children extremely used for answering as their mother had taught them, till cold drops of sweat have stood on my brow, and I have knelt in my chamber wringing my hands and praying to be spared a like trial. And then, maybe an hour later, sitting at the table, I spake merrily of the gallows, mocking my own fears, as when Mr. Bryan was last here; and I said that priests should be more welcome to me than ever they were, now that virtue and the Catholic cause were made felony; and the same would be in God's sight more meritorious than ever before: upon which, 'Then you must prepare your neck for the rope,' quoth he, in a pleasant but withal serious manner; at the which a cold chill overcame me, and I very well-nigh faulted, though constraining my tongue to say, 'God's will be done; but I am far unworthy of so great an honor.' The cowardly heart belied the confident tongue, and fear of my own weakness affrighted me, by the which I must needs have offended God, who helps such as trust {178} in him. But I hope to be forgiven, inasmuch as it has ever been the wont of my poor thoughts to picture evils beforehand in such a form as to scare the soul, which, when it came to meet with them, was not shaken from its constancy. When Conny was an infant I have stood nigh unto a window with her in my arms, and of a sudden a terror would seize me lest I should let her fall out of my hands, which yet clasped her; and methinks 'twas somewhat of alike feeling which worked in me touching the denying of my faith, which, God is my witness, is dearer to me than aught upon earth."

"'Tis even so, sweet wife," quoth my father; "the edge of a too keen conscience and a sensitive apprehension of defects visible to thine own eyes and God's—never to mine, who was ever made happy by thy love and virtue—have worn out the frame which enclosed them, and will rob me of the dearest comfort of my life, if I must lose thee."

She looked upon him with so much sweetness, as if the approach of death had brought her greater peace and joy than life had ever done, and she replied: "Death comes to me as a compassionate angel, and I fain would have thee welcome with me the kindly messenger who brings so great relief to the poor heart thou hast so long cherished. Now, thou art called to another task; and when the bruised, broken reed is removed from thy side, thou wilt follow the summons which even now sounds in thine ears."

"Ah," cried my father, clasping her hand, "art thou then already a saint, sweet wife, that thou hast read the vow slowly registered as yet in the depths of a riven heart?" Then his eyes turned on me; and she, who seemed to know his thoughts, that sweet soul who had been so silent in life, but was now spending her last breath in never-to-be-forgotten words, answered the question contained in that glance as if it had been framed in a set speech.

"Fear not for her," she said, laying her cheek close unto mine. "As her days, so shall her strength be. Methinks Almighty God has given her a spirit meet for the age in which her lot is cast. The early training thou hast had, my wench; the lack of such memories as make the present twofold bitter; the familiar mention round thy cradle of such trials as do beset Catholics in these days, have nurtured thee a stoutness of heart which will stand thee in good stead amidst the rough waves of this troublesome world. The iron will not enter into thy soul as it hath done into mine." Upon which she fell back exhausted and for a while no sound was heard in or about the house save the barking of our great dog.

My father had sent a messenger to a house where we had had notice days before Father Ford was staying but with no certain knowledge he still there, or any other priest in neighborhood, which occasioned him no small disquietude, for my mother's strength seemed to be visibly sinking which was what the doctor's words had led him to expect. The man he sent returned not till the evening; in the afternoon Mr. Genings and son came from Lichfield, which, when my mother heard, she said God was gracious to permit her once more to see John, which was Mr. Genings' name. They had been reared in the same house; and a kindness had always continued betwixt them. For some time past he had conformed to the times; and since his marriage with the daughter of a French Huguenot who lived in London, and who was a lady of very commendable character and manners, and strenuous in her own way of thinking, he had left off practising his own religion in secret, which for a while he used to do. When he came in, and saw death plainly writ in his cousin's face, he was greatly moved, and knelt down by her side with a very sorrowful countenance; upon which she straightly looked at him, and said: "Cousin John, my {179} breath is very short, as my time is also like to be. But one word I would fain say to thee before I die. I was always well pleased with my religion, which was once thine and that of all Christian people one hundred years ago; but I have never been so well pleased with it as now, when I be about to meet my Judge."

Mr. Genings' features worked with a strange passion, in which was more of grief than displeasure, and grasping his son's shoulder, who was likewise kneeling and weeping, he said: "You have wrought with this boy, cousin, to make him a Catholic."

"As heaven is my witness," she answered, "not otherwise but by my prayers."

"Hast thou seen a priest, cousin Constance?" he then asked: upon which my mother not answering, the poor man burst into tears, and cried: "Oh, cousin—cousin Constance, dost count me a spy, and at thy death-bed?"

He seemed cut to the heart; whereupon she gave him her hand, and said she hoped God would send her such ghostly assistance as she stood in need of; and praying God to bless him and his wife and children, and make them his faithful servants, so she might meet them all in perpetual happiness, she spoke with such good cheer, and then bade him and Edmund farewell with so pleasant a smile, as deceived them into thinking her end not so near. And so, after a while, they took their leave; upon which she composed herself for a while in silence, occupying her thoughts in prayer; and toward evening, through God's mercy, albeit the messenger had returned with the heavy news that Father Ford had left the county some days back, it happened that Mr. Watson, a secular priest who had lately arrived in England, and was on his way to Chester, stopped at our house, whereunto Mr. Orton, whom he had seen in prison at London, had directed him for his own convenience on the road, and likewise our commodity, albeit little thinking how great our need would be at that time of so opportune a guest, through whose means that dear departing soul had the benefit of the last sacraments with none to trouble or molest her, and such ghostly aid as served to smooth her passage to what has proved, I doubt not, the beginning of a happy eternity, if we may judge by such tokens as the fervent acts of contrition she made both before and after shrift, such as might have served to wash away ten thousand sins through his blood who cleansed her, and her great and peaceable joy at receiving him into her heart whom she soon trusted to behold. Her last words were expressions of wonder and gratitude at God's singular mercy shown unto her in the quiet manner of her death in the midst of such troublesome times. And methinks, when the silver cord was loosed, and naught was left of her on earth save the fair corpse which retained in death the semblance it had had in life, that together with the natural grief which found vent in tears, there remained in the hearts of such as loved her a comfortable sense of the Divine goodness manifested in this her peaceable removal.

How great the change which that day wrought in me may be judged of by such who, at the age I had then reached to, have met with a like affliction, coupled with a sense of duties to be fulfilled, such as then fell to my lot, both as touching household cares, and in respect to the cheering of my father in his solitary hours during the time we did yet continue at Sherwood Hall, which was about a year. It waxed very hard then for priests to make their way to the houses of Catholics, as many now found it to their interest to inform against them and such as harbored them; and mostly in our neighborhood, wherein there were at that time no recusants of so great rank and note that the sheriff would not be lief to meddle with them. We had oftentimes had secret advices to beware of such and such of our servants who might betray our hidden conveyances of safety; and my father scarcely durst {180} be sharp with them when they offended by slacking their duties, lest they might bring us into danger if they revealed, upon any displeasure, priests having abided with us. Edmund we saw no more since my mother's death; and after a while the news did reach us that Mr. Genings had died of the small-pox, and left his wife in so distressed a condition, against all expectation, owing to debts he had incurred, that she had been constrained to sell her house and furniture, and was living in a small lodging near unto the school where Edmund continued his studies.

I noticed, as time went by, how heavily it weighed on my father's heart to see so many Catholics die without the sacraments, or fall away from their faith, for lack of priests to instruct them, like so many sheep without a shepherd; and I guessed by words he let fall on divers occasions, that the intent obscurely shadowed forth in his discourse to my mother on her deathbed was ripening to a settled purpose, and tending to a change in his state of life, which only his love and care for me caused him to defer. What I did apprehend must one day needs occur, was hastened about this time by a warning he did receive that on an approaching day he would be apprehended and carried by the sheriff before the council at Lichfield, to be examined touching recusancy and harboring of priests; which was what he had long expected. This message was, as it were, the signal he had been waiting for, and an indication of God's will in his regard. He made instant provision for the placing of his estate in the hands of a friend of such singular honesty and so faithful a friendship toward himself, though a Protestant, that he could wholly trust him. And next he set himself to dispose of her whom he did term his most dear earthly treasure, and his sole tie to this perishable world, which he resolved to do by straightway sending her to London, unto his sister Mistress Congleton, who had oftentimes offered, since his wife's death, to take charge of this daughter, and to whom he now despatched a messenger with a letter, wherein he wrote that the times were now so troublesome, he must needs leave his home, and take advantage of the sisterly favor she had willed to show him in the care of his sole child, whom he now would forthwith send to London, commending her to her good keeping, touching her safety and religious and virtuous training, and that he should be more beholden to her than ever brother was to sister, and, as long as he lived, as he was bound to do, pray for her and her good husband. When this letter was gone, and order had been taken for my journey, which was to be on horseback, and in the charge of a maiden gentlewoman who had been staying some months in our neighborhood, and was now about in two days to travel to London, it seemed to me as if that which I had long expected and pictured unto myself had now come upon me of a sudden, and in such wise as for the first time to taste its bitterness. For I saw, without a doubt, that this parting was but the forerunner of a change in my father's condition as great and weighty as could well be thought of. But of this howbeit our thoughts were full of it, no talk was ministered between us. He said I should hear from him in London; and that he should now travel into Lancashire and Cheshire, changing his name, and often shifting his quarters whilst the present danger lasted. The day which was to be the last to see us in the house wherein himself and his fathers for many centuries back, and I his unworthy child, had been born, was spent in such fashion as becometh those who suffer for conscience sake, and that is with so much sorrow as must needs be felt by a loving father and a dutiful child in a first and doubtful parting, with so much regret as is natural in the abandonment of a peaceful earthly home, wherein God had been served in a Catholic manner for many generations and up to that time without discontinuance, only of late years as it were by {181} night and stealth, which was linked in their memories with sundry innocent joys and pleasures, and such griefs as do hallow and endear the visible scenes wherewith they be connected, but withal with a stoutness of heart in him, and a youthful steadiness in her whom he had infected with a like courage unto his own, which wrought in them so as to be of good cheer and shed no more tears on so moving an occasion than the debility of her nature and the tenderness of his paternal care extorted from their eyes when he placed her on her horse, and the bridle in the hand of the servant who was to accompany her to London. Their last parting was a brief one, and such as I care not to be minute in describing; for thinking upon it even now 'tis like to make me weep; which I would not do whilst writing this history, in the recital of which there should be more of constancy and thankful rejoicing in God's great mercies, than of womanish softness in looking back to past trials. So I will even break off at this point; and in the next chapter relate the course of the journey which was begun on that day.

[TO BE CONTINUED. Page 349]

Abridged from Le Correspondant.

THE MARQUIS DE CHASTELLUX.

In the bleak region of Upper Burgundy, not far from the domain of Vauban, stands the old manor of Chastellux, famous since the fifteenth century as the birth-place of two brothers, one of whom became an admiral, the other a marshal of France. From this feudal stronghold came forth one of the most amiable of the courtiers of Louis XVI.—a disciple of Voltaire and Hume, a rival of Turgot and Adam Smith, a friend of Washington and Jefferson, a forerunner of the revolutionists of 1789, a philosopher, an historian, a political economist, something of a poet, something of a naturalist, something of an artist, a man of taste, an enthusiastic student, a brilliant talker, and an elegant writer. The rude Sieurs de Chastellux would have been not a little astonished could they have foreseen what character of man was destined to inherit their title.

François Jean de Beauvoir, first known as Chevalier and afterward Marquis de Chastellux, was born at Paris in 1734. He was a son of the Count de Chastellux, lieutenant-general of the armies of the king, by Mlle. d'Aguesseau, daughter of the chancellor. His mother, being left a widow at an early period, withdrew thereupon into the privacy of domestic life, and the young marquis had the good fortune to be brought up under the eyes of the Chancellor d'Aguesseau himself. He entered the army at sixteen, and was hardly twenty-one before he had risen to be colonel. He distinguished himself highly during the campaigns of the Seven Years' War, and it was as a reward of his gallantry no less than out of compliment to his hereditary rank that he was selected on one occasion to present to the king the flags of a conquered city. It is hard to understand how, in the midst of such an active life, he could find time for study; but for all that he knew Greek, Latin, English, and Italian, and had some acquaintance with every branch of science cultivated in his time. From boyhood he showed a zealous interest in every sort of invention or discovery which promised to be of practical use {182} to mankind. When the principle of inoculation for small-pox was first broached in Europe, everybody shrank in alarm from the experiment. The young marquis had himself inoculated without his mother's knowledge, and then, running to Buffon, who knew his family, exclaimed joyfully, "I am saved, and my example will be the means of saving many others."

When peace was declared in 1763, he was not yet thirty. With his eminent gifts of mind and person, a brilliant career in society lay open to him, but he aimed to be something more than a mere man of fashion. His first literary productions were biographical sketches of two of his brother officers, MM. de Closen and de. Belsunce, which appeared in the Mercure, in 1765. He wrote a lively and graceful little essay on the "Union of Poetry and Music,"—the same subject which Marmontel afterward treated in his poem of Polymnie. The great quarrel between the schools of Gluck and Piccini did not break out until ten years later; but mutterings of the coming tempest were heard already. Italian music had its enthusiastic admirers and its implacable foes, and in the midst of their disputes Monsigny and Grétry had just given to France a lyric school of her own by creating the comic opera. M. de Chastellux, like everybody else in those days, was passionately fond of the theatre, and he espoused the cause of Italian music with the ardor that characterized everything he did. About the same time he fell into the society of the Encyclopoedists, and allied himself with Helvétius, d'Alembert, Turgot, and the rest of the philosophical party, who received the illustrious recruit with open arms.

About the same time that M. de Chastellux left the army, and made his debut in civil life, the Scottish historian and philosopher, David Hume, arrived in Paris, with the British ambassador, Lord Hertford. He became the lion of the day. Courtiers and philosophers fell down and worshipped him; his skeptical opinions were eagerly imbibed, and the three years that he spent in the French capital became, owing to his extraordinary influence, one of the most important epochs in the literary history of the eighteenth century. M. de Chastellux shared in the general enthusiasm; and the "Essays" and "Political Discourses" of Hume, together with the Essai sur les moeurs et l'esprit des nations of Voltaire, which had appeared a few years before, wrought upon his mind a deep and lasting impression. The united influence of these two authors led him to a course of study which resulted in a work upon which his reputation was finally established. This was his celebrated treatise, "On Public Felicity; or, Considerations on the Condition of Man at different Periods of his History," in two volumes. It bears a resemblance to both its parents. It is historical, like the Essai sur les moeurs, and dogmatic, like the "Essays" and "Discourses." And that is one of its defects. The "Considerations" on the condition of man at various periods serve by way of introduction to the author's theory of public felicity; but the second part is inferior to the first. The body of the book is sacrificed to the introduction.

This was four years before the appearance of Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations." The Marquis de Mirabeau and others of his school had begun to write; but their notions of political economy were still unfamiliar to the public. M. de Chastellux may therefore be regarded as one of the first supporters of that doctrine of human perfectibility which lies at the bottom of all the prevailing opinions of the eighteenth century. To this he added another theory, that the only end of government ought to be "the greatest happiness of the greatest possible number." Nearly one hundred years ago, therefore, he discovered and developed the principle which is now one of the most popular epitomes of social science. His style is good, {183} but neither very concise nor very brilliant. It is now and then obscure, sometimes digressive, sometimes declamatory; but for the most part clear, lively, and abounding in those happy touches which show the writer to be a man of the world as well as an author.

It is said that the immediate occasion of his writing the book was a conversation with Mably, the author of "Observations on the History of France," who maintained that the world was constantly degenerating, and that the men of to-day were not half so good as their grandfathers. The young philosopher, his head full of the new ideas, resolved to demonstrate the superiority of the present over the past. The first edition of his work appeared in 1772, two years before the death of Louis XV. It was printed anonymously in Holland. Everywhere it was read with avidity, abroad as well as in France. It was translated into English, German, and Italian. Voltaire read it at Ferney, and was so much struck by it that he covered his copy with marginal notes—not always of approbation—which were reproduced in a new edition of the work by the author's son, in 1822.

Despite great merits, which cannot be denied it, the essay "On Public Felicity" is now almost forgotten. In the historical portion, M. de Chastellux passes in review all the nations of ancient and modern times, for the purpose of showing that the general condition of man has never before been so good as it is now. The fundamental principle of his work is disclosed in the following profession of faith: "To say that man is born to be free, that his first care is to preserve his liberty when he enjoys it, and to recover it when he has lost it, is to attribute to him a sentiment which he shares with the whole animal kingdom, and which cannot be called in question. And if we add that this liberty is by its very nature indefinite, and that the liberty of one individual can only be limited by that of another, we do but express a truth which few in this enlightened age will be found to contradict. Look at society from this point of view, and you will see nothing but a series of encroachments and resistances; and if you want to form a just idea of government, you must consider it as the equilibrium which ought to result from these opposing struggles.… Government and legislation are only secondary and subordinate objects. They ought to be regarded merely as means through which men may preserve in the social state the greatest possible portion of natural liberty."

It is melancholy to see how, in a work that has so much to recommend it, the chapter which treats of the establishment of Christianity is disfigured by the skeptical philosophy of the age. Our regret at this is perhaps the more keen because the fault was altogether without excuse. Turgot had argued before the Sorbonne, only a few years previously, that a belief in the progress of the human race, so far from being incompatible with the doctrine of redemption, is its necessary consequence. De Chastellux might have shown that, if the coming of our Lord did not immediately effect a sensible reformation throughout the civilized world, it was because the vices and bad passions of the old pagan society long survived the overthrow of the old pagan gods. But there is this to be said for him: if he does not evince an adequate appreciation of the great moral revolution effected by Christianity, he at least does not speak of it in the same insolent tone that was fashionable in his day. When he comes down to modern times, and treats of density of population in its relation to national prosperity, he repeats the popular fallacy that the multiplication of religious orders exerts a pernicious influence upon the progress of population. But when from general views he descends to statistics, he refutes his own arguments. "The number of monks in France," he says, "according to a careful enumeration {184} made by order of government, a few years ago, was 26,674, and it certainly is not less now." In point of fact, the real number when the property of the clergy was confiscated in 1790 was only 17,000; and what is that in a population of 24,000,000 or 26,000,000? The army withdraws from the marriage state twenty times that number of men, in the vigor of their age; whereas the greater part of the monks are men in the decline of life.

It is a matter of astonishment that a work which professes to treat of "public felicity" should devote itself entirely to the material well-being of society, and have nothing to say of the moral condition of mankind, which is the more important element of the two in making up the sum of human happiness. Every author, of course, has a right to fix the limits of his subject; but then he must not promise on the title-page more than he means to perform.

The authorship of the essay on "Public Felicity" was not long a secret; but de Chastellux received perhaps as much annoyance as glory from the discovery. His ideas did not please everybody, and among those who fell foul of him for his philosophical errors were some of his own family. He made little account of their opposition, and in 1774 came out boldly with an eulogy on Helvétius, with whom he had lived for a long time on the most intimate terms. Two years later, he published a second edition of his previous treatise, with the addition of a chapter of "Ulterior Views," in which he points out the danger of some of the revolutionary opinions which were then coming more and more into vogue, and the futility of trying to realize in actual life that form of government which might be theoretically the best. If he had been alive in 1789, he would have belonged to the monarchical party in the Constituent Assembly; and, after having done his part in paving the way for the revolution, he would have perished as one of its victims. Among political and social reformers, he must be classed with the school of Montesquieu rather than with that of Rousseau.

The attention of France, however, was now fixed more and more firmly upon the contest going on in America between Great Britain and her rebellious colonies. Louis XVI., after some resistance, yielded to the demand of public opinion, and, in 1778, not only recognized the independence of the United States, but sent a fleet under Count d'Estaing to help them. A second expedition was despatched under Count de Rochambeau. M. de Chastellux, who then held the grade of maréchal de camp [equivalent to something between brigadier and major-general in the present United States army—ED.], obtained permission to join it, and was appointed major-general. The expeditionary corps arrived at Newport, capital of the state of Rhode Island, July 10, 1780. It consisted of eight ships of the line, two frigates, two gunboats, and over 5,000 troops. The next year came a reenforcement of 3,000 men. Lord Cornwallis, who commanded the English force was shut up in Yorktown, Va., and, being closely besieged by the allies and invested by land and sea, was compelled to surrender in October, 1781. This forced England to conclude a peace, and the auxiliary corps re-embarked at Boston on their return to France at the close of 1782. It had been two years and a half in America, and during this time the republic had achieved its independence.

During his visit to America, M. de Chastellux employed the brief periods of leisure left him from military occupations in making three tours through the interior. He wrote down as he travelled a journal of his observations, and printed at a little press on board the fleet some twenty copies of it, ten or twelve of which found their way to Europe. So great was the eagerness {185} with which people there seized upon every book relating to America, that a number of copies were surreptitiously printed, and a publisher at Cassel brought out an imperfect edition. The author then published the book himself in 1786 (2 vols., 12mo, Paris), under the title, Voyages de M. le Marquis de Chastellux dans l'Amérique septentrionale en 1780, 1781, et 1782. Though written originally only for his friends, it has a general interest, and presents a curious picture of the condition of North America at the period of which it treats.

The author set out from Newport, where the troops had landed and gone into winter-quarters, in order to visit Pennsylvania. Accompanied by two aides-de-camp, one of whom was the Baron de Montesquieu, grandson of the author of the Esprit des lois, and by five mounted servants, he started, November 11, 1780, on horseback, for that was the only means of travelling that the country afforded. The ground was frozen hard, and already covered with snow. The little party directed their steps first toward Windham, where Lauzun's hussars, forming the advance-guard of the army, were encamped. They found the Duke de Lauzun at the head of his troops, and this meeting between the grandsons of d'Aguesseau and Montesquieu, and a descendant of the Lauzuns and Birons, all three fighting for the cause of liberty in the wilds of America, was a curious beginning of their adventures. It was this same Duke de Lauzun, a friend of Mirabeau and Talleyrand, who became Duke de Biron after the death of his uncle, was chosen a member of the States General in 1789, commanded the republican army of La Vendée, and finished his career on the scaffold.

The travellers crossed the mountains which separated them from the Hudson, and, after passing through a wild and almost desert country, arrived at West Point, a place celebrated at that time for the most dramatic incidents of the war of independence (the treason of General Arnold and the execution of Major André), and now famous as the seat of the great military school of the United States. The American army occupying the forts of West Point, which Arnold's treachery had so nearly given over to the enemy, saluted the French major-general with thirteen guns—one for each state in the confederation. "Never," says he, "was honor more imposing or majestic. Every gun was, after a long interval, echoed back from the opposite bank with a noise nearly equal to that of the discharge itself. Two years ago, West Point was an almost inaccessible desert. This desert has been covered with fortresses and artillery by a people who, six years before, had never seen a cannon. The well-filled magazines, and the great number of guns in the different forts, the prodigious labor which must have been expended in transporting and piling up on the steep rocks such huge trunks of trees and blocks of hewn stone, give one a very different idea of the Americans from that which the English ministry have labored to convey to Parliament. A Frenchman might well be surprised that a nation hardly born should have spent in two years more than 12,000,000 francs in this wilderness; but how much greater must be his surprise when he learns that these fortifications have cost the state nothing, having been constructed by the soldiers, who not only received no extra allowance for the labor, but have not even touched their regular pay! It will be gratifying for him to know that these magnificent works were planned by two French engineers, M. du Portail and M. Gouvion, [Footnote 45] who have been no better paid than their workmen."

[Footnote 45: MM. du Portail and Gouvion went to America with Lafayette, and returned with him. Each rose afterward to the rank of lieutenant-general in the French army. The former, through the influence of Lafayette, was appointed minister-of-war in 1790; he fled to the United States during the Reign of Terror. The other was created major-general of the National Guard of Paris in 1769; he fell in battle in 1792.]

West Point stands on the bank of {186} the Hudson, in a situation which may well be compared with the most beautiful scenery of the Rhine. M. de Chastellux describes it with the liveliest admiration; but he remained there only a short time, because he was in haste to reach the head-quarters of Washington.

"After passing thick woods, I found myself in a small plain, where I saw a handsome farm. A small camp which seemed to cover it, a large tent pitched in the yard, and several wagons around it, convinced me that I was at the head-quarters of His Excellency, for so Mr. Washington is called, in the army and throughout America. M. de Lafayette was conversing in the yard with a tall man about five feet nine inches high, of a noble and mild aspect: it was the general himself. I was soon off my horse and in his presence. The compliments were short; the sentiments which animated me and the good-will which he testified for me were not equivocal. He led me into his house, where I found the company still at table, although dinner had long been over. He presented me to the generals and the aides-de-camp, adjutants, and other officers attached to his person, who form what is called in England and America the family of the general. A few glasses of claret and madeira accelerated the acquaintances I had to make, and I soon felt at my ease in the presence of the greatest and best of men. The goodness and benevolence which characterize him are evident from everything about him; but the confidence he inspires never gives occasion to familiarity, for it originates in a profound esteem for his virtues and a high opinion of his talents."

The next day Washington offered to conduct his guest to the camp of the marquis: this was the appellation universally bestowed in America upon Lafayette, who commanded the advance of the army.

"We found his troops in order of battle, and himself at their head, expressing by his air and countenance that he was better pleased to receive me there than he would be at his estate in Auvergne. [Footnote 46] The confidence and attachment of his troops are invaluable possessions for him, well-earned riches of which nobody can deprive him; but what, in my opinion, is still more flattering for a young man of his age (he was not more than twenty-three) is the influence and consideration he has acquired in political as well as military matters. I do not exaggerate when I say that private letters from him have often produced more effect upon some of the states than the most urgent recommendations of the Congress. On seeing him, one is at a loss to decide which is the stranger circumstance—that a man so young should have given such extraordinary proofs of ability, or that one who has been so much tried should still give promise of such a long career of glory. Happy his country, should she know how to make use of his talents! happier still, should she never stand in need of them!"

[Footnote 46: M. de Chastellux was cousin-german by the mother's side to the Duchess of Ayen, the mother of Madame de Lafayette.]

This last remark shows that M. de Chastellux, with all his enthusiasm for the present, was not without anxiety for the future. He spent three days at head-quarters, nearly all the while at table, after the American fashion. At the end of each meal nuts were served, and General Washington sat for several hours, eating them, "toasting," and conversing. These long conversations only increased his companion's admiration.

"The most striking characteristic of this respected man is the perfect accord which exists between his physical and moral qualities. This idea of a perfect whole cannot be produced by enthusiasm, which would rather reject it, since the effect of proportion is to diminish the idea of greatness. Brave without rashness, laborious without ambition, generous without prodigality, noble without pride, virtuous without severity, he seems always to have {187} confined himself within those limits where the virtues, by clothing themselves in more lively but more changeable and doubtful colors, may be mistaken for faults."

The city of Philadelphia was the capital of the confederation and the seat of the Congress. M. de Chastellux did not fail to visit it. He enjoyed there the hospitality of the Chevalier de la Luzerne, French minister to the United States, and had the pleasure of meeting several young French officers, some in the service of the United States, others belonging to the expeditionary corps, whom the interruption of military operations had left at liberty, like himself. Among them were M. de Lafayette, the Viscount de Noailles, the Count de Damas, the Count de Custine, the Chevalier de Mauduit, and the Marquis de la Rouérie. Let us give a few particulars about these "Gallo-Americans," as our author calls them. The Viscount de Noailles, brother-in-law of Lafayette, and colonel of the chasseurs of Alsace, was afterward a member of the States General, and principal author of the famous deliberations of the 4th of August. The Count Charles de Damas, an aide-de-camp of Rochambeau, in after years took part, on the contrary, against the revolutionists, and, attempting to rescue Louis XVI. at Varennes, was arrested with him. The Count de Custine, colonel of the regiment of Saintonge infantry, is the same who was general-in-chief of the republican armies in 1792, and who died by the guillotine the next year, like Lauzun. The Chevalier de Mauduit commanded the American artillery. At the age of fifteen, with his head full of dreams of classical antiquity, he ran away from college, walked to Marseilles, and shipped as cabin-boy on board a vessel bound for Greece, in order to visit the battle-fields of Plataea and Thermopylae. The same spirit of enthusiasm carried him, at the age of twenty, to America. Appointed, after the war, commandant at Port au Prince, he was assassinated there by his own soldiers in 1791. The history of the Marquis de la Rouérie, or Rouarie, is still more romantic. In his youth he fell violently in love with an actress, and wanted to marry her. Compelled by his family to break off this attachment, he determined to become a Trappist; but he soon threw aside the monastic habit and went to America, where he commanded a legion armed and equipped at his own cost. He abandoned his surname and title, and would only be known as Colonel Armand. After his return to France, he was concerned, with others of the nobility of Brittany, in the troubles which preceded the revolution. He was one of the twelve deputies sent in 1787 to demand of the king the restoration of the privileges of that province, and as such was committed to the Bastile. The next year he had occasion to claim the same privileges, not from the king, but from the Third Estate. In 1791 he placed himself at the head of the disaffected, and organized the royalist insurrection in the west. Denounced and pursued, he saved himself by taking to the forest, lay hid in one chateau after another, fell sick in the middle of winter, and died in a fit of despair on hearing of the execution of Louis XVI.

The Chevalier de la Luzerne, brother of the Bishop of Langres, afterward cardinal, so distinguished for his noble conduct in 1789, was a man of more coolness and deliberation, but not less devoted to the cause of the United States. He had given abundant proof of his friendship by contracting a loan on his own responsibility for the payment of the American troops.

"M. de la Luzerne," says de Chastellux, "is so formed for the station he occupies, that one would be tempted to imagine no other could fill it but himself. Noble in his expenditure, like the minister of a great monarchy, but plain in his manners, like a republican, he is equally fit to represent the king with the Congress, or the Congress with the king. He loves the {188} Americans, and his own inclination attaches him to the duties of his administration. He has accordingly obtained their confidence, both as a private and a public man; but in both these respects he is inaccessible to the spirit of party which reigns but too much around him. He is anxiously courted by all parties, and, espousing none, he manages all." In acknowledgment of his services in America, the Chevalier was appointed, after the peace, minister at London;—rather an audacious action on the part of the government of Louis XVI. to choose as their representative in England the very man who had contributed most of all to the independence of the United States. The state of Pennsylvania, in gratitude for his acts of good-will, gave the name of Luzerne to one of her counties.

The principal occupation of these officers, during their stay at Philadelphia, was to visit, notwithstanding the inclemency of the weather, the scenes of the recent conflicts near that city, or to discuss the causes which had turned the fortune of war, now in favor of the Americans, and now against them. Our author here shows himself in a new light, as a tactician who, with a thorough knowledge of the art of war, points out the circumstances which have led to the success or failure of this or that manoeuvre. Those affairs in which the French figured especially attracted his attention. Bravery, generosity, disinterestedness, all the national virtues were conspicuous in these volunteers who had crossed the ocean to make war at their own expense, and who softened the asperity of military operations by the charm of their elegant manners and chivalric bearing.

Among the battle-fields which these young enthusiasts, while a waiting something better to do, loved to trace out was that of Brandywine, where M. de Lafayette, almost immediately after his landing in America, received the wound in the leg of which he speaks so gaily in a letter to his wife. Lafayette himself acted as their guide, and recounted to his friends, on the very scene of action, the incidents of this day, which was not a fortunate one for the Americans. He did the honors of another expedition to the heights of Barren Hill, where he had gained an advantage under rather curious circumstances. He had with him there about two thousand infantry with fifty dragoons and an equal number of Indians, when the English, who occupied Philadelphia, endeavored to surround and capture him.

"General Howe [Sir Henry Clinton—ED.] thought he had now fairly caught the marquis, and even carried his gasconade so far as to invite ladies to meet Lafayette at supper the next day; and, whilst the principal part of the officers were at the play, he put in motion the main body of his forces, which he marched in three columns. The first was not long in reaching the advanced posts of M. de Lafayette, which gave rise to a laughable adventure. The fifty savages he had with him were placed in ambuscade in the woods, after their own manner; that is to say, lying as close as rabbits. Fifty English dragoons, who had never seen any Indians, entered the wood where they were hid. The Indians on their part, had never seen dragoon. Up they start, raising a horrible cry, throw down their arms, and escape by swimming across the Schuylkill. The dragoons, on the other hand, as much terrified as they were, turned tail, and fled in such a panic that they did not stop until they reached Philadelphia. M. de Lafayette, finding himself in danger of being surrounded, made such skilful dispositions that he effected his retreat, as if by enchantment, and crossed the river without losing a man. The English army, finding the bird flown, returned to Philadelphia, spent with fatigue, and ashamed of having done nothing. The ladies did not see M. de Lafayette, and General Howe [Clinton] himself arrived too late for supper." By the side of these admirable military sketches, we have an account of a ball at the Chevalier de la Luzerne's. "There were near twenty women, {189} twelve or fifteen of whom danced, each having her 'partner,' as the custom is in America. Dancing is said to be at once the emblem of gaiety and of love; here it seems to be the emblem of legislation and of marriage: of legislation, inasmuch as places are marked out, the country-dances named, and every proceeding provided for, calculated, and submitted to regulation; of marriage, as it furnishes each lady with a partner, with whom she must dance the whole evening, without being permitted to take another. Strangers have generally the privilege of being complimented with the handsomest women; that is to say, out of politeness, the prettiest partners are given to them. The Count de Damas led forth Mrs. Bingham, and the Viscount de Noailles, Miss Shippen. Both of them, like true philosophers, testified a great respect for the custom of the country by not quitting their partners the whole evening; in other respects they were the admiration of the whole assembly from the grace and dignity with which they danced. To the honor of my country, I can affirm that they surpassed that evening a chief justice of Carolina, and two members of Congress, one of whom (Mr. Duane) passed for being by ten per cent. more lively than all the other dancers."

At Philadelphia, as in camp, a great part of the day was passed at table. The Congress having met, M. de Chastellux was invited to dinner successively by the representatives from the North and the representatives from the South; for the political body was even then divided by a geographical line, each side having separate reunions at a certain tavern which they used to frequent: so we see the differences between North and South are as old as the confederation itself. He made the acquaintance of all the leading members, and especially of Samuel Adams, one of the framers of the Declaration of Independence. [Footnote 47] He saw also the celebrated pamphleteer, Thomas Paine, who ten years afterward came to France, and was chosen a member of the National Convention. Together with Lafayette, our author was elected a member of the Academy of Philadelphia. Despite so many circumstances to prepossess him in favor of the Americans, he appears not a very ardent admirer of what he witnesses about him. He shows but little sympathy with the Quakers, whose "smooth and wheedling tone" disgusts him, and whom he represents as wholly given up to making money. Philadelphia he calls "the great sink in which all the speculations of the United States meet and mingle." The city then had 40,000 inhabitants; it now contains 600,000.

[Footnote 47: A mistake of the reviewer's. Samuel Adams had no hand in writing the Declaration, nor does de Chastellux say that he had.——ED. C. W. ]

We can easily conceive that, in contrasting the appearance of this republican government with the great French monarchy, he should have found abundant food for study and reflection. He speaks with great reserve, but what little he says is enough to show that he was not so much enamored of republican ideas as Lafayette and most of his friends. The disciple of Montesquieu loses much of his admiration for the American constitutions when he sees them in operation, and seems especially loath to introduce them into his own country. The constitution of Pennsylvania strikes him as particularly defective.

"The state of Pennsylvania is far from being one of the best governed of the members of the confederation. The government is without force; nor can it be otherwise. A popular government can never have any whilst the people are uncertain and vacillating in their opinions; for then the leaders seek rather to please than to serve them, and end by becoming the slaves of the multitude whom they pretended to govern."

This constitution had one capital defect: it provided only for a single legislative chamber. After a disastrous trial, Pennsylvania was {190} compelled to change her laws, and adopt the system of two chambers, like the other states of the Union.

Our author betrays his misgivings most clearly in his narrative of an interview with Samuel Adams. His report of the conversation is especially curious, as it shows how entirely the two speakers were preoccupied by different ideas. Samuel Adams, who has been called "the American Cato," bent himself to prove the revolution justifiable, by arguments drawn not only from natural right but from historical precedent. The thoroughly English character of mind of these innovators led them to make it a sort of point of honor to find a sanction for their conduct in tradition. M. de Chastellux, like a true Frenchman, made no account of such reasonings.

"I am clearly of opinion that the parliament of England had no right to tax America without her consent; but I am still more clearly convinced that, when a whole people say, 'We will be free!' it is difficult to demonstrate that they are in the wrong. Be that as it may, Mr. Adams very satisfactorily proved to me that New England was peopled with no view to commerce and aggrandizement, but wholly by individuals who fled from persecution, and sought an asylum at the extremity of the world, where they might be free to live and follow their own opinions; that it was of their own accord that these colonists placed themselves under the protection of England; that the mutual relationship springing from this connection was expressed in their charters, and that the right of imposing or exacting a revenue of any kind was not comprised in them." There was no question between the two speakers of the Federal Constitution, for it did not yet exist. The states at that time formed merely a confederation of sovereign states, with a general congress, like the German confederation. They had no president or central administration. The constitutions spoken of in this conversation were simply the separate constitutions of the individual states, and Samuel Adams, being from Massachusetts, referred particularly to that state. M. de Chastellux, accustomed to the complex social systems of Europe, was surprised that no property qualification should be required of voters; the Americans, on the contrary, who had always lived in a democratic community, both before and since the declaration of independence, could not comprehend the necessity of such a restriction. Both were doubtless right; for it is equally difficult to establish political inequality where it does not already exist, and to suddenly abolish it where it does exist. The constitution of Massachusetts, superior in this respect to that of Pennsylvania, provided for a moderating power by creation of a governor's council, elected by property-holders.

Our author's first journey terminates in the north, near the Canada frontier. He crosses the frozen rivers in a sleigh, in order to visit the battle-field of Saratoga, the scene, three years before, the capitulation of General Burgoyne, the most important success which the Americans had achieved previous to the arrival of the French. Returning to Newport in the early part of 1781, after having travelled, in the course of two months, more than three hundred leagues, on horseback or in sleighs, he passed the rest of the year solely occupied in the duties of the glorious campaign which put an end to the war. He wrote a journal of this campaign, but it has not been published. He speaks of it in the narrative of his travels. From the Memoires of Rochambeau, however, we learn something of his gallant behavior at the siege of Yorktown, where, at the head of the reserve, he repulsed a sortie of the enemy.

His second journey was made immediately after the surrender of Cornwallis, and was directed toward Virginia, the most important of the southern, as Pennsylvania was of the northern, states. It was the birth-place of Washington, of Jefferson, of Madison, and {191} of Monroe; the state which shared most actively in the war of independence, and which is now the principal battle-field of the bloody struggle between North and South. This second journey did not partake of the military and political character of the first. Now that the destiny of America seemed settled, the author gave his attention, principally, to natural history. In every phrase we recognize the pupil and admirer of Buffon. His chief purpose was to visit a natural bridge of rock across one of the affluents of the James river, in the Appalachian mountains. He describes this stupendous arch with great care, and illustrates his narrative with several drawings which he caused to be made by an officer of engineers.

À propos of this subject, he indulges in speculations upon the geological formation of the New World, quite after the manner of the author of Époques de la nature. On the road he amused himself by hunting. He describes the animals that he kills, and gives an account of the mocking-bird, which almost equals Buffon's in vivacity, and excels it in accuracy. He gives several details respecting the opossum, that singular animal which almost seems to belong to a different creation. All natural objects interest him, and he studies them with the zeal of a first discoverer. His description of the mocking-bird is well worth reproducing:

"I rose with the sun, and, while breakfast was preparing, took a walk around the house. The birds were heard on every side, but my attention was chiefly attracted by a very agreeable song, which appeared to proceed from a neighboring tree. I approached softly, and perceived it to be a mocking-bird, saluting the rising sun. At first I was afraid of frightening it, but my presence, on the contrary, gave it pleasure; for, apparently delighted at having an auditor, it sang better than before, and its emulation seemed to increase when it saw a couple of dogs, which followed me, draw near to the tree on which it was perched. It kept hopping incessantly from branch to branch, still continuing its song; for this extraordinary bird is not less remarkable for its agility than its charming notes. It keeps perpetually rising and sinking, so as to appear not less the favorite of Terpsichore than Polyhymnia. This bird cannot certainly be reproached with fatiguing its auditors, for nothing can be more varied than its song, of which it is impossible to give an imitation, or even to furnish any adequate idea. As it had every reason to be satisfied with my attention, it concealed from me none of its talents; and one would have thought that, after having delighted me with a concert, it was desirous of entertaining me with a comedy. It began to counterfeit different birds; those which it imitated the most naturally, at least to a stranger, were the jay, the raven, the cardinal, and the lapwing. It appeared desirous of detaining me near it; for, after I had listened for a quarter of an hour, it followed me on my return to the house, flying from tree to tree, always singing, sometimes its natural song, at others those which it had learned in Virginia and in its travels; for this bird is one of those which change climate, although it sometimes appears here during the winter."

Continuing his journey, the traveller visited Jefferson at his country-home, situated deep in the wilderness, on the skirts of the Blue Ridge. This visit gives him opportunity for a new historical portrait:

"It was Jefferson himself who built his house and chose the situation. He calls it Monticello ['little mountain'], a modest title, for it is built upon a very high mountain; but the name indicates the owner's attachment to the language of Italy, and above all to the fine arts, of which that country was the cradle. He is a man not yet forty, of tall stature and a mild and pleasant countenance; but his mind and understanding are ample substitutes for every external grace. {192} An American who, without having ever quitted his own country, is skilled in music and drawing; a geometrician, an astronomer, a natural philosopher, a jurist and a statesman; a senator who sat for two years in the congress which brought about the revolution, and which is never mentioned without respect, though unhappily not without regret; [Footnote 48] a governor of Virginia, who filled this difficult station during the invasions of Arnold, of Phillips, and of Cornwallis; in fine, a philosopher in voluntary retirement from the world and public affairs, because he only loves the world so long as he can flatter himself with the conviction that he is of some use to mankind. A mild and amiable wife, charming children, of whose education he himself takes charge, a house to embellish, great possessions to improve, and the arts and sciences to cultivate—these are what remain to Mr. Jefferson after having played a distinguished part on the theatre of the New World. Before I had been two hours in his company, we were as ultimate as if we had passed our whole lives together. Walking, books, but above all a conversation always varied and interesting, sustained by that sweet satisfaction experienced by two persons whose sentiments are always in unison, and who understand each other at the first hint, made four days seem to me only so many minutes. No object had escaped Mr. Jefferson's attention; and it seemed as if from his youth he had placed his mind, as he has done his house, on an elevation from which he might contemplate the universe."

[Footnote 48: The United States were then passing through a crisis of anarchy, which lasted until the adoption of the Federal Constitution in 1788, and the elevation of Washington to the presidency.]

At the period of this visit, Mr. Jefferson thought only of retirement; but when M. de Chastellux's Voyages en Amérique appeared, three years afterward, he was minister-plenipotentiary of the United States in Paris. The death of his wife had determined him to return to public life. He formed a solid friendship for M. de Chastellux, of which his correspondence contains abundant proof. The brilliant French soldier introduced the solitary of Monticello, the "American wild-man of the mountains," to the salons of Paris; and the republican statesman, with the manners of an aristocrat, entered, nothing loath, into the society of the gay and polished capital, where he received the same welcome and honors that were accorded to Franklin.

This portion of the Journal closes with some general remarks upon Virginia, which possess a new interest now that the people of that state reappear upon the scene in the same bellicose and indomitable character which they bore of old.

"The Virginians differ essentially from the people of the North, not only in the nature of their climate, soil, and agriculture, but in that indelible character which is imprinted on every nation at the moment of its origin, and which, by perpetuating itself from generation to generation, justifies the great principle that 'everything which is partakes of that which has been.' The settlement of Virginia took place at the commencement of the seventeenth century. The republican and democratic spirit was not then common in England; that of commerce and navigation was scarcely in its infancy. The long wars with France and Spain had perpetuated the military spirit, and the first colonists of Virginia were composed in great part of gentlemen who had no other profession than that of arms. It was natural, therefore, for these colonists, who were filled with military principles and the prejudices of nobility, to carry them even into the midst of the savages whose lands they came to occupy. Another cause which operated in forming their character was the institution of slavery. It may be asked how these prejudices have been brought to coincide with a revolution founded on such different principles? I answer {193} that they have perhaps contributed to produce it. While the insurrection in New England was the result of reason and calculation, Virginia revolted through pride."

The third and last journey of M. de Chastellux led him through New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and northern Pennsylvania. This was during the months of November and December, 1782, on the eve of his return to France. He started from Hartford, the capital of Connecticut, and, after visiting several other places, went to Boston, for he could not leave America without seeing this city, the cradle of the revolution. He found at this port the French fleet, under command of M. de Vaudreuil, which was to carry back the expeditionary corps to France. He closes his Journal with an interesting account of the university at Cambridge, which Ampère, who was, like him, a member of the French Academy, visited and described seventy years afterward. In the appendix to his book he gives a letter written by himself on board the frigate l'Émeraude, just before sailing, to Mr. Madison, professor of philosophy in William and Mary College. It is upon a subject which has not yet lost its appropriateness—the future of the arts and sciences in America. A democratic and commercial society, always in a ferment, seemed to him hardly compatible with scientific, and still less with artistic, progress. But, in his solicitude for the welfare of the country he had been defending, he would not allow that the difficulty was insuperable. Some of his remarks upon this subject are extremely delicate and ingenious.

The question which troubled him is not yet fully answered, but it is in a fair way of being settled. The United States have really made but little progress in the arts, though they have produced a few pictures and statues which have elicited admiration even in Europe at recent industrial exhibitions. They are beginning, however, to have a literature. Even in the days of the revolution they could boast of the writings of Franklin, which combined the-most charming originality with refinement and solid good sense. Now they can show, among novelists, Fenimore Cooper and the celebrated Mrs. Beecher Stowe, whose book gave the signal for another revolution; among story-tellers, Washington Irving and Hawthorne; among critics, Ticknor; among historians, Prescott and Bancroft; among economists, Carey; among political writers, Everett; among moralists, Emerson and Channing; among poets, Bryant and Longfellow. In science they have done still more. They have adopted and naturalized one of the first of modern geologists, Agassiz; and the hydrographical labors of Maury, [late] director of the Washington Observatory, are the admiration of the whole world. Their immense development in industrial pursuits implies a corresponding progress in practical science. It was Fulton, an American, who invented the steamboat, and carried out in his own country the idea which he could not persuade Europe to listen to; and only lately the reaping-machine has come to us from the shores of the great lakes and the vast prairies of the Far West.

When the Voyages en Amérique appeared, the revolutionary party in France were still more dissatisfied with the book than they had been with the Félicité publique. They were angry at the wise and unprejudiced judgments which the author passed upon men and things in the New World; they were angry that he found some things not quite perfect in republican society, that his praises of democracy were not louder, his denunciations of the past not more sweeping. Brissot de Warville, whose caustic pen was already in full exercise, published a bitter review of the book. Some of the hostile criticisms found their way to the United States, and M. de Chastellux, in sending a copy of his work to General Washington, took occasion to {194} defend himself. He received from the general a long and affectionate reply, written at Mount Vernon, in April, 1786.

M. de Chastellux also wrote a "Discourse on the Advantages and Disadvantages which have resulted to Europe from the Discovery of America," and edited the comedies of the Marchioness de Gléon. This lady, celebrated for her wit and beauty, was the daughter of a rich financier. At her house, La Chevrette, near Montmorency, she entertained all the literary world, and gave representations of her own plays. Her friend, M. de Chastellux, was himself the author of a few dramatic pieces, performed either at La Chevrette or at the Prince de Condé's, at Chantilly; but they have never been published. We shall respect his reserve, and refrain from giving our readers a taste either of these compositions or of his "Plan for a general Reform of the French Infantry," and other unpublished writings.

After his return from America, de Chastellux was appointed governor of Longwy. He had reached the age of nearly fifty and was still unmarried, when he met at the baths of Spa, which were still the resort of all the good company in Europe, a young, beautiful, and accomplished Irish girl, named Miss Plunkett, with whom he fell over head and ears in love. He married her in 1787, but did not long enjoy his happiness, for he died the next year. Like most men who devote themselves to the public welfare, he had sadly neglected his private affairs. Being the youngest of five children, his fortune was not large, and it gave him little trouble to run through it. General officers in those days took a pride in their profuse expenditures in the field: he ruined himself by his American campaign. His widow was attached in the capacity of maid of honor to the person of the estimable daughter of the Duke de Penthièvre, the Duchess of Orléans, mother of King Louis Philippe. This princess adopted, after a certain fashion, his posthumous son, who became one of the chevaliers d'honneur of Madame Adelaide, the daughter of his patroness. He was successively a deputy and peer of France after the revolution 1830. He published a short memoir of his father, prefixed to an edition of the Félicité publique.

{195}

From The Month.

THE LEGEND OF LIMERICK BELLS.

BY BESSIE RAYNER PARKES.

  There is a convent on the Alban hill,
      Round whose stone roots the gnarlèd olives grow;
  Above are murmurs of the mountain rill,
      And all the broad Campagna lies below;
  Where faint gray buildings and a shadowy dome
  Suggest the splendor of eternal Rome.

  Hundreds of years ago, these convent-walls
      Were reared by masons of the Gothic age:
  The date is carved upon the lofty halls,
      The story written on the illumined page.
  What pains they took to make it strong and fair
  The tall bell-tower and sculptured porch declare.

  When all the stones were placed, the windows stained,
      And the tall bell-tower finished to the crown,
  Only one want in this fair pile remained,
      Whereat a cunning workman of the town
  (The little town upon the Alban hill)
  Toiled day and night his purpose to fulfil.

  Seven bells he made, of very rare devise,
      With graven lilies twisted up and down;
  Seven bells proportionate in differing size,
      And full of melody from rim to crown;
  So that, when shaken by the wind alone,
  They murmured with a soft AEolian tone.

  These being placed within the great bell-tower,
      And duly rung by pious skilful hand,
  Marked the due prayers of each recurring hour,
      And sweetly mixed persuasion with command.
  Through the gnarled olive-trees the music wound,
  And miles of broad Campagna heard the sound.

  And then the cunning workman put aside
      His forge, his hammer, and the tools he used
  To chase those lilies; his keen furnace died;
      And all who asked for bells were hence refused.
  With these his best, his last were also wrought,
  And refuge in the convent-walls he sought.

  There did he live, and there he hoped to die,
      Hearing the wind among the cypress-trees
  Hint unimagined music, and the sky
      Throb full of chimes borne downward by the breeze;
  Whose undulations, sweeping through the air,
  His art might claim as an embodied prayer.

{196}

  But those were stormy days in Italy:
      Down came the spoiler from the uneasy North,
  Swept the Campagna to the bounding sea,
      Sacked pious homes, and drove the inmates forth;
  Whether a Norman or a German foe,
  History is silent, and we do not know.

  Brothers in faith were they; yet did not deem
      The sacred precincts barred destroying hand.
  Through those rich windows poured the whitened beam,
      Forlorn the church and ruined altar stand.
  As the sad monks went forth, that self-same hour
  Saw empty silence in the great bell-tower.

  The outcast brethren scattered far and wide;
      Some by the Danube rested, some in Spain:
  On the green Loire the aged abbot died,
      By whose loved feet one brother did remain
  Faithful in all his wanderings: it was he
  Who cast and chased those bells in Italy.

  He, dwelling at Marmontier, by the tomb
      Of his dear father, where the shining Loire
  Flows down from Tours amidst the purple bloom
      Of meadow-flowers, some years of patience saw.
  Those fringèd isles (where poplars tremble still)
  Swayed like the olives of the Alban hill.

  The man was old, and reverend in his age;
      And the "Great Monastery" held him dear.
  Stalwart and stern, as some old Roman sage
      Subdued to Christ, he lived from year to year,
  Till his beard silvered, and the fiery glow
  Of his dark eye was overhung with snow.

  And being trusted, as of prudent way,
      They chose him for a message of import,
  Which the "Great Monastery" would convey
      To a good patron in an Irish court;
  Who, by the Shannon, sought the means to found
  St. Martin's off-shoot on that distant ground.

  The old Italian took his staff in hand,
      And journeyed slowly from the green Touraine
  Over the heather and salt-shining sand,
      Until he saw the leaping crested main,
  Which, dashing round the Cape of Brittany,
  Sweeps to the confines of the Irish Sea.

{197}

  There he took ship, and thence with laboring sail
      He crossed the waters, till a faint gray line
  Rose in the northern sky; so faint, so pale,
      Only the heart that loves her would divine,
  In her dim welcome, all that fancy paints
  Of the green glory of the Isle of Saints.

  Through the low banks, where Shannon meets the sea,
      Up the broad waters of the River King
  (Then populous with a nation), journeyed he,
      Through that old Ireland which her poets sing;
  And the white vessel, breasting up the stream,
  Moved slowly, like a ship within a dream.

  When Limerick towers uprose before his gaze,
      A sound of music floated in the air—
  Music which held him in a fixed amaze,
      Whose silver tenderness was alien there;
  Notes full of murmurs of the southern seas,
  And dusky olives swaying in the breeze.

  His chimes! the children of the great bell-tower,
      Empty and silent now for many a year,
  He hears them ringing out the vesper hour,
      Owned in an instant by his loving ear.
  Kind angels stayed the spoiler's hasty hand,
  And watched their journeying over sea and land.

  The white-sailed boat moved slowly up the stream;
      The old man lay with folded hands at rest;
  The Shannon glistened in the sunset beam;
      The bells rang gently o'er its shining breast,
  Shaking out music from each lilied rim:
  It was a requiem which they rang for him.

  For when the boat was moored beside the quay,
      He lay as children lie when lulled by song;
  But never more to waken. Tenderly
      They buried him wild-flowers and grass among,
  Where on the cross alights the wandering bird,
  And hour by hour the bells he loved are heard.

{198}

From London Society.

A PERILOUS JOURNEY.

A TALE.

  There is a tide in the affairs of men,
  Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune—

So says the sage, and it is not to be gainsayed by any man whom forty winters have chilled into wisdom. Ability and opportunity are fortune. Opportunity is not fortune; otherwise all were fortunate. Ability is not fortune, else why does genius slave? Why? But because it missed the opportunity that fitted it?

What I have—wife, position, independence—I owe to an opportunity for exercising the very simple and unpretending combination of qualities that goes by the name of ability. But to my story.

My father was a wealthy country gentleman, of somewhat more than the average of intelligence, and somewhat more than the average of generosity and extravagance. His younger brother, a solicitor in large practice in London, would in vain remonstrate as to the imprudence of his course. Giving freely, spending freely, must come to an end. It did; and at twenty I was a well educated, gentlemanly pauper. The investigation of my father's affairs showed that there was one shilling and sixpence in the pound for the whole of his creditors, and of course nothing for me.

The position was painful. I was half engaged—to that is, I had gloves, flowers, a ringlet, a carte de visite of Alice Morton. That, of course, must be stopped.

Mr. Silas Morton was not ill-pleased at the prospect of an alliance with his neighbor Westwood's son while there was an expectation of a provision for the young couple in the union of estates as well as persons; but now, when the estate was gone, when I, Guy Westwood, was shillingless in the world, it would be folly indeed. Nevertheless I must take my leave.

"Well, Guy, my lad, bad job this; very bad job; thought he was as safe as the Bank. Would not have believed it from any one—not from any one. Of course all that nonsense about you and Alice must be stopped now; I'm not a hard man, but I can't allow Alice to throw away her life in the poverty she would have to bear as your wife; can't do it; wouldn't be the part of a father if I did."

I suggested I might in time.

"Time, sir! time! How much? She's nineteen now. You're brought up to nothing; know nothing that will earn you a sixpence for the next six months; and you talk about time. Time, indeed! Keep her waiting till she's thirty, and then break her heart by finding it a folly to marry at all.'

"Ah! Alice, my dear, Guy's come to say 'Good by:' he sees, with me, that his altered position compels him, as an honorable man, to give up any hopes he may have formed as to the future."

He left us alone to say 'Farewell!'—a word too hard to say at our ages. Of course we consulted what should be done. To give each other up, to bury the delicious past, that was not to be thought of. We would be constant, spite of all. I must gain a position, and papa would then help us.

Two ways were open; a commission in India, a place in my uncle's office. Which? I was for the commission, Alice for the office. A respectable influential solicitor; a position not to be despised; nothing but cleverness wanted; and my uncle's name, and no one to wait for; no liver {199} complaints; no sepoys; no sea voyages; and no long separation.

"Oh, I'm sure it is the best thing."

I agreed, not unnaturally then, that it was the best.

"Now, you young people, you've had time enough to say 'Good by,' so be off, Guy. Here, my lad, you'll need something to start with," and the old gentleman put into my hands a note for fifty pounds.

"I must beg, sir, that you will not insult—"

"God bless the boy! 'Insult!' Why I've danced you on my knee hundreds of times. Look you, Guy,"—and the old fellow came and put his hand on my shoulder,—"it gives me pain to do what I am doing. I believe, for both your sakes, it is best you should part. Let us part friends. Come now, Guy, you'll need this; and if you need a little more, let me know."

"But, sir, you cut me off from all hope; you render my life a burden to me. Give me some definite task; say how much you think we ought to have; I mean how much I ought to have to keep Alice—I mean Miss Morton—in such a position as you would wish."

Alice added her entreaties, and the result of the conference was an understanding that if, within five years from that date, I could show I was worth £500 a year, the old gentleman would add another £500; and on that he thought we might live for a few years comfortably.

There was to be no correspondence whatever; no meetings, no messages. We protested and pleaded, and finally he said—

"Well, well, Guy; I always liked you, and liked your father before you. Come to us on Christmas day, and you shall find a vacant chair beside Alice. There, now; say 'Good by,' and be off."

I went off. I came to London to one of the little lanes leading out of Cannon street. Five hundred a year in five years! I must work hard.

My uncle took little notice of me; I fancied worked me harder than the rest, and paid me the same. Seventy-five pounds a year is not a large sum. I had spent it in a month before now, after the fashion of my father: now, I hoarded; made clothes last; ate in musty, cheap, little cook-shops; and kept my enjoying faculties from absolute rust by a weekly half-price to the theatres—the pit.

The year passed. I went down on Christmas, and for twenty-four hours was alive; came back, and had a rise of twenty pounds in salary for the next year. I waited for opportunity, and it came not.

This jog-trot routine of office-work continued for two years more, and at the end of that time I was worth but my salary of £135 per year—£135! a long way from £500. Oh, for opportunity? I must quit the desk, and become a merchant; all successful men have been merchants; money begets money. But, to oppose all these thoughts of change, came the memory of Alice's last words at Christmas, "Wait and hope, Guy, dear; wait and hope." Certainly; it's so easy to.

"Governor wants you, Westwood. He's sharp this morning; very sharp; so look out, my dear nephy."

"You understand a little Italian, I think?" said my uncle.

"A little, sir."

"You will start to-night for Florence, in the mail train. Get there as rapidly as possible, and find whether a Colonel Wilson is residing there, and what lady he is residing with. Learn all you can as to his position and means, and the terms on which he lives with that lady. Write to me, and wait there for further instructions. Mr. Williams will give you a cheque for £100; you can get circular notes for £50, and the rest cash. If you have anything to say, come in here at five o'clock; if not, good morning. By-the-by, say nothing in the office."

I need not say that hope made me believe my opportunity was come.

I hurried to Florence and discharged my mission; sent home a {200} careful letter, full of facts without comment or opinion, and in three weeks' time was summoned to return. I had done little or nothing that could help me, and in a disappointed state of mind I packed up and went to the railway station at St. Dominico. A little row with a peasant as to his demand for carrying my baggage caused me to lose the last train that night, and so the steamer at Leghorn. The station-master, seeing my vexation, endeavored to console me:

"There will be a special through train to Leghorn at nine o'clock, ordered for Count Spezzato: he is good-natured, and will possibly let you go in that."

It was worth the chance, and I hung about the station till I was tired, and then walked back toward the village. Passing a small wine-shop, I entered, and asked for wine in English. I don't know what whim possessed me when I did it, for they were unable to understand me without dumb motions. I at length got wine by these means, and sat down to while away the time over a railway volume.

I had been seated about half an hour, when a courier entered, accompanied by a railway guard. Two more different examples of the human race it would be difficult to describe.

The guard was a dark, savage-looking Italian, with 'rascal' and 'bully' written all over him; big, black, burly, with bloodshot eyes, and thick, heavy, sensual lips, the man was utterly repulsive.

The courier was a little, neatly-dressed man, of no age in particular; pale, blue-eyed, straight-lipped, his face was a compound of fox and rabbit that only a fool or a patriot would have trusted out of arm's length.

This ill-matched pair called for brandy, and the hostess set it before them. I then heard them ask who and what I was. She replied, I must be an Englishman, and did not understand the Italian for wine. She then left.

They evidently wanted to be alone, and my presence was decidedly disagreeable to them; and muttering that I was an Englishman, they proceeded to try my powers as a linguist. The courier commenced in Italian, with a remark on the weather. I immediately handed him the Newspaper. I didn't speak Italian, that was clear to them.

The guard now struck in with a remark in French as to the fineness of the neighboring country. I shrugged my shoulders, and produced my cigar case. French was not very familiar to me, evidently.

"Those beasts of English think their own tongue so fine they are too proud to learn another," said the guard.

I sat quietly, sipping my wine, and reading.

"Well, my dear Michael Pultuski," began the guard.

"For the love of God, call me by that name. My name is Alexis Alexis Dzentzol, now."

"Oh! oh!" laughed the guard; "you've changed your name, you fox; it's like you. Now I am the same that you knew fifteen years ago, Conrad Ferrate—to-day, yesterday, and for life, Conrad Ferrate. Come, lad, tell us your story. How did you get out of that little affair at Warsaw? How they could have trusted you, with your face, with their secrets, I can't for the life of me tell; you look so like a sly knave, don't you, lad?"

The courier, so far from resenting this familiarity, smiled, as if he had been praised.

"My story is soon said. I found, after my betrayal to the police of the secrets of that little conspiracy which you and I joined, that Poland was too hot for me, and my name too well known. I went to France, who values her police, and for a few years was useful to them. But it was dull work; very dull; native talent was more esteemed. I was to be sent on a secret service to Warsaw; I declined for obvious reasons."

"Good! Michael—Alexis; good, {201} Alexis. This fox is not to be trapped." And he slapped the courier on the shoulder heartily.

"And," resumed the other, "I resigned. Since then I have travelled as courier with noble families, and I trust I give satisfaction."

"Good! Alexis; good Mich—good Alexis! To yourself you give satisfaction. You are a fine rascal!—the prince of rascals! So decent; so quiet; so like the curé of a convent. Who would believe that you had sold the lives of thirty men for a few hundred roubles?"

"And who," interrupted the courier, "would believe that you, bluff, honest Conrad Ferrate, had run away with all the money those thirty men had collected during ten years of labor, for rescuing their country from the Russian?"

"That was good, Alexis, was it not? I never was so rich in my life as then; I loved—I gamed—I drank on the patriots' money."

"For how long? Three years?"

"More—and now have none left. Ah! Times change, Alexis; behold me." And the guard touched his buttons and belt, the badges of his office. "Never mind—here's my good friend, the bottle—let us embrace—the only friend that is always true—if he does not gladden, he makes us to forget."

"Tell me, my good Alexis, whom do you rob now? Who pays for the best, and gets the second best? Whose money do you invest, eh! my little fox? Why are you here? Come, tell me, while I drink to your success."

"I have the honor to serve his Excellency the Count Spezzato."

"Ten thousand devils! My accursed cousin!" broke in the guard. "He who has robbed me from his birth; whose birth itself was a vile robbery of me—me, his cousin, child of his father's brother. May he be accursed for ever!"

I took most particular pains to appear only amused at this genuine outburst of passion, for I saw the watchful eye of the courier was on me all the time they were talking.

The guard drank off a tumbler of brandy.

"That master of yours is the man of whom I spoke to you years ago, as the one who had ruined me; and you serve him! May he be strangled on his wedding night, and cursed for ever."

"Be calm, my dearest Conrad, calm yourself; that beast of an Englishman will think you are drunk, like one of his own swinish people, if you talk so loud as this."

"How can I help it? I must talk. What he is, that I ought to be: I was brought up to it till I was eighteen; was the heir to all his vast estate; there was but one life between me and power—my uncle's—and he, at fifty, married a girl, and had this son, this son of perdition, my cousin. And after that, I, who had been the pride of my family, became of no account; it was 'Julian' sweet Julian!'"

"I heard," said the courier, "that some one attempted to strangle the sweet child, that was——?"

"Me—you fox—me. I wish I had done it; but for that wretched dog that worried me, I should have been Count Spezzato now. I killed that dog, killed him, no not suddenly; may his master die like him!"

"And you left after that little affair?"

"Oh yes! I left and became what you know me."

"A clever man, my dear Conrad. I know no man who is more clever with the ace than yourself, and, as to bullying to cover a mistake, you are an emperor at that. Is it not so, Conrad? Come, drink good health to my master, your cousin."

"You miserable viper, I'll crush you if you ask me to do that again. I'll drink—here, give me the glass—Here's to Count Spezzato: May he die like a dog! May his carcase bring the birds and the wolves together! May his name be cursed and hated while the sun lasts! And may purgatory keep him till I pray for his release!"

{202}

The man's passion was something frightful to see, and I was more than half inclined to leave the place; but something, perhaps a distant murmur of the rising tide, compelled me to stay. I pretended sleep, allowing my head to sink, down upon the table.

He sat still for a few moments, and then commenced walking about the room, and abruptly asked:

"What brought you here, Alexis?"

"My master's horse, Signor Conrad."

"Good, my little fox; but why did you come on your master's horse?"

"Because my master wishes to reach Leghorn to-night, to meet his bride, Conrad."

"Then his is the special train ordered at nine, that I am to go with?" exclaimed the guard eagerly.

"That is so, gentle Conrad; and now, having told you all, let me pay our hostess and go."

"Pay! No one pays for me, little fox; no, no, go; I will pay."

The courier took his departure, and the guard kept walking up and down the room, muttering to himself:

"To-night, it might be to-night. If he goes to Leghorn, he meets his future wife; another life, and perhaps a dozen. No, it must be to-night or never. Does his mother go? Fool that I am not to ask! Yes; it shall be to-night;" and he left the room.

What should be "to-night?" Some foul play of which the count would be the victim, no doubt. But how? when? That must be solved. To follow him, or to wait—which? To wait. It is always best to wait; I had learned this lesson already.

I waited. It was now rather more than half-past eight, and I had risen to go to the door when I saw the guard returning to the wine-shop with a man whose dress indicated the stoker.

"Come in, Guido; come in," said the guard; "and drink with me."

The man came in, and I was again absorbed in my book.

They seated themselves at the same table as before, and drank silently for a while; presently the guard began a conversation in some patois I could not understand; but I could see the stoker grow more and more interested as the name of Beatrix occurred more frequently.

As the talk went on, the stoker seemed pressing the guard on some part of the story with a most vindictive eagerness, repeatedly asking, "His name? The accursed! His name?"

At last the guard answered, "The Count Spezzato."

"The Count Spezzato!" said the stoker, now leaving the table, and speaking in Italian.

"Yes, good Guido; the man who will travel in the train we take to-night to Leghorn."

"He shall die! The accursed! He shall die to-night!" said the stoker. "If I lose my life, the betrayer of my sister shall die!"

The guard, returning to the unknown tongue, seemed to be endeavoring to calm him; and I could only catch a repetition of the word "Empoli" at intervals. Presently the stoker took from the seats beside him two tin bottles, such as you may see in the hands of mechanics who dine out; and I could see that one of them had rudely scratched on it the name "William Atkinson." I fancied the guard produced from his pocket a phial, and poured the contents into that bottle; but the action was so rapid, and the corner so dark, that I could not be positive; then rising, they stopped at the counter, had both bottles filled with brandy, and went out.

It was now time to get to the station; and, having paid my modest score, I went out.

A little in front of me, by the light from a small window, I saw these two cross themselves, grip each other's hands across right to right, left to left, and part.

The stoker had set down the bottles, and now taking them up followed the guard at a slower pace.

{203}

Arrived at the station, I found the count, his mother, a female servant, and the courier.

The count came up to me, and said, in broken English, "You are the English to go to Leghorn with me? Very well, there is room. I like the English. You shall pay nothing, because I do not sell tickets; you shall go free. Is that so?"

I thanked him in the best Italian I could muster.

"Do not speak your Italian to me; I speak the English as a native; I can know all you shall say to me in your own tongue. See, here is the train special, as you call it. Enter, as it shall please you."

The train drew up to the platform; and I saw that the stoker was at his post, and that the engine-driver was an Englishman.

I endeavored in vain to draw his attention to warn him, and was compelled to take my seat, which I did in the compartment next the guard's break—the train consisting of only that carriage and another, in which were the count, his mother, and the servant.

The guard passed along the train, locked the doors, and entered his box.

"The Florence goods is behind you, and the Sienna goods is due at Empoli Junction four minutes before you; mind you don't run into it," said the station-master, with a laugh.

"No fear; we shall not run into it," said the guard, with a marked emphasis on the "we" and "it" that I recalled afterward.

The whistle sounded, and we were off. It was a drizzling dark night; and I lay down full length on the seat to sleep.

As I lay down a gleam of light shot across the carriage from a small chink in the wood-work of the partition between the compartment I was in and the guard's box.

I was terribly anxious for the manner of the guard; and this seemed to be a means of hearing something more. I lay down and listened attentively.

"How much will you give for your life, my little fox?" said the guard.

"To-day, very little; when I am sixty, all I have, Conrad."

"But you might give something for it, to-night, sweet Alexis, if you knew it was in danger?"

"I have no fear; Conrad Ferrate has too often conducted a train for me to fear to-night."

"True, my good Alexis; but this is the last train he will ride with as guard, for to-morrow he will be the Count Spezzato."

"How? To-morrow? You joke, Conrad. The brandy was strong; but you who have drunk so much could hardly feel that."

"I neither joke, nor am I drunk; yet I shall be Count Spezzato to-morrow, good Alexis. Look you, my gentle fox, my sweet fox; if you do not buy your life of me, you shall die tonight. That is simple, sweet fox."

"Ay; but, Conrad, I am not in danger."

"Nay, Alexis; see, here is the door" (I heard him turn the handle). "If you lean against the door, you will fall out and be killed. Is it not simple?"

"But, good Conrad, I shall not lean against the door."

"Oh, my sweet fox, my cunning fox, my timid fox, but not my strong fox; you will lean against the door. I know you will, unless I prevent you; and I will not prevent you, unless you give me all you have in that bag."

The mocking tone of the guard seemed well understood, for I heard the click of gold.

"Good, my Alexis; it is good; but it is very little for a life. Come, what is your life worth, that you buy it with only your master's money? it has cost you nothing. I see you will lean against that door, which is so foolish."

"What, in the name of all the devils in hell, will you have?" said the trembling voice of the courier. "Only a little more; just that belt {204} that is under your shirt, under everything, next to your skin, and dearer to you; only a little soft leather belt with pouches in. Is not life worth a leather belt?"

"Wretch! All the earnings of my life are in that belt, and you know it."

"Is it possible, sweet fox, that I have found your nest? I shall give Marie a necklace of diamonds, then. Why do you wait? Why should you fall from a train, and make a piece of news for the papers? Why?"

"Take it; and be accursed in your life and death!" and I heard the belt flung on the floor of the carriage.

"Now, good Alexis, I am in funds; there are three pieces of gold for you; you will need them at Leghorn. Will you drink? No? Then I will tell you why, without drink. Do you know where we are?"

"Yes; between St. Dominico and Signa."

"And do you know where we are going?"

"Yes; to Leghorn."

"No, sweet Alexis, we are not; we are going to Empoli: the train will go no further. Look you, little fox; we shall arrive at the junction one minute before the Sienna goods train, and there the engine will break down just where the rails cross; for two blows of a hammer will convert an engine into a log; I shall get out to examine it; that will take a little time; I shall explain to the count the nature of the injury; that will take a little time; and then the goods train will have arrived; and as it does not stop there, this train will go no further than Empoli, and I shall be Count Spezzato to-morrow. How do you like my scheme, little fox? Is it not worthy of your pupil? Oh, it will be a beautiful accident; it will fill the papers. That beast of an English who begged his place in the train will be fortunate; he will cease, for goods trains are heavy. Eh! but it's a grand scheme— the son, the mother, the servant, the stranger, the engine-driver, all shall tell no tales."

"And the stoker?" said the courier.

"Oh, you and he and I shall escape. We shall be pointed at in the street as the fortunate. It is good, is it not, Alexis, my fox? I have told him that the count is the man who betrayed his sister. He believes it, and is my creature. But, little fox, it was not my cousin, it was myself, that took his Beatrix from her home. Is it not good, Alexis? Is it not genius? And Atkinson—he, the driver—is now stupid: he has drunk from his can the poppy juice that will make him sleep for ever. I will be a politician. I am worthy of office. I will become the Minister of a Bourbon when I am count, my dear fox, and you shall be my comrade again, as of old."

I was, for a time, lost to every sensation save that of hearing. The fiendish garrulity of the man had all the fascination of the serpent's rattle. I felt helplessly resigned to a certain fate.

I was aroused by something white slowly passing the closed window of the carriage. I waited a little, then gently opened it and looked out. The stoker was crawling along the foot-board of the next carriage, holding on by its handles, so as not to be seen by the occupants, and holding the signal lantern that I had noticed at the back of the last carriage in his hand. The meaning of it struck me in a moment: if by any chance we missed the goods train from Sienna, we should be run into from behind by the train from Florence.

The cold air that blew in at the open window refreshed me, and I could think what was to be done. The train was increasing its pace rapidly. Evidently the stoker, in sole charge, was striving to reach Empoli before the other train, which we should follow, was due: he had to make five minutes in a journey of forty-five, and, at the rate we were going, we should do it. We stopped nowhere, and the journey was more than half over. We were now between Segua and {205} Montelupo; another twenty minutes and I should be a bruised corpse. Something must be done.

I decided soon. Unfastening my bag, I took out my revolver, without which I never travel, and looking carefully to the loading and capping, fastened it to my waist with a handkerchief. I then cut with my knife the bar across the middle of the window, and carefully looked out. I could see nothing; the rain was falling fast, and the night as dark as ever. I cautiously put out first one leg and then the other, keeping my knees and toes close to the door, and lowered myself till I felt the step. I walked carefully along the foot-board by side steps, holding on to the handles of the doors, till I came to the end of the carriages, and was next the tender. Here was a gulf that seemed impassable. The stoker must have passed over it; why not I? Mounting from the foot-board on to the buffer, and holding on to the iron hook on which the lamps are hung, I stretched my legs to reach the flat part of the buffer on the tender. My legs swung about with the vibration, and touched nothing. I must spring. I had to hold with both hands behind my back, and stood on the case of the buffer-spring, and, suddenly leaving go, leaped forward, struck violently against the edge of the tender, and grasped some of the loose lumps of coal on the top. Another struggle brought me on my knees, bruised and bleeding, on the top. I stood up, and at that moment the stoker opened the door of the furnace, and turned toward me, shovel in hand, to put in the coals. The bright red light from the fire enabled him to see me, while it blinded me. He rushed at me, and then began a struggle that I shall remember to my dying day.

He grasped me round the throat with one arm, dragging me close to his breast, and with the other kept shortening the shovel for an effective blow. My hands, numbed and bruised, were almost useless to me, and for some seconds we reeled to and fro on the foot-plate in the blinding glare. At last he got me against the front of the engine, and, with horrible ingenuity, pressed me against it till the lower part of my clothes were burnt to a cinder. The heat, however, restored my hands, and at last I managed to push him far enough from my body to loosen my pistol. I did not want to kill him, but I could not be very careful, and I fired at his shoulder from the back. He dropped the shovel, the arm that had nearly throttled me relaxed, and he fell. I pushed him into a corner of the tender, and sat down to recover myself.

My object was to get to Empoli before the Sienna goods train, for I knew nothing of what might be behind me. It was too late to stop, but I might, by shortening the journey seven minutes instead of five, get to Empoli three minutes before the goods train was due.

I had never been on an engine before in my life, but I knew that there must be a valve somewhere that let the steam from the boiler into the cylinders, and that, being important, it would be in a conspicuous position. I therefore turned the large handle in front of me, and had the satisfaction of finding the speed rapidly increased, and at the same time felt the guard putting on the break to retard the train. Spite of this, in ten minutes I could see some dim lights; I could not tell where, and I still pressed on faster and faster.

In vain, between the intervals of putting on coals, did I try to arouse the sleeping driver. There I was, with two apparently dead bodies, on the foot-plate of an engine, going at the rate of forty miles an hour, or more, amidst a thundering noise and vibration that nearly maddened me.

At last we reached the lights, and I saw, as I dashed by, that we had passed the dread point.

As I turned back, I could see the rapidly-dropping cinders from the train which, had the guard's break been sufficiently powerful to have made me {206} thirty seconds later, would have utterly destroyed me.

I was still in a difficult position. There was the train half a minute behind us, which, had we kept our time, would have been four minutes in front of us. It came on to the same rails, and I could hear its dull rumble rushing on toward us fast. If I stopped there was no light to warn them. I must go on, for the Sienna train did not stop at Empoli.

I put on more fuel, and after some slight scalding, from turning on the wrong taps, had the pleasure of seeing the water-gauge filling up. Still I could not go on long; the risk was awful. I tried in vain to write on a leaf of my note-book, and after searching in the tool-box, wrote on the iron lid of the tank with a piece of chalk, "Stop everything behind me. The train will not be stopped till three red lights are ranged in a line on the ground. Telegraph forward." And then, as we flew through the Empoli station, I threw it on the platform. On we went; the same dull thunder behind warning me that I dare not stop.

We passed through another station at full speed, and at length I saw the white lights of another station in the distance. The sound behind had almost ceased, and in a few moments more I saw the line of three red lamps low down on the ground. I pulled back the handle, and after an ineffectual effort to pull up at the station, brought up the train about a hundred yards beyond Pontedera.

The porters and police of the station came up and put the train back, and then came the explanation.

The guard had been found dead on the rails, just beyond Empoli, and the telegraph set to work to stop the train. He must have found out the failure of his scheme, and in trying to reach the engine, have fallen on the rails.

The driver was only stupefied, and the stoker fortunately only dangerously, not fatally, wounded.

Another driver was found, and the train was to go on.

The count had listened most attentively to my statements, and then, taking my grimed hand in his, led me to his mother.

"Madam, my mother, you have from this day one other son: this, my mother, is my brother."

The countess literally fell on my neck, and kissed me in the sight of them all; and speaking in Italian said—

"Julian, he is my son; he has saved my life; and more, he has saved your life. My son, I will not say much; what is your name?"

"Guy Westwood."

"Guy, my child, my son, I am your mother; you shall love me."

"Yes, my mother; he is my brother, I am his. He is English too; I like English. He has done well. Blanche shall be his sister."

During the whole of this time both mother and son were embracing me and kissing my cheeks, after the impulsive manner of their passionate natures, the indulgence of which appears so strange to our cold blood.

The train was delayed, for my wounds and bruises to be dressed, and I then entered their carriage and went to Leghorn with them.

Arrived there, I was about to say "Farewell."

"What is farewell, now? No; you must see Blanche, your sister. You will sleep to my hotel: I shall not let you go. Who is she that in your great book says, 'Where you go, I will go?' That is my spirit. You must not leave me till—till you are as happy as I am."

He kept me, introduced me to Blanche, and persuaded me to write for leave to stay another two months, when he would return to England with me. Little by little he made me talk about Alice, till he knew all my story.

"Ah! that is it; you shall be unhappy because you want £500 every year, and I have so much as that. I am a patriot to get rid of my money. So it is that you will not take money. You have saved my life, and you will {207} not take money; but I shall make you take money, my friend, English Guy; you shall have as thus." And he handed me my appointment as secretary to one of the largest railways in Italy. "Now you shall take money; now you will not go to your fogland to work like a slave; you shall take the money. That is not all. I am one of the practice patriots—no, the practical patriots—of Italy. They come to me with their conspiracies to join, their secret societies to adhere to, but I do not. I am director of ever so many railways; I make fresh directions every day. I say to those who talk to me of politics, 'How many shares will you take in this or in that?' I am printer of books; I am builder of museums; I have great share in docks, and I say to these, 'It is this that I am doing that is wanted.' This is not conspiracy; it is not plot; it is not society with ribbons; but it is what Italy, my country, wants. I grow poor; Italy grows rich. I am not wise in these things; they cheat me, because I am an enthusiast. Now, Guy, my brother, you are wise; you are deep; long in the head; in short, you are English! You shall be my guardian in these things—you shall save me from the cheat, and you shall work hard as you like for all the money you shall take of me. Come, my Guy, is it so?"

Need I say that it was so? The count and his Blanche made their honeymoon tour in England. They spent Christmas day with Alice and myself at Mr. Morton's, and when they left, Alice and I left with them, for our new home in Florence.

From The Cornhill Magazine.

THE WINDS.

  O wild raving west winds.…
  Oh! where do ye rise from, and where do ye die?

The question which is put in these lines is one which has posed the ingenuity of all who have ever thought on it; and though theories have repeatedly been propounded to answer it, yet one and all fail, and we again recur to the words of him who knew all things and said, "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth."

However, though we cannot assign exactly the source whence the winds rise or the goal to which they tend, the labors of meteorologists have been so far successful as to enable us to understand the causes of the great currents of air, and even to map out the winds which prevail at different seasons in the various quarters of the globe. The problem which has thus been solved is one vastly more simple than that of saying why the wind changes on any particular day, or at what spot on the earth's surface a particular current begins or ends. Were these questions solved, there would be an end to all uncertainty about weather. There need be no fear that the farmer would lose his crops owing to the change of weather, if the advent of every shower had been foretold by an unerring guide, and the precise day of the break in the weather predicted weeks and months before. This is the point on which weather-prophets—'astro-meteorologists' they call themselves now-a-days—still venture their predictions, undismayed by their reported and glaring failures. {208} It has been well remarked that not one of these prophets foretold the dry weather which lasted for so many weeks during the last summer; yet, even at the present day, there are people who look to the almanacs to see what weather is to be expected at a given date; and even the prophecies of "Old Moore" find, or used to find within a very few years, an ample credence. In fact, if we are to believe the opinions propounded by the positive philosophers of the present day, we must admit that it is absurd to place any limits on the possibility of predicting natural phenomena, inasmuch as all operations of nature obey fixed and unalterable laws, which are all discoverable by the unaided mind of man.

True science, we may venture to say, is more modest than these gentlemen would have us to think it; and though in the particular branch of knowledge of which we are now treating daily prophecies (or 'forecasts,' as Admiral Fitzroy is careful to call them) of weather appear in the newspapers, yet these are not announced dogmatically, and no attempt is made in them to foretell weather for more than forty-eight hours in advance. We are not going to discuss the question of storms and storm-signals at present, so we shall proceed to the subject in hand—the ordinary wind-currents of the earth; and in speaking of these shall confine ourselves as far as possible to well-known and recorded facts, bringing in each case the best evidence which we can adduce to support the theories which may be broached.

What, then, our readers will ask, is the cause of the winds? The simple answer is—the sun. Let us see, now, how this indefatigable agent, who appears to do almost everything on the surface of the earth, from painting pictures to driving steam-engines, as George Stephenson used to maintain that he did, is able to raise the wind.

If you light a fire in a room, and afterward stop up every chink by which air can gain access to the fire, except the chimney, the fire will go out in a short time. Again, if a lamp is burning on the table, and you stop up the chimney at the top, the lamp will go out at once. The reason of this is that the flame, in each case, attracts the air, and if either the supply of air is cut off below, or its escape above is checked, the flame cannot go on burning. This explanation, however, does not bear to be pushed too far. The reason that the fire goes out if the supply of air is cut off is, that the flame, so to speak, feeds on air; while the sun cannot be said, in any sense, to be dependent on the earth's atmosphere for the fuel for his fire. We have chosen the illustration of the flame, because the facts are so well known. If, instead of a lamp in the middle of a room, we were to hang up a large mass of iron, heated, we should find that currents of air set in from all sides, rose up above it, and spread out when they reached the ceiling, descending again along the walls. The existence of these currents may be easily proved by sprinkling a handful of fine chaff about in the room. What is the reason of the circulation thus produced? The iron, unless it be extremely hot, as it is when melted by Mr. Bessemer's process, does not require the air in order to keep up its heat; and, in fact, the constant supply of fresh air cools it, as the metal gives away its own heat to the air as fast as the particles of the latter come in contact with it. Why, then, do the currents arise? Because the air, when heated, expands or gets lighter, and rises, leaving an empty space, or vacuum, where it was before. Then the surrounding cold air, being elastic, forces itself into the open space, and gets heated in its turn.

From this we can see that there will be a constant tendency in the air to flow toward that point on the earth's surface where the temperature is highest—or, all other things being equal, to that point where the sun may be at that moment in the zenith. Accordingly, if the earth's surface were either {209} entirely dry land, or entirely water, and the sun were continually in the plane of the equator, we should expect to find the direction of the great wind-currents permanent and unchanged throughout the year. The true state of the case is, however, that these conditions are very far from being fulfilled. Every one knows that the sun is not always immediately over the equator, but that he is at the tropic of Cancer in June, and at the tropic of Capricorn in December, passing the equator twice every year at the equinoxes. Here, then, we have one cause which disturbs the regular flow of the wind-currents. The effect of this is materially increased by the extremely arbitrary way in which the dry land has been distributed over the globe. The northern hemisphere contains the whole of Europe, Asia, and North America, the greater part of Africa, and a portion of South America; while in the southern hemisphere we only find the remaining portions of the two last-named continents, with Australia and some of the large islands in its vicinity. Accordingly, during our summer there is a much greater area of dry land exposed to the nearly vertical rays of the sun than is the case during our winter.

Let us see for a moment how this cause acts in modifying the direction of the wind-currents. We shall find it easier to make this intelligible if we take an illustration from observed facts. It takes about five times as much heat to raise a ton weight of water through a certain range of temperature, as it does to produce the same effect in the case of a ton of rock. Again, the tendency of a surface of dry land to give out heat, and consequently to warm the air above it, and cause it to rise, is very much greater than that of a surface of water of equal area. Hence we can at once see the cause of the local winds which are felt every day in calm weather in islands situated in hot climates. During the day the island becomes very hot, and thus what the French call a courant ascendant is set in operation. The air above the land gets hot and rises, while the colder air which is on the sea all round it flows in to fill its place, and is felt as a cool sea-breeze. During the night these conditions are exactly reversed: the land can no longer get any heat from the sun, as he has set, while it is still nearly as liberal in parting with its acquired heat as it was before. Accordingly, it soon becomes cooler than the sea in its neighborhood; and the air, instead of rising up over it, sinks down upon it, and flows out to sea, producing a land-wind.

These conditions are, apparently, nearly exactly fulfilled in the region of the monsoons, with the exception that the change of wind takes place at intervals of six months, and not every twelve hours. In this district—which extends over the southern portion of Asia and the Indian ocean—the wind for half the year blows from one point, and for the other half from that which is directly opposite. The winds are north-east and south-west in Hindostan; and in Java, at the other side of the equator, they are south-east and north-west. The cause of the winds—monsoons they are called, from an Arabic word, mausim, meaning season—is not quite so easily explained as that of the ordinary land and sea breezes to which we have just referred. Their origin is to be sought for in the temperate zone, and not between the tropics. The reason of this is that the districts toward which the air is sucked in are not those which are absolutely hottest, but those where the rarefaction of the air is greatest. When the air becomes lighter, it is said to be rarefied, and this rarefaction ought apparently to be greatest where the temperature is highest. This would be the case if the air were the only constituent of our atmosphere. There is, however, a very important disturbing agent to be taken into consideration, viz., aqueous vapor. There is always, when it is not actually raining, a quantity of water rising from the surface of {210} the sea and from every exposed water-surface, and mingling with the air. This water is perfectly invisible: as it is in the form of vapor, it is true steam, and its presence only becomes visible when it is condensed so as to form a cloud. The hotter the air is, the more of this aqueous vapor is it able to hold in the invisible condition.

We shall naturally expect to find a greater amount of this steam in the air at places situated near the coast, than at those in the interior of continents, and this is actually the case. The amount of rarefaction which the dry air on the sea-coast of Hindostan undergoes in summer, is partially compensated for by the increased tension of the aqueous vapor, whose presence in the air is due to the action of the sun's heat on the surface of the Indian ocean. In the interior of Asia there is no great body of water to be found, and the winds from the south lose most of the moisture which they contain in passing over the Himalayas. Accordingly the air is extremely dry, and a compensation, similar to that which is observed in Hindostan, cannot take place. It is toward this district that the wind is sucked in, and the attraction is sufficient to draw a portion of the south-east trade-wind across the line into the northern hemisphere. In our winter the region where the rarefaction is greatest is the continent of Australia; and accordingly, in its turn, it sucks the north-east trade-wind of the northern hemisphere across the equator. Thus we see that in the region which extends from the coast of Australia to the centre of Asia we have monsoons, or winds which change regularly every six months. As to the directions of the different monsoons, we shall discuss them when we have disposed of the trade-winds—which ought by rights, as Professor Dove observes, rather to be considered as an imperfectly developed monsoon, than the latter to be held as a modification of the former.

The origin of the trade-winds is to be sought for, as before, in the heating power of the sun, and their direction is a result of the figure of the earth, and of its motion on its axis. When the air at the equator rises, that in higher latitudes on either side flows in, and would be felt as a north wind or as a south wind respectively, if the earth's motion on its axis did not affect it. The figure of the earth is pretty nearly that of a sphere, and, as it revolves round its axis, it is evident that those points on its surface which are situated at the greatest distance from the axis, will have to travel over a greater distance in the same time than those which are near it. Thus, for instance, London, which is nearly under the parallel of 50, has only to travel about three-fifths of the distance which a place like Quito, situated under the equator, has to travel in the same time. A person situated in London is carried, imperceptibly to himself, by the motion of the earth, through 15,000 miles toward the eastward in the twenty-four hours; while another at Quito is carried through 25,000 miles in the same time. Accordingly, if the Londoner, preserving his own rate of motion, were suddenly transferred to Quito, he would be left 10,000 miles behind the other in the course of the twenty-four hours, or would appear to be moving in the opposite direction, from east to west, at the rate of about 400 miles an hour. The case would be just as if a person were to be thrown into a railway carriage which was moving at full speed; he would appear to his fellow-passengers to be moving in the opposite direction to them, while in reality the motion of progression was in the train, not in the person who was thrown into it. The air is transferred from high to low latitudes, but this change is gradual, and the earth, accordingly, by means of the force of friction, is able to retard its relative velocity before it reaches the tropics so that its actual velocity, though still considerable, is far below 400 miles an hour.

This wind comes from high latitudes and becomes more and more easterly {211} reaching us as a nearly true north-east wind; and as it gets into lower latitudes becoming more and more nearly east, and forming a belt of north-east wind all round the earth on the northern side of the equator. In the southern hemisphere, there is a similar belt of permanent winds, which are, of course, south-easterly instead of north-easterly. These belts are not always at equal distances at each side of the equator, as their position is dependent on the situation of the zone of maximum temperature for the time being. When we reach the actual district where the air rises, we find the easterly direction of the wind no longer so remarkable, as has been noticed by Basil Hall and others. The reason is, that by the time that the air reaches the district where it rises, it has obtained by means of its friction with the earth's surface a rate of motion round the earth's axis nearly equal to that of the earth's surface itself.

The trade-wind zones, called, by the Spaniards, the "Ladies' Sea"—El Golfo de las Damas—because navigation on a sea where the wind never changed was so easy, shift their position according to the apparent motion of the sun in the ecliptic. In the Atlantic the north-east trade begins in summer in the latitude of the Azores; in winter it commences to the south of the Canaries.

In the actual trade-wind zones rain very seldom falls, any more than it does in these countries when the east wind has well set in. The reason of this is, that the air on its passage from high to low latitudes is continually becoming warmer and warmer. According as its temperature rises, its power of dissolving (so to speak) water increases also, and so it is constantly increasing its burden of water until it reaches the end of its journey, where it rises into the higher regions of the atmosphere, and there is suddenly cooled. The chilling process condenses, to a great extent, the aqueous vapor contained in the trade-wind air, and causes it to fall in constant discharges of heavy rain. Throughout the tropics the rainy season coincides with that period at which the sun is in the zenith, and in this region the heaviest rain-fall on the globe is observed. The wettest place in the world, Cherrapoonjee, is situated in the Cossya hills, about 250 miles northeast of Calcutta, just outside the torrid zone. There the ram-fall is upward of 600 inches in the year, or twenty times as much as it is on the west coasts of Scotland and Ireland. However, in such extreme cases as this, there are other circumstances to be taken into consideration, such as the position of the locality as regards mountain chains, which may cause the clouds to drift over one particular spot.

To return to the wind: When the air rises at the equatorial edge of the trade-wind zone, it flows away above the lower trade-wind current. The existence of an upper current in the tropics is well known. Volcanic ashes, which have fallen in several of the West Indian islands on several occasions, have been traced to volcanoes which lay to the westward of the locality where the ashes fell, at a time when there was no west wind blowing at the sea-level. To take a recent instance: ashes fell at Kingston, Jamaica, in the year 1835, and it is satisfactorily proved that they had been ejected from the volcano of Coseguina, on the Pacific shore of Central America, and must consequently have been borne to the eastward by an upward current counter to the direction of the easterly winds which were blowing at the time at the sea-level.

Captain Maury supposes that when the air rises, at either side of the equator, it crosses over into the opposite hemisphere, so that there is a constant interchange of air going on between the northern and southern hemispheres. This he has hardly sufficiently proved, and his views are not generally accepted. One of the arguments on which he lays great stress in support of his theory is that on certain occasions dust has fallen in {212} various parts of western Europe, and that in it there have been discovered microscopical animals similar to those which are found in South America. This appears to be scarcely an incontrovertible proof; as Admiral Fitzroy observes: "Certainly, such insects may be found in Brazil; but does it follow that they are not also in Africa, under nearly the same parallel?"

This counter-current, or "anti-trade," as Sir J. Herschel has called it, is at a high level in the atmosphere between the tropics, far above the top of the highest mountains; but at the exterior edge of the trade-wind zone, it descends to the surface of the ground. The Canary islands are situated close to this edge, and accordingly we find that there is always a westerly wind at the summit of the Peak of Teneriffe, while the wind at the sea-level, in the same island, is easterly throughout the summer months. Professor Piazzi Smyth, who lived for some time on the top of that mountain, making astronomical observations, has recorded some very interesting details of the conflicts between the two currents, which he was able to observe accurately from his elevated position. In winter the trade-wind zone is situated to the south of its summer position in latitude, and at this season the southwest wind is felt at the sea-level in the Canary islands. Similar facts to these have been observed in other localities where there are high mountains situated on the edge of the trade-wind zone, as, for instance, Mouna Loa, in the Sandwich islands. There can, therefore, be no doubt that the warm, moist west wind, which is felt so generally in the temperate zones, is really the air returning to the poles from the equator, which has now assumed a south-west direction on its return journey, owing to conditions the reverse of those which imparted to it a north-east motion on its way toward the equator. This, then, is our south-west wind, which is so prevalent in the North Atlantic ocean that the voyage from Europe to America is not unfrequently called the up-hill trip, in contradistinction to the down-hill passage home. These are the "brave west winds" of Maury, whose refreshing action on the soil he never tires of recapitulating.

The south-west monsoons of Hindostan, which blow from May to October, and the north-west monsoons of the Java seas, which are felt between November and April, owe their westerly motion to a cause similar to that of the anti-trades which we have just described. To take the case of the monsoons of Hindostan: we have seen above how the rarefaction of the air in Central Asia attracts the southeast trade-wind of the southern hemisphere across the equator. This air, when it moves from the equator into higher latitudes, brings with it the rate of motion, to the eastward, of the equatorial regions which it has lately left, and is felt as a south-west wind. Accordingly, the directions of the monsoons are thus accounted for. In the winter months the true north-east trade-wind is felt in Hindostan; while in the summer months its place is taken by the south-east trade of the southern hemisphere, making its appearance as the south-west monsoon. In Java, conditions exactly converse to these are in operation, and the winds are south-east from April to November, and north-west during the rest of the year.

The change of one monsoon to the other is always accompanied by rough weather, called in some places the "breaking out" of the monsoon; just as with us the equinox, or change of the season from summer to winter, and vice versa, is marked by "windy weather," or "equinoctial gales."

The question may, however, well be asked, why there are no monsoons in the Atlantic Ocean?

In the first place, the amount of rarefaction which the air in Africa and in Brazil undergoes, in the respective hot seasons of those regions, is far less considerable than that which is {213} observed in Asia and Australia at the corresponding seasons.

Secondly, in the case of the Atlantic ocean, the two districts toward which the air is attracted are situated within the torrid zone, while in the Indian ocean they are quite outside the tropics, and in the temperate zones. Accordingly, even if the suction of the air across the equator did take place to the same extent in the former case as in the latter, the extreme contrast in direction between the two monsoons would not be perceptible to the same extent, owing to the fact that the same amount of westing could not be imparted to the wind, because it had not to travel into such high latitudes on either side of the equator. A tendency to the production of the phenomena of the monsoons is observable along the coast of Guinea, where winds from the south and south-west are very generally felt. These winds are not really the south-east trade-wind, which has been attracted across the line to the northern hemisphere, They ought rather to be considered as of the same nature as the land and sea breezes before referred to, since we find it to be very generally the case, that in warm climates the ordinary wind-currents undergo a deflection to a greater or less extent along a coast-line such as that of Guinea, Brazil, or north of Australia.

Our readers may perhaps ask why it is, that when we allege that the whole of the winds of the globe owe their origin to a regular circulation of the air from the Polar regions to the equator, and back again, we do not find more definite traces of such a circulation in the winds of our own latitudes? The answer to this is, that the traces of this circulation are easily discoverable if we only know how to look for them, In the Mediterranean sea, situated near the northern edge of the trade-wind zone, the contrast between the equatorial and polar currents of air is very decidedly marked. The two conflicting winds are known under various names in different parts of the district. The polar current, on its way to join the trade-wind, is termed the "tramontane," in other parts the "bora," the "maestral," etc.; while the return trade-wind, bringing rain, is well known under the name of the "sirocco." In Switzerland the same wind is called the "Fohn," and is a warm wind, which causes the ice and snow to melt rapidly, and constantly brings with it heavy rain.

In these latitudes the contrast is not so very striking, but even here every one knows that the only winds which last for more than a day or two at a time are the north-east and the south-west winds, the former of which is dry and cold, the latter moist and warm. The difference between these winds is much more noticeable in winter than in summer, inasmuch as in the latter season Russia and the northern part of Asia enjoy, relatively to the British Islands, a much higher temperature than is the case in winter; so that the air which moves from those regions during the summer months does not come to us from a climate which is colder than our own, but from one which is warmer.

So far, then, we have attempted to trace the ordinary wind-currents, but as yet there are very many questions connected therewith which are not quite sufficiently explained. To mention one of these, we hear from many observers on the late Arctic expeditions, that the most marked characteristic of the winds in the neighborhood of Baffin's Bay, is the great predominance of north-westerly winds. It is not as yet, nor can it ever be satisfactorily, decided how far to the northward and westward this phenomenon is noticeable. The question then is, Whence does this north-west wind come?

As to the causes of the sudden changes of wind, and of storms, they are as yet shrouded in mystery, and we cannot have much expectation that in our lifetime, at least, much will be done to unravel the web. Meteorology is a very young science—if it deserves {214} the title of science at all—and until observations for a long series of years shall have been made at many stations, we shall not be in the possession of trustworthy facts on which to ground our reasoning. It is merely shoving the difficulty a step further off to assign these irregular variations to atmospheric waves. It will be time enough to reason accurately about the weather and its changes when we ascertain what these atmospheric waves are, and what causes them. Until the "astro-meteorologists" will tell us the principles on which their calculations are based, we must decline to receive their predictions as worthy of any credence whatever.

From The Month.

EUGÉNIE AND MAURICE DE GUÉRIN.

The life of Eugénie de Guérin forms a great contrast with those which are generally brought before the notice of the world. Not only did she not seek for fame, but the circumstances of her life were the very ones which generally tend to keep a woman in obscurity. Her life was passed in the deepest retirement of a country home. The society even of a provincial town was not within her reach. Poverty placed a bar between her and the means for study in congenial society. The routine of her life shut her out from great deeds or unusual achievements. In fact, her life, so far from being a deviation from the ordinary track which women have to tread, was a very type of the existence which seems to be marked out for the majority of women, and at which they are so often wont to murmur. The want of an aim in life, the necessity of some fixed, engrossing occupation, and the ennui which follows on the deprivation of these, forms the staple trial of thousands of women, especially in England, where there is much intellectual vigor with so little power for its exercise. That the reaction from this deprivation is shown by "fastness," or an excessive love of dress and amusement, is acknowledged by the most keen observers of human nature. But to the large class of women who, disdaining such means of distraction, bear their burden patiently, Eugénie de Guérin's Journal et Lettres possess an intense interest. Her life was so uneventful that it absolutely affords no materials for a biography, but her character is so full of interest that her name is now a familiar one in England and France.

Far away in the heart of sunny Languedoc stands the chateau of Le Cayla, the home of the de Guérins. They were of noble blood. The old chateau was full of reminiscences of the deeds of their ancestors. De Guérin, Bishop of Senlis and Chancellor of France, had gone forth, with a valor scarcely befitting his episcopal character, to animate the troops at the battle of Bouvines; and from the walls of Le Cayla looked down from his portrait de Guérin, Grand Master of the Knights of Malta in 1206. A cardinal, a troubadour, and countless gallant and noble soldiers filled up the family rolls—the best blood in France had mingled with theirs; but now the family were obscure, forgotten, and poor. But these circumstances were no hindrances to the happiness of Eugénie's early life.

"My childhood passed away like one long summer-day," said she {215} afterward. Thirteen happy years fled by. There was the father, cherished with tender, self-forgetting love; the brother Eranbert; the sister Marie, the youngest pet of the household; the beautiful and precocious Maurice; and the mother, the centre of all, loving and beloved. But a shadow suddenly fell on the sunny landscape, and Madame de Guérin lay on her death-bed, when, calling to her Eugénie, her eldest child, she gave to her especial charge Maurice, then aged seven, and his mother's darling. The dying lips bade Eugénie fill a mother's place to him, and the sensitive and enthusiastic girl received the words into her heart, and never forgot them.

From that day her childhood, almost her youth, ended; and it is without exaggeration we may say that the depth of maternal love passed into her heart. Henceforth Maurice was the one object and the absorbing thought of her heart, second only to one other, and that no love of earth. Sometimes, indeed, that passionate devotion to Maurice disputed the sway of the true Master, as we shall hereafter see, but it was never ultimately victorious. It was not likely that their lives should for long run side by side. The extraordinary brilliancy of Maurice's gifts made his father determine upon cultivating his mind. As soon as possible, he was sent first to the petit séminaire at Toulouse, and then to the college Stanislaus at Paris.

Maurice de Guérin was a singularly endowed being. He possessed that kind of personal beauty so very rare among men, and which is so hard to describe—a spiritual beauty, which insensibly draws the hearts of others to its possessor. Added to this, he had that sweetness of tone and manner, that instinctive power of sympathy, that sparkling brilliance which made him idolized by those who knew him, which rendered him literally the darling of his friends. "Il était leur vie," said those who spoke of him after he was gone from earth.

The early and ardent aspirations of this gifted being were turned heavenward. His youthful head was devoutly bowed in prayer. The country people called him "le jeune saint;" and his conduct at the petit séminaire gave such satisfaction that the Archbishop of Toulouse, and also the Archbishop of Rouen, offered to take the whole charge of his future education on themselves; but his father refused both. The temptations of a college life had left him scathless, and the longing of his soul was for the consecration of the priesthood. What he might have been, had he fallen into other hands, cannot now be known. Whether there was an inherent weakness and effeminacy in the character which would have unfitted him for the awful responsibilities of the priestly office, we know not. At all events, he was attracted, as many minds of undoubted superiority were at that time, by the extraordinary brilliancy and commanding genius of de Lamennais; and Maurice de Guérin found himself in the solitude of La Chesnaie, a fellow-student with Hippolyte Lacordaire, Montalembert, Saint-Beuve, and a group of others. Here some years of his life were spent, divided between prayer, study, and brilliant conversation, led and sustained by M. de Lamennais. Maurice, of a shy and diffident disposition, does not seem to have attached himself to Lamennais, although he admired and looked up to him, and although the insidious portion of his teaching was making havoc with his faith.

And now, it may be asked, what of Eugénie? Dwelling in an obscure province, with no other living guide than a simple parish curé, with a natural enthusiastic reverence for genius, and a predilection for all Maurice's friends, was she not dazzled from afar off by this great teacher of men's minds, this earnest reformer of abuses? The instinct of the single in heart was hers. Long ere others had discerned the canker eating away the fruit so fair to look on, Eugénie, with prophetic voice, was warning Maurice. {216} Lacordaire's noble soul was yet ensnared. Madam Swetchine's remonstrances had not yet prevailed; while this young girl in the country, whose name no one knew, was watching and praying for the issue of the deliberations at La Chesnaie.

At length the break-up came—the memorable journey to Rome was over. Submission had been required, and Lacordaire had given it. "Silence is the second power in the world," he had said to Lamennais; and he had withdrawn with him to La Chesnaie for a time of retreat, where he was soon undeceived as to Lamennais' intentions. And these two great men parted—one to reap the fruits of patient obedience in the success of one of the greatest works wrought in his century, to gain a mastery over the men of his age, and to die at last worn out by labors before his time, the beloved child of the Church, whose borders he had enlarged, whose honor he had defended; the other, to follow the course of self-will, and to quench his light in utter darkness.

The students of La Chesnaie went away, and Maurice was thrown on the world with no definite employment. An unsuccessful attachment deepened the natural melancholy of his sensitive nature. He went to Paris, and was soon in the midst of the literary world. He wrote, and obtained fame; he was admired and sought after; but the beautiful faith of his youth faded away like a flower, and the innocent pleasures of his childhood, and the passionate love of his sister, had no attractions for him compared to the brilliant circles of Parisian society.

And thus was Eugénie's fate marked out. From afar off her heart followed him; and, partly for his amusement, partly to relieve the outpourings of her intensely-loving heart, she kept a journal, intended for Maurice's eye only. A few letters to Maurice and one or two intimate friends make up the rest of the volume, which was, after her death, most fortunately given to the world. In these pages her character stands revealed, and no long description of her mode of life could have made us more thoroughly acquainted with her than these words, written sometimes in joy, sometimes in sorrow, in weariness and depression, in all weathers, and at all times; for, believing that she pleased her brother, nothing would prevent her from keeping her promise of a daily record of her life and thoughts. Its chief beauty lies in that she made so much out of so little. "I have just come away very happy from the kitchen, where I stood a long time this evening, to persuade Paul, one of our servants, to go to confession at Christmas. He has promised me, and he is a good boy and will keep his word. Thank God, my evening is not lost! What a happiness it would be if I could thus every day gain a soul for God! Walter Scott has been neglected this evening; but what book could have been worth to me what Paul's promise is? … The 20th.— I am so fond of the snow! Its perfect whiteness has something celestial about it. To-day I see nothing but road-tracks, and the marks of the feet of little birds. Lightly as they rest, they leave their little traces in a thousand forms upon the snow. It is so pretty to see their little red feet, as if they were all drawn with pencils of coral. Winter has its beauties and its enjoyments, and we find them every-where when we know how to see them. God spreads grace and beauty everywhere. … I must have another dish to-day for S.R., who is come to see us. He does not often taste good things—that is why I wish to treat him well; for it is to the desolate that, it seems to me, we should pay attentions. No reading to-day. I have made a cap for a little child, which has taken up all my time. But, provided one works, be it with the head or the fingers, it is all the same in the eyes of God, who takes account of every work done in his name. I hope, then, that my cap has been a charity—I have given my time, a little material, and a thousand interesting lines that I could {217} have read. Papa brought me yesterday Ivanhoe, and the Siècle de Louis XIV. Here are provisions for some of our long winter evenings."

Then she had a keen sense of enjoyment, and a wonderful faculty of making the best of things. Thus a simple pleasure to her was a source of delight. Here is her description of Christmas night in Languedoc:

"Dec. 31. I have written nothing for a fortnight. Do not ask me why. There are times when we cannot speak, things of which we can say nothing. Christmas is come—that beautiful fête which I love the most, which brings me as much joy as the shepherds of Bethlehem. Truly our whole soul sings at the coming of the Lord, which is announced to us on all sides by hymns and by the pretty nadalet. [Footnote 49] Nothing in Paris can give an idea of what Christmas is. You have not even midnight mass. [Footnote 50] We all went to it, papa at our head, on a most charming night. There is no sky more beautiful than that of midnight: it was such that papa kept putting his head out of his cloak to look at it. The earth was white with frost, but we were not cold, and, beside, the air around us was warmed by the lighted fagots that our servants carried to light us. It was charming, I assure you, and I wish I could have seen you sliding along with us toward the church on the road, bordered with little white shrubs, as if they were flowering. The frost makes such pretty flowers! We saw one wreath so pretty that we wanted to make it a bouquet for the Blessed Sacrament, but it melted in our hands; all flowers last so short a time. I very much regretted my bouquet; it was so sad to see it melt drop by drop. I slept at the presbytery. The curé's good sister kept me, and gave me an excellent réveillon of hot milk." Then, again, the grave part of her nature prevails, and she continues:

[Footnote 49: A particular way of ringing the bells during the fifteen days which precede the feast of Christmas, called in patois nodal.]

[Footnote 50: Since the period at which Mdlle. de Guérin wrote, midnight mass has been resumed in Paris.]

"These are, then, my last thoughts; for I shall write nothing more this year; in a few hours it will be over, and we shall have begun a new year. Oh, how quickly time passes! Alas, alas, can I say that I regret it? No, my God, I do not regret time, or anything that it brings; it is not worth while to throw our affections into its stream. But empty, useless days, lost for heaven, this causes me regret as I look back on life. Dearest, where shall I be at this day, at this hour, at this minute, next year? Will it be here, elsewhere; here below, or above? God only knows; I am before the door of the future, resigned to all that can come forth from it. To-morrow I will pray for your happiness, for papa, Mimi, Eran [her other brother and sister], and all those whom I love. It is the day for presents; I will take mine from heaven. I draw all from thence, for truly there are few things which please me on earth. The longer I live, the less it pleases me, and I see the years pass by without sorrow, because they are but steps to the other world. Do not think it is any sorrow or trouble which makes me think this. I assure you it is not, but a home-sickness comes over my soul when I think of heaven. The clock strikes; it is the last I shall hear when writing to you."

The following is an account of what she called "a happy day:" "God be blessed for a day without sorrow. They are rare in this life, and my soul, more than others, is soon troubled. A word, a memory, the sound of a voice, a sad face, nothing, I know not what, often troubles the serenity of my soul—a little sky, darkened by the smallest cloud. This day I received a letter from Gabrielle, the cousin whom I love so for her sweetness and beautiful mind. I was uneasy about her health, which is so delicate, having heard nothing of her for more than a month. I was so pleased to see a letter from her, that I read it before my prayers. I was so eager to read it. To see a letter, and not to open it, is {218} an impossible thing. Another letter was given to me at Cahuzac. It was from Lili, another sweet friend, but quite withdrawn from the world; a pure soul—a soul like snow, from its purity so white that I am confounded when I look at it—a soul made for the eyes of God. I was coming from Cahuzac, very pleased with my letter, when I saw a little boy, weeping as if his heart were broken. He had broken his jug, and thought his father would beat him. I saw that with half a franc I could make him happy, so I took him to a shop, where we got another jug. Charles X. could not be happier if he regained his crown. Has it not been a beautiful day?"

Here is another instance of the way she had of beautifying the most simple incidents: "I must notice, in passing, an excellent supper that we have had—papa, Mimi, and I—at the corner of the kitchen-fire, with the servants: soup, some boiled potatoes, and a cake that I made yesterday with the dough from the bread. Our only servants were the dogs Lion, Wolf, and Tritly, who licked up the fragments. All our people were in church for the instruction which is given for confirmation;" and, she adds, "it was a charming meal."

The daily devotions of the month of Mary were very recently established when Eugénie wrote; she speaks thus of them: on one first of May when absent from home, she writes: "On this day, at this moment, my holy Mimi (a pet name for her sister) is on her knees before the little altar for the month of Mary in my room. Dear sister, I join myself to her, and find a chapel here also. They have given me for this purpose a room filled with flowers; in it I have made a church, and Marie, with her little girls, servants, shepherds, and all the household, assemble together every evening before the Blessed Virgin. They came at first only to look on, for they had never kept the month of Mary before. Some good will result to them of this new devotion, if it is only one idea, a single idea, of their Christian duties, which these people know so little of, and which we can teach them while amusing them. These popular devotions please me so, because they are so attractive in their form, and thereby offer such an easy method of instruction. By their means, salutary truths appear most pleasing, and all hearts are gained in the name of our Lady and of her sweet virtues. I love the month of Mary, and the other little devotions which the Church permits; which she blesses; which are born at the feet of the Faith like flowers at the mountain-foot."

Speaking of St. Teresa, to whom she had a great devotion, she says: "I am pleased to remember that, when I lost my mother, I went, like St. Teresa, to throw myself at the feet of the Blessed Virgin, and begged her to take me for her daughter." At another time she says: "To-day, very early, I went to Vieux, to visit the relics of the saints, and, in particular, those of St. Eugénie, my patron. I love pilgrimages, remnants of the ancient faith; but these are not the days for them; in the greater number of people the spirit for them is dead. However, if M. le Curé does not have this procession to Vieux, there will be discontent. Credulity abounds where faith disappears. We have, however, many good souls, worthy to please the saints, like Rose Drouille, who knows how to meditate, who has learnt so much from the rosary; then Françon de Gaillard and her daughter Jacquette, so recollected in church. This holy escort did not accompany me; I was alone with my good angel and Mimi. Mass heard, my prayers finished, I left with one hope more. I had come to ask something from St. Eugène? The saints are our brothers. If you were all-powerful, would you not give me all that I desired? This is what I was thinking of while invoking St. Eugène, who is also my patron. We have so little in this world, at least let us hope in the other."

Those who are not of the same faith as Eugénie de Guérin have not failed {219} to be attracted by the depth and ardor of her faith and piety. A writer in the Cornhill Magazine observes, "The relation to the priest, the practice of confession assume, when she speaks of them, an aspect which is not that under which Exeter Hall knows them."

"In my leisure time I read a work of Leitniz, which delighted me by its catholicity and the pious things which I found in it—like this on confession:

"'I regard a pious, grave, and prudent confessor as a great instrument of God for the salvation of souls; for his counsels serve to direct our affections, to enlighten us about our faults, to make us avoid the occasions of sin, to dissipate our doubts, to raise up our broken spirit; finally, to cure or to mitigate all the maladies of the soul; and, if we can never find on earth anything more excellent than a faithful friend, what happiness is it not to find one who is obliged, by the inviolable law of a divine sacrament, to keep faith with us and to succor souls?'

"This celestial friend I have in M. Bories, and therefore the news of his departure has deeply affected me. I am sad with a sadness which makes the soul weep. I should not say this to any one else; they would not, perhaps, understand me, and would take it ill. In the world they know not what a confessor is—a man who is a friend of our soul, our most intimate confidant, our physician, our light, our teacher—a friend who binds us to him, and is bound to us; who gives us peace, who opens heaven to us, who speaks to us while we, kneeling, call him, like God, our father; and faith truly makes him God and father. When I am at his feet, I see nothing else in him than Jesus listening to Magdalen, and pardoning much because she has loved much. Confession is but an expansion of repentance in love."

Again she writes: "I have learnt that M. Bories is about to leave us— this good and excellent father of my soul. Oh, how I regret him! What a loss it will be to me to lose this good guide of my conscience, of my heart, my mind, of my whole self, which God had confided to him, and which I had trusted to him with such perfect freedom! I am sad with the sadness which makes the soul weep. My God, in my desert to whom shall I have recourse? Who will sustain me in my spiritual weakness? who will lead me on to great sacrifices? It is in this last, above all, that I regret M. Bories. He knew what God had put into my heart. I needed his strength to follow it. The new curé cannot replace him; he is so young; then he appears so inexperienced, so undecided. It is necessary to be firm to draw a soul from the midst of the world, and to sustain it against the assaults of flesh and blood.

"It is Saturday—the day of pilgrimage to Cahuzac. I will go there; perhaps I shall come back more tranquil. God has always given me some blessing in that chapel, where I have left so many miseries.… I was not mistaken in thinking that I should come back more tranquil. M. Bories is not going! How happy I am, and how thankful to God for this favor. It is such a great blessing to me to keep this good father, this good guide, this choice of God for my soul, as St. Francis de Sales expresses it.

"Confession is such a blessed thing, such a happiness for the Christian soul; a great good, and always greater in measure when we feel it to be so; and when the heart of the priest, into which we pour our sorrow, resembles that Divine Heart which has loved us so much. This is what attaches me to M. Bories; you will understand it."

Nevertheless, when the trial of parting with this beloved friend did come, at length, it was borne with gentle submission.

"Our pastor is come to see us. I have not said much to you about him. He is a simple and good man, knowing his duties well, and speaking better of God than of the world, which he knows little of. Therefore, he does not shine in conversation. {220} His conversation is ordinary, and those who do not know what the true spirit of a priest is would think little of him. He does good in the parish, for his gentleness wins souls. He is our father now. I find him young after M. Bories. I miss that strong and powerful teaching which strengthened me; but it is God who has taken it from me. Let us submit and walk like children, without looking at the hand which leads us."

Eugénie's life revolved round that of Maurice. No length of separation could weaken her affection, nor make her interest in his pursuits less engrossing. His letters, so few and so scanty, were treasured up and dwelt upon in many a lonely hour. She suffered with him, wept over his disappointments, and prayed for his return to the faith of his youth with all the earnestness of her soul. With exquisite tact she avoided preaching to him. It was rather by showing him what religion was to her that she strove to lead him back to its practice.

"Holy Thursday.—I have come back all fragrant from the chapel of moss, in the church where the Blessed Sacrament is reposing. It is a beautiful day when God wills to rest among the flowers and perfumes of the springtime. Mimi, Rose, and I made this reposoir, aided by M. le Curé. I thought, as we were doing it, of the supper-room, of that chamber well furnished, where Jesus willed to keep the pasch with his disciples, giving himself for the Lamb. Oh, what a gift! What can one say of the Eucharist? I know nothing to say. We adore; we possess; we live; we love. The soul is without words, and loses itself in an abyss of happiness. I thought of you among these ecstasies, and ardently desired to have you at my side, at the holy table, as I had three years ago."

Mademoiselle de Guérin occasionally composed; her brother was very anxious she should publish her productions, but she shrank from the responsibility. "St. Jean de Damas," she remarks, "was forbidden to write to any one, and for having composed some verses for a friend he was expelled from the convent. That seemed to me very severe; but one sees the wisdom of it, when, after supplication and much humility, the saint had been forgiven, he was ordered to write and to employ his talents in conquering the enemies of Jesus Christ. He was found strong enough to enter the lists when he had been stripped of pride. He wrote against the iconoclasts. Oh, if many illustrious writers had begun by a lesson of humility, they would not have made so many errors nor so many books. Pride has blinded them, and thus see the fruits which they produce, into how many errors they lead the erring. But this chapter on the science of evil is too wide for me. I should prefer saying that I have sewn a sheet. A sheet leads me to reflect, it will cover so many people, so many different slumbers—perhaps that of the tomb. Who knows if it will not be my shroud, and if these stitches which I make will not be unpicked by the worms? While I was sewing, papa told me that he had sent, without my knowledge, some of my verses to Bayssac, and I have seen the letter where M. de Bagne speaks of them and says they are very good. A little vanity came to me and fell into my sewing. Now I tell myself the thought of death is good to keep us from sin. It moderates joy, tempers sadness, makes us see that all which passes by us is transitory."

Again she writes: "Dear one, I would that I could see you pray like a good child of God. What would it cost you? Your soul is naturally loving, and prayer is nothing else but love; a love which spreads itself out into the soul as the water flows from the fountain."

******

"Ash-Wednesday.—Here I am, with ashes on my forehead and serious thoughts in my mind. This 'Remember thou art dust!' is terrible to me. I hear it all day long. I cannot banish {221} the thought of death, particularly in your room, where I no longer find you, where I saw you so ill, where I have sad memories both of your presence and your absence. One thing only is bright—the little medal of Our Lady, suspended over the head of your bed. It is still untarnished and in the same place where I put it to be your safeguard. I wish you knew, dearest, the pleasure I have in seeing it—the remembrances, the hopes, the secret thoughts that are connected with that holy image. I shall guard it as a relic; and, if ever you return to sleep in that little bed, you shall sleep again near the medal of the Blessed Virgin. Take from, me this confidence and love, not to a bit of metal, but to the image of the Mother of God. I should like to know, if in your new room I should see St. Teresa, who used to hang in your other room near the bénitier:

      'Où toi, nécessiteux
  Défaillant, tu prenais l'aumône dans ce creux.'

You will no longer, I fear, seek alms there. Where will you seek them? Who can tell? Is the world in which you live rich enough for all your necessities? Maurice, if I could but make you understand one of these thoughts, breathe into you what I believe, and what I learn in pious books—those beautiful reflections of the Gospel—if I could see you a Christian, I would give life and all for that."

******

Maurice's absence was the great trial of Eugénie's life; but there were minor trials also, concerning the little things that make up the sum of our happiness. She suffered intensely and constantly from ennui. Her active, enterprising mind had not sufficient food to sustain it, and bravely did she fight against this constant depression and weariness.

A duller life than hers could hardly be found; she had literally "nothing to do." She had no society, for she lived at a distance from her friends. Sometimes the curé called, sometimes a priest from a neighboring parish, and then the monotonous days went on without a single incident. There was no outward sign of the struggle going on. Speaking of her father, she says: "A grave look makes him think there is some trouble, so I conceal the passing clouds from him; it is but right that he should only see and know my calm and serene side. A daughter should be gentle to her father. We ought to be to them something like the angels are to God."

Nor would she distract her thoughts by any means which might injure her soul. "I have scarcely read the author whose work you sent, though I admired him as I do M. Hugo; but these geniuses have blemishes which wound a woman's eye. I detest to meet with what I do not wish to see; and this makes me close so many books. I have had Notre Dame de Paris under my hands a hundred times to-day; and the style, Esméralda, and so many pretty things in it, tempt me, and say to me, 'Read—look.' I looked; I turned it over; but the stains here and there stopped me. I read no more, and contented myself with looking at the pictures." At another time, when she is staying at a "deserted house," rather duller than her own, she writes: "The devil tempted me just now in a little room, where I found a number of romances. 'Read a word,' he said to me; 'let us see that; look at this;' but the titles of the books displeased me. I am no longer tempted now, and will go only to change the books in this room, or rather to throw them into the fire."

There was one sovereign remedy for her ills, and she sought for it with fidelity, and reaped her reward.

"This morning I was suffering. Well, at present, I am calm; and this I owe to faith, simply to faith, to an act of faith. I can think of death and eternity without trouble, without alarm. Over a deep of sorrow there floats a divine calm, a serenity, which is the work of God only. In vain have I tried other things at a time like this; {222} nothing human comforts the soul, nothing human upholds it.

  'A l'enfant il faut sa mère,
  A mon âme il faut mon Dieu.'"

At another time of suffering she writes: "God only can console us when the heart is sorrowful: human helps are not enough; they sink beneath it, it is so weighed down by sorrow. The reed must have more than other reeds to lean on."

******

"To distract my thoughts, I have been turning over Lamartine, the dear poet. I love his hymn to the nightingale, and many other of his 'Harmonies' but they are far from having the effect on me that his 'Meditations' used to have. I was ravished and in ecstacy with them. I was but sixteen, and time changes many things. The great poet no longer makes my heart vibrate; to-day he has not even power to distract my thoughts. I must try something else, for I must not cherish ennui, which injures the soul. What can I do? It is not good for me to write, to communicate trouble to others. I will leave pen and ink. I know something better, for I have tried it a hundred times; it is prayer—prayer which calms me when I say to my soul before God, 'Why art thou sad, and wherefore art thou troubled?' I know not what he does in answering me, but it quiets me just like a weeping child when it sees its mother. The Divine compassion and tenderness is truly maternal toward us."

******

And, further on: "Now I have something better to do than write: I will go and pray. Oh, how I love prayer! I would that all the world knew how to pray. I would that children, and the old, and the poor, the afflicted, the sick in soul and body—all who live and suffer—could know the balm that prayer is. But I know not how to speak of these things. We cannot tell what is ineffable."

She had said once, as we have seen, that she would give life and all to see Maurice once more serving God. She had written to him thus, not carelessly indeed, but as we are too wont to write—not counting the cost, because we know not what the cost is. She wrote thus, and God took her at her word, and he asked from her not life, as she then meant it, but her life's life. First came the trial of a temporary estrangement. Her journal suddenly stops; she believed it wearied him, and, without a word of reproach, she silenced her eager pen. Maurice, however, declared she was mistaken, and she joyfully resumed her task with words which would evidence, if nothing else were left, us, the intense depth of her love for her brother. "I was in the wrong. So much the better; for I had feared it had been your fault." Then Maurice's health, which had always been delicate, began to fail, and her heart was tortured at the thought of him suffering, away from her loving care, unable to send her news of him.

"I have, been reading the epistle about the child raised to life by Elias. Oh, if I knew some prophet, some one who would give back life and health, I would go, like the Shunamite, and throw myself at his feet."

And again, most touchingly, she says: "A letter from Felicité, which tells me nothing better about you. When will those who know more write? If they knew how a woman's heart beats, they would have more pity."

Maurice recovered from these attacks, and in the autumn of 1836 married a young and pretty Creole lady. He had not the violent attachment as to the "Louise" of his early youth; but the union seemed a suitable one on both sides. One of Eugénie's brief visits to Paris was made for the purpose of being present at her brother's marriage. It was a romantic scene. It took place in the chapel of the old and quaint Abbaye aux Bois. The church was filled with brilliant and admiring friends. The bride and bridegroom, both so beautiful, knelt before the altar; the Père Bugnet, who had {223} known Maurice as a boy, blessed the union. The gay procession passed from the church, and met a funeral cortège! It fell like an omen on Eugénie's heart. Six short months went by, and Eugénie was again summoned to Paris, to Maurice's sick-bed—his dying-bed it indeed was, but his sister's passionate love would not relinquish hope. The physicians, catching at a straw, prescribed native air, and the invalid caught at the proposal with feverish impatience. That eager longing sustained him through the long and terrible journey of twenty days; for, the moment he revived, he would be laid in the salon, and see the home-faces gathered round him. Then he was carried to his room, and soon the end came. At last Eugénie knew that he must go, and all the powers of her soul were gathered into that one prayer, that he might die at peace with God. Calmly she bent over him, and kissed the forehead, damp with the dews of death.

"Dearest, M. le Curé is coming, and you will confess. You have no difficulty in speaking to M. le Curé?" "Not at all," he answered. "You will prepare for confession, then?" He asked for his prayer-book, and had the prayers read to him.

When the priest came, he asked for more time to prepare. At last the curé was summoned.

"Never have I heard a confession better made," said the priest afterward. As he was leaving the room, Maurice called him back, and made a solemn retraction of the doctrines of M. de Lamennais. Then came the Viaticum and the last anointing. Life ebbed away; he pressed the hand of the curé, who was by him to the last, he kissed his crucifix, and died. Eugénie's prayer was heard. He died, but at home; a wanderer come back; an erring child, once more forgiven, resting on his Father's breast.

And he was gone!—"king of my heart! my other self!" as she had called him—and Eugénie was left behind. She had loved him too well for her eternal peace, and it was necessary that she should be purified in the crucible of suffering. Very gradually she parted from him; the gates of the tomb closed not on her love; slowly she uprooted the fibres of her nature which had been entwined in his. Her journal did not end, and she wrote still to him—to Maurice in heaven: "Oh, my beloved Maurice! Maurice, art thou far from me? hearest thou me? Sometimes I shed torrents of tears; then the soul is dried up. All my life will be a mourning one; my heart is desolate." Then, reproaching herself, she turns to her only consolation: "Do I not love thee, my God? only true and Eternal Love! It seems to me that I love thee as the fearful Peter, but not like John, who rested on thy heart—divine repose which I so need. What do I seek in creatures? To make a pillow of a human breast? Alas! I have seen how death can take that from us. Better to lean, Jesus, on thy crown of thorns.

******

"This day year, we went together to St. Sulpice, to the one o'clock mass. To-day I have been to Lentin in the rain, with bitter memories, in solitude. But, my soul, calm thyself with thy God, whom thou hast received to-day, in that little church. He is thy brother, thy friend, the well-beloved above all; whom thou canst never see die; who can never fail thee, in this world or the next. Let us console ourselves with this thought, that in God we shall find again all we have lost."

One great desire was, however, left to her; that of publishing the letters and writings of Maurice, and of winning for her beloved one the fame which she so despised for herself. A tribute to his memory appeared the year after his death, in the Revue des deux Mondes, from the brilliant pen of Madame Sand; but it was the source of more pain than pleasure to Eugénie. With the want of candor which is so often a characteristic of the class of writers to whom Madame Sand {224} belongs, she represented Maurice as a man totally without faith. Eugénie believed that he had never actually lost it, although it had been darkened and obscured; and she was certainly far more in his confidence than any of his friends.

For some time before his death he had gradually been returning to religious exercises; and, as we have seen, on his death-bed, he had most fully retracted and repented of whatever errors there had been in his life. But Madame Sand was not very likely to trouble herself about the dying moments of her friend, while it was another triumph to infidelity to let the world think this brilliant young man lived and died in its ranks.

"Madame Sand makes Maurice a skeptic, a great poet, like Byron, and it afflicts me to see the name of my brother—a name which was free from these lamentable errors—thus falsely represented to the world." And again: "Oh, Madame Sand is right when she says that his words are like the diamonds linked together, which make a diadem; or, rather, my Maurice was all one diamond. Blessed be those who estimated his price; blessed be the voice which praises him, which places him so high, with so much respect and enthusiasm! But on one point this voice is mistaken—when she says he had no faith. No; faith was not wanting in him. I proclaim it, and attest it by what I have seen and heard; by his prayers, his pious reading; by the sacraments he received; by all his Christian actions; by the death which opened life unto him—a death with his crucifix."

This article of Madame Sand only increased Eugénie's desire to vindicate her brother, by letting the world judge from his own writings and letters what Maurice really was. Many projects were set on foot for publishing this work. Rather than leave it undone, Eugénie would have undertaken it herself, though her broken spirit shrank more than ever from any sort of notoriety, or communication with the busy world outside her quiet home. But she would greatly have preferred the task should be accomplished by one of his friends; and much of her correspondence was devoted to the purpose. Time passed, and plan after plan fell to the ground. This last satisfaction was not to be hers. She was to see, as she thought, the name of her beloved one gradually fading away, and forgotten as years went on. To the very last drop she was to drain the cup of disappointment and loss. Her journal ceased, and its last sentence was, "Truly did the saint speak who said, 'Let us throw our hearts into eternity.'"

There are a few fragments and letters, which carry us on some years later; and in one of the last of these letters, dated 15th of June, 1845, we find these consoling words: "I have suffered; but God teaches us thus, and leads us to willingly place our hearts above. You are again in mourning, and I have felt your loss deeply. I mean the death of your poor brother. Alas! what is life but a continual separation? But you will meet in heaven, and there will be no more mourning nor tears; and there the society of saints will reward us for what we have suffered in the society of men. And, while waiting, there is nothing else to do than to humble one's self, as the Apostle says, 'under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in the time of visitation; casting all your care upon him, for he hath care of you.'"

These are almost her closing words; and thus we see God comforted her. Three years more passed, of which we have no record; and we cannot but deeply regret the determination of M. Trebutien not to give any account of her beyond her own words. As long as they lasted, they are indeed sufficient; but we would have fain followed her into the silence of those last years, and have seen the soul gradually passing to its rest. We would have liked to know if the friends she loved soothed her dying hours—whether M. Bories, with his "strong {225} and powerful words," was by her side in her last earthly struggle. But a veil falls over it all. We feel assured, as we close the volume, that whatever human means were wanting, the God she had faithfully served consoled his child to the last, and sustained her mortal weakness till she reposed in him. After her death, her heart's wish was fulfilled, and abundant honor has been rendered to Maurice de Guérin. Nay, more; for homage is ever given to the majesty of unselfish love; and from henceforth, if Maurice the poet shall be forgotten, Maurice the brother of Eugénie will never be. She has embalmed his memory with her deep and fond devotion; and she has left a living record of how, in the midst of a wearisome, an objectless, a monotonous life, a woman may find work to do, and doing it, like Eugénie, with all her might, leave behind her a track of light by which others may follow after her, encouraged and consoled.
F.

THE BUILDING OF MOURNE.

A LEGEND OF THE BLACKWATER.

BY ROBERT D. JOYCE.

Rome, according to the old aphorism, was not built in a day. Neither was the old town of Mourne, although it was destroyed in a day, and made fit almost for the sowing of salt upon its foundations, by the great Lord of Thomond, Murrough of the Ferns, when he gathered around it his rakehelly kerns, as Spenser in his spleen called them, and his fierce galloglasses and roving hobbelers. But the present story has naught to do with the spoliation and burning of towns. Far different, indeed, was the founding of Mourne, to the story of the disastrous termination of its prosperity. You will look in vain to the histories for a succinct or circumstantial account of the building of this ancient town; but many a more famous city has its early annals involved in equal obscurity—Rome, for instance. What tangible fact can be laid hold of with regard to its early history, save the will-o'-the-wisp light emanating from the traditions of a more modern day? A cimmerian cloud of darkness overhangs its founding and youthful progress, through which the double-distilled microscopic eyes of the historian are unable to penetrate with any degree of certainty. Mourne, however, though it cannot boast of a long-written history, possesses an oral one of remarkable perspicuity and certainty. The men are on the spot who, with a mathematical precision worthy of Archimedes or Newton, will relate everything about it, from its foundation to its fall. The only darkness cast upon their most circumstantial history is the elysian cloud from their luxuriant dudheens, as they whiff away occasionally, and relate—

That there was long ago a certain Dhonal, a nobleman of the warlike race of Mac Caurha, who ruled over Duhallow, and the wild mountainous territories extending downward along the banks of the Blackwater. This nobleman, after a long rule of prosperity and peace, at length grew weary of inaction, and manufactured in his pugnacious brain some cause of mortal affront and complaint against a neighboring potentate, whose territory extended in a westerly direction on the opposite shore of the river. So he mustered his vassals with all imaginable speed, and prepared to set out for the domains of his foe on a foray of unusual ferocity and magnitude. Before departing from his castle, which stood some miles above Mallow, on the banks of the river, he held a long and confidential parley with his wife, in which he told her, if he were defeated or slain, and if the foe should cross the Blackwater to make reprisals, that she should hold out the fortress while one stone would stand upon another, and especially that she should guard their three young sons well, whom, he doubted not, whatever might happen, would one day gain prosperity and renown. After this, he set out on his expedition, at the head of a formidable array of turbulent kerns and marauding horsemen. But his neighbor was not a man to be caught sleeping; for, at the crossing of a ford near Kanturk, he attacked Dhonal, slew him in single combat, and put his followers to the sword, almost to a man. After this he crossed the Blackwater, laid waste the territories of the invader, and at length besieged the castle, where the widowed lady and her three sons had taken refuge. For a long time she held her own bravely against her enemy; but in the end the castle was taken by assault, and she and her three young sons narrowly escaped with their lives out into the wild recesses of the forest.

After wandering about for some time, the poor lady built a little hut of brambles on the shore of the Clydagh, near the spot where stand the ruins of the preceptory of Mourne, or Ballinamona, as it is sometimes called. Here she dwelt with her children for a long time, in want and misery. Her sons grew up without receiving any of those accomplishments befitting their birth, and gained their subsistence, like the children of the common people around, by tilling a little plot of land before their hut, and by the products of the chase in the surrounding forest. One day, as Diarmid, the eldest, with his bow and arrows ready for the chase, was crossing a narrow valley, he met a kern, one of the followers of the great lord who had slain his father. Now, neither Diarmid nor his brothers recollected who had killed their father, nor the high estate from which they had fallen, for their mother kept them carefully in ignorance of all, fearing that they might become known, and that their enemies would kill them also. So the kern and himself wended their way for some time together along the side of the valley. At length they started a deer from its bed in the green ferns. Each shot his arrow at the same moment, and each struck the deer, which ran downward for a short space, and at last fell dead beside the little stream in the bottom of the valley.

"The deer is mine!" said the strange kern, as they stood over its body.

"No!" answered Diarmid, "it is not. See! your arrow is only stickin' in the skin of his neck, an' mine is afther rattlin' into his heart, through an' through!"

"No matther," exclaimed the kern, with a menacing look. "I don't care how he kem by his death, but the deer I must have, body an' bones, whatever comes of it! Do you think sich a sprissawn as you could keep me from it, an' I wantin' its darlin' carkiss for the table o' my lord, the Mac Donogh?"

Now Diarmid recollected that his mother and brothers were at the same time almost dying in their little hut for want of food. So without further parley he drew his long skian from its sheath.

"Very well," said he, "take it, if you're a man; but before it goes, my carkiss must lie stiff an' bloody in its place!"

The kern drew his skian at the word, and there, over the body of the fallen deer, ensued a combat stern and fierce, which at last resulted in Diarmid's plunging his skian through and through the body of his foe into the gritty sand beneath them.

{227}

Diarmid then took the spear and other weapons of the dead kern, put the deer upon his broad shoulders, and marching off in triumph, soon gained his mother's little hut. There, after eating a comfortable meal, and telling his adventure, Diarmid began to lay down his future plans.

"Mother," he said, "the time is come at last when this little cabin is too small for me. I'm a man now, an' able to meet a man, body to body, as I met him to-day; so I'll brighten up my weapons, an' set off on my adventures, that I may gain renown in the wars. Donogh here, too, has the four bones of a man," continued he, turning to his second brother; "so let him prepare, an' we'll thramp off together as soon as we can, an' perhaps afther all we'd have a castle of our own, where you could reign in glory, as big an' grand as Queen Cleena o' the Crag!"

"Well, then," answered his mother, "if you must go, before you leave me, you and your brothers must hunt in the forest for a month, and bring in as much food as will do me and Rory here for a year and a day."

"But," said Rory, the youngest, or Roreen Shouragh, or the Lively, as he was called, in consequence of the 'cute and merry temperament of his mind—"but, Diarmid, you know I am now beyant fifteen years of age, an' so, if you go, I'll folly you to the worldt's end!"

"You presumptious little atomy of a barebones," answered his eldest brother, "if I only see the size of a thrush's ankle of you follyin' us on the road, I'll turn back an' bate that wiry an' freckled little carkiss o' yours into frog's jelly! So stay at home in pace an' quietness, an' perhaps when I come back I might give you a good purse o' goold to begin your forthin with."

"That for your mane an' ludiacrous purse o' goold!" exclaimed Roreen Shouragh, at the same time snapping his fingers in the face of his brother. "Arrah! do you hear him, mother? But never mind. Let us be off into the forest to-morrow, an' we'll see who'll bring home the most food before night!"

"Well," said his mother, "whether he stays at home or goes away, I fear he'll come to some bad end with that sharp tongue of his, and his wild capers."

"With all jonteel respect, mother," answered Shouragh again, "I mane to do no such thing. I think myself as good a hairo this minnit—because I have the sowl an' heart o' one as King Dathi, who was killed in some furrin place that I don't recklect the jography of, or as Con o' the Hundhert Battles, or as the best man amongst them, Fion himself—an' I'll do as great actions as any o' them yet!"

This grandiloquent boast of Roreen Shouragh's set his mother and brothers into a fit of laughter, from which they only recovered when it was time to retire to rest. In the morning the three brothers betook themselves to the forest, and at the fall of night returned with a great spoil of game. From morning till night they hunted thus every day for a month, at the end of which time Diarmid said that they had as much food stored in as would last his mother and Rory for a year and a day.

On a hot summer noon the two brothers left the little hut, with their mother's blessing on their heads, and set off on their adventures. After crossing a few valleys, they came at length to the shore of the Blackwater, and sat down in the shade of a huge oak-tree on the bank to rest themselves. Beneath them, in a clear, shady pool, a huge pike, with his voracious jaws ready for a plunge, was watching a merry little speckled trout, which in its turn was regarding with most affectionate eyes a bright blue fly, that was disporting overhead on the surface of the water. Suddenly the trout darted upward into the air, catching the ill-starred fly, but, in its return to the element beneath, unfortunately plumped itself into the Charybdis-like jaws of the villanous {228} pike, and was from that in one moment quietly deposited in his stomach.

"Look at that!" said Diarmid to his brother. "That's the way with a man that works an' watches everything with a keen eye. He'll have all in the end, just as the pike has both fly and throut—an' just as I have both fly, an' throut, an' pike!" continued he, giving his spear a quick dart into the deep pool, and then landing the luckless pike, transfixed through and through, upon the green bank. "That's the way to manage, and the divvle a betther sign o' good luck we could have in the beginning of our journey, than to get a good male so aisy!"

"Hooray!" exclaimed a voice behind them. "That's the way to manage most galliantly. What a nate dinner the thurminjous monsther will make for the three of us!" and on turning round, the two brothers beheld Roreen Shouragh, accoutred like themselves, and dancing with most exuberant delight at the feat beside them on the grass.

"An' so you have follied us afther all my warnin', you outragious little vagabone!" exclaimed Diarmid, making a wrathful dart at Roreen, who, however, eluding the grasp, ran and doubled hither and thither with the swiftness of a hare, around the trunks of the huge oak-trees on the shore. In vain Diarmid tried every ruse of the chase to catch him. Roreen Shouragh could not be captured. At length the elder brother, wearied out, returned to Donogh, who, during the chase, was tumbling about on the grass in convulsions of laughter.

"'Tis no use, Donogh," he said, "we must only let him come with us. He'll never go back. Come here, you aggravatin' young robber," continued he, calling out to Roreen, who was still dancing in defiance beneath a tree, some distance off—"come here, an' you'll get your dinner, an' may folly us if you wish."

Roreen knew that he might depend on the word of his brother. "I towld ye both," said he, coming up to the spot, "that I'd folly ye to the worldt's end; so let us have pace, an' I may do ye some service yet. But may I supplicate to know where ye're preamblin' to at present; for if ye sit down that way in every umberagious coolin' spot, as the song says, the divvle a much ye'll have for yeer pains in the ind?"

"I'll tell you then," answered Donogh, now recovered from his fit of laughing. "We're goin' off to Corrig Cleena, to see the Queen o' the Fairies, an' to ask her advice what to do so as to win wealth an' renown."

"'Tis aisier said than done," said Roreen, "to see Queen Cleena. But howsomdever, when we're afther devourin' this vouracious thief of a pike here, we'll peg off to the Corrig as swift as our gambadin'-sticks will carry us!"

After the meal the three brothers swam across the river, and proceeded on their way through the forest toward Corrig Cleena. On gaining the summit of a little height, a long, straight road extended before them.

On and on the straight road they went, till, turning up a narrow path in the forest, they beheld the great grey boulders of Corrig Cleena towering before them. They searched round its base several times for an entrance, but could find none. At length, as they were turning away in despair, they saw an extremely small, withered old atomy of a woman, clad all in sky blue, and sitting beside a clump of fairy thimbles, or foxgloves, that grew on a little knoll in front of the rock. They went up and accosted her:

"Could you tell us, ould woman," asked Diarmid, "how we can enter the Corrig? We want to speak to the queen."

"Ould woman, inagh!" answered the little atomy in a towering passion. "How daar you call me an ould woman, you vagabone? Off wid you—thramp, I say, for if you sted there till your legs would root in the ground, you'd get no information from me!"

{229}

"Be aisy, mother," said Donogh, in a soothing voice; "sure, if you can tell us, you may as well serve us so far, an' we'll throuble you no more."

"Ould woman an' mother, both!" screamed the little hag, starting up and shaking her crutch at the brothers; "this is worse than all. You dirty an' insultin' spalpeens, how daar ye again, I say call me sich names? What for should I be decoratin' my fingers wid the red blossoms o' the Lusmore, if I was as ould as you say? Be off out o' this, or be this an' be that, I ruinate ye both wid a whack o' this wand o' mine!"

"Young leedy," said Roreen Shouragh, stepping up cap in hand at this juncture, and making the old hag an elaborately polite bow—"young, an' innocent, an' delightful creethur, p'r'aps you'd have the kindness to exercise that lily-white hand o' yours in pointin' out the way for us into Queen Cleena's palace!"

"Yes, young man," answered the crone, greatly mollified at the handsome address of Roreen. "For your sake, I'll point out the way. You at laste know the respect that should be paid to youth an' beauty!"

"Allow me, my sweet young darlint," said Roreen at this, as he stepped up and offered her his arm—"allow me to have the shuprame pleasure of conductin' you. I'm sure I must have the honor an' glory of ladin' on my arm one of the queen's maids of honor. May those enticin' cheeks o' yours for ever keep the bloomin' an' ravishin' blush they have at the present minnit, an' may those riglar ivory teeth o' yours, that are as white as the dhriven snow, never make their conjay from your purty an' delightful mouth!"

The "delightful young creethur" allowed herself, with many a gratified smirk, to be conducted downward by the gallant Roreen toward the rock, where, striking the naked wall with her crutch, or wand as she was pleased to call it, a door appeared before them, and the three brothers were immediately conducted into the presence of the fairy queen.

It would be long, but pleasant, to tell the gallant compliments paid by Roreen to the queen, and the queen's polite and gracious acceptance of them; merry to relate the covert laughter of the lovely maids of honor, as Roreen occasionally showered down praises on the head of the "young leedy" who so readily gained him admittance to the palace, and who was no other than the vain old nurse of the queen; but, despite all such frivolities, this history must have its course. At length the queen gave them a gentle hint that their audience had lasted the proper time, and as they were departing she cast her bright but love-lorn eyes upon them with a kindly look.

"Young man," she said, "you ask my advice how to act so as to gain wealth and renown. I could give you wealth, but will not, for wealth thus acquired rarely benefits the possessor. But I will give you the advice you seek. Always keep your senses sharp and bright, and your bodies strong by manly exercise. Look sharply round you, and avail yourselves honorably of every opportunity that presents itself. Be brave, and defend your rights justly; but, above all, let your hearts be full of honor and kindness, and show that kindness ever in aiding the poor, the needy, and the defenceless. Do all this, and I doubt not but you will yet come to wealth, happiness, and renown. Farewell!"

And in a moment, they knew not how, they found themselves sitting in the front of the Rock of Cleena, upon the little knoll where Roreen had so flatteringly accosted the "young leedy." Away they went again down to the shore, swam back across the river, and wandered away over hill and dale, till they ascended Sliabh Luchra, and lost themselves in the depths of the great forest that clothed its broad back. Here they sat down in a green glade, and began to consider what they should further do with themselves. At length {230} they agreed to build a little hut, and remain there for a few days, in order to look about the country. No sooner said than done.

To work they went, finished their hut beneath a spreading tree, and were soon regaling themselves on a young fawn they had killed as they descended the mountain. Next day they went out into the forest, killed a deer, brought him back to the hut, in order to prepare part of him for their dinner. Diarmid undertook the cooking for the first day, while his two younger brothers went out along the back of the mountain to kill more game. With the aid of a small pot, which they had borrowed from a forester at the northern part of the mountain, and a ladle that accompanied it, Diarmid began to cook the dinner, stirring the pieces of venison round and round over the fire, in order to have some broth ready at the return of his brothers. As he was stirring and tasting alternately with great industry, he heard a light footstep behind him, and on looking round, beheld sitting on one of the large mossy stones they used for a seat a little crabbed-looking boy, with a red head almost the color of scarlet, a red jacket, and tight-fitting trowsers of the same hue, which, reaching a little below the knee, left the fire-bedizened and equally rubicund legs and feet exposed in free luxury to the air. His face was handsomely formed, but brown and freckled, and he had a pair of dark, keen eyes, which seemed to pierce into the very soul of Diarmid as he sat gazing at him. There was a wild, elfish look about him altogether, as, with a vivacious twinkle of his acute eye, he saluted Diarmid politely, and asked him for a ladleful of the broth. Diarmid, however, in turning round from the pot, had spilt the contents of the ladle on his hand, burning it sorely, and was in consequence not in the most amiable humor.

"Give you a ladle of broth, indeed, you little weasel o' perdition!" exclaimed he. "Peg off out o' my house this minute, or I'll catch you by one o' them murtherin' legs o' yours, an' bate your brains out against one o' the stones!"

"I'm well acquainted with the cozy an' indestructible fact, that a man's house is his castle," said the little fellow, at the same time thrusting both his hands into his pockets, inclining his head slightly to one side, and looking up coolly at Diarmid; "but some o' that broth I must have, for three raisons. First, that all the wild-game o' the forest are mine as well as yours; second, that I'm a sthranger, an' you know that hospitality is a virthue in ould Ireland; an', third an' best, because you darn't refuse me! So, sit down there an' cool me a good rich ladleful, or, be the hole o' my coat! there'll be wigs on the green bethune you an' me afore you're much ouldher!"

"Ther's for your impidence, you gabblin' little riffin!" said Diarmid, making a furious kick at the imperturbable little intruder, who, however, evaded it by a nimble jump to one side; and then leaping up suddenly, before his assailant was aware, hit him right and left two stunning blows with his hard and diminutive fists in the eyes. Round and round hopped redhead, at each hop striking the luckless Diarmid right in the face, till at length, with one finishing blow, he brought him to the ground, stunned and senseless.

"There," he said, as he took a ladleful o' broth and began to cool it deliberately, "that's the most scientific facer I ever planted on a man's forehead in my life. I think he'll not refuse me the next time I ask him."

With that he drank off the broth at a draught, laid the ladle carefully in the pot, stuck his hands in his pockets, and jovially whistling up, "The cricket's rambles through the hob," he left the hut, and strutted with a light and cheerful heart into the forest.

When Diarmid's brothers returned, they found him just recovering from his swoon, with two delightful black eyes, and a nose of unusual dimensions. {231} He told them the cause of his mishap, at which they only laughed heartily, saying that he deserved it for allowing himself to be beaten by such an insignificant youngster. Next day, Diarmid and Roreen went out to hunt, leaving Donogh within to cook the dinner. When they returned, they found the ill-starred Donogh lying almost dead on the floor, with two black eyes far surpassing in beauty and magnitude those received on the preceding evening by his brother.

"Let me stay within to-morrow," said Roreen, "for 'tis my turn; an' if he has the perliteness o' payin' me a visit, I'll reward him for his condescension."

"Arrah!" said both his brothers, "is it a little traneen like you to be able for him, when he bate the two of us?"

"No matther," answered Roreen; "tis my turn, an' stay I will, if my eyes were to be oblitherated in my purricranium!"

And so, when the morrow came, Diarmid and Donogh went out to hunt, and Roreen Shouragh stayed within to cook the dinner. As the pot commenced boiling, Roreen kept a sharp eye around him for the expected visitor, whom he at length descried coming up the glade toward the door of the hut, whistling cheerfully as he came.

"Good-morrow, youngster!" said the chap as he entered, and made a most hilarious bow; "you seem to have the odor o' charity from your handsome face here, at laste it comes most aromatically from the pot, anyhow."

"Ah, then! good-morrow kindly, my blushin' little moss-rose!" said Roreen, answering the salutation with an equally ornamental inclination of his head—"welcome to the hall o' my fathers. P'r'aps you'd do me the thurminjous honor o' satin' that blazin' little carkiss o' yours on the stone fornent me there."

"With all the pleasure in the univarse," answered the other, seating himself; "but as the clay is most obsthreporously hot an' disthressin' to the dissolute traveller, p'r'aps you'd have the exthrame kindness o' givin' me a ladleful o' broth to refresh myself."

"Well," said Roreen, "I was always counted a livin' respectacle o' the hospitality of ould Ireland. Yet, although the first law is not to ask the name of a guest, in regard to the unmerciful way you thrated my brothers, I must make bowld, before I grant your request, to have the honor an' glory of hearin' your cognomen."

"With shuprame pleasure," answered the visitor. "My name, accordin' to the orthography o' Ogham characters, is Shaneen cus na Thinné, which, larnedly expounded, manes John with his Feet to the Fire. But the ferlosophers an' rantiquarians of ould Ireland, thracin' effect from cause, call me Fieryfoot, an' by that name I shall be proud to be addhressed by you at present."

"Well," rejoined Roreen, "it only shows their perfound knowlidge an' love for truth, to be able to make out such a knotty ploberm in derivations; an' so, out o' compliment to their oceans o' larnin', you'll get the broth; but," continued he, as he took up a ladleful and held it to cool, "as there are a few questions now and then thrublin' my ruminashins, p'r'aps you may be so perlite as to throw a flash o' lightnin' on them, while we're watin'. One is in nathral history. I've heerd that of late the hares sleep with one eye shut an' th' other open. What on earth is the raison of it?"

"That," answered Fieryfoot, "is aisily solvoluted. Tis on account o' the increase o' weasels, and their love for suckin' the blood o' hares in their sleep. So the hares, in ordher to be on their guard an' prevent it, sleep with only one eye at a time, an' when that's rested an' has slept enough, they open it an' shut the other!"

"The other," said Roreen, "is in asthronomy, an' thrubbles me most of all, sleepin' an' noddin', aitin' an' dhrinkin'. Why is it that the man in the moon always keeps a rapin'-hook in his hand, and never uses it?"

{232}

"Because," answered Fieryfoot, getting somewhat impatient, "because, you poor benighted crathure, he's not a man at all, but the image of a man painted over the door of Brian Airach's shebeen there, where those that set off on a lunarian ramble go in to refresh themselves, as I want to refresh myself with that ladle o' broth you're delayin' in your hand!"

"Oh! you'll get it fresh an' fastin'!" exclaimed Roreen, and with that he dashed the ladleful of scalding broth right into the face of Fieryfoot, who started up with a wild cry, and rushed half-blinded from the hut. Away went Roreen in hot pursuit after him, with the ladle in his hand, and calling out to him, with the most endearing names imaginable, to come back for another supply of broth—away down the glades, till at length, on the summit of a smooth, green little knoll, Fieryfoot suddenly disappeared. Roreen went to the spot, and found there a square aperture, just large enough to admit his body. He immediately went and cut a sapling with his knife, stuck it by the side of the aperture, and placed his cap on it for a mark, and then returned to the hut, and found his brothers just after coming in. He related all that happened, and they agreed to go together to the knoll after finishing their dinner. When the dinner was over, the three brothers went down to the knoll, and easily found out the aperture through which Fieryfoot had disappeared.

"An' now, what's to be done?" asked Diarmid.

"What's to be done, is it?" said Roreen; "why just to have me go down, as I'm the smallest—smallest in body I mane—for, to spake shupernathrally, my soul is larger than both of yurs put together; an', in the manetime, to have ye build another hut over the spot an' live there till I return with a power o' gold an' dimons, and oceans o' renown an' glory!"

With that he crept into the aperture, while his brothers busied themselves in drawing brambles and sticks to the spot in order to build a hut as he had directed. As Roreen descended, the passage began to grow more broad and lightsome, and at length he found himself on the verge of a delightful country, far more calm and beautiful than the one he had left. Here he took the first way that presented itself, and travelled on till he came to the crossing of three roads. He saw a large, dark-looking house, part of which he knew to be a smith's forge, from the smoke, and from the constant hammering that resounded from the inside. Roreen entered, and the first object that presented itself was Fieryfoot, as fresh and blooming as a trout, and roasting his red shins with the utmost luxuriance and happiness of heart before the blazing fire on the hob.

"Wisha, Roreen Shouragh," exclaimed Fieryfoot, starting from his seat, spitting on his hand for good luck, and then offering it with great cordiality, "you're as welcome as the flowers o' May! Allow me to offer you my congratulations, ad infinitum, for your superior cuteness in the art of circumwentin' your visitors. I prizhume you'll have no objection to be presented to the three workmen I keep in the house—the smith there, the carpenter, an' the mason. Roreen Shouragh, gentlemin, the only man in the world above that was able to circumwint your masther!"

"A céad mille fáilté, young gintleman!" said the three workmen in a breath.

Roreen bowed politely in acknowledgment.

"Any news from the worldt above?" asked the smith, as he rested his ponderous hammer on the anvil.

"Things are morthially dull," answered Roreen, giving a sly wink at Fieryfoot. "I've heard that the Danes are making a divarshin in Ireland; that a shower o' dimons fell in Dublin; that the moon is gettin' mowldy for want o' shinin'; and that there's a say in the west that is gradually becoming transmogrified into whiskey. I humbly hope that the latther intelligence {233} is unthrue, for if not, I'm afraid the whole worldt will become drunk in the twinklin' of a gooldfrinch's eye!"

"Milé, milé gloiré!" exclaimed the three workmen, "but that's grate an' wondherful intirely! P'r'aps masther," continued they, addressing Fieryfoot, and smacking their lips at the thought of whiskey, "p'r'aps you'd have the goodness o' givin' us a few days' lave of absence!"

"Not at present," answered Fieryfoot; "industry is the soul o' pleasure, as the hawk said to the sparrow before he transported him to his stomach, so ye must now set to work an' make a sword, for I want to make my frind here a present as a compliment for his superior wisdom."

To work they went. The smith hammered out, tempered, and polished the blade, the carpenter fashioned the hilt, which the mason set with a brilliant row of diamonds; and the sword was finished instantly.

"An' now," said Fieryfoot, presenting the sword to Roreen, "let me have the immorthial pleasure o' presenting you with this. Take it and set off on your thravels. Let valior and magnanimity be your guide, and you'll come to glory without a horizintal bounds. In the manetime I'll wait here till you return."

"I accept it with the hottest gratitudinity an' gladness," said Roreen, taking the sword and running his eye critically along hilt and blade. "'Tis a darlin', handy sword; 'tis sharp, shinin', an' killin', as the sighin' lover said to his sweetheart's eyes, an' altogether 'tis the one that matches my experienced taste, for 'tis tough, an' light, and lumeniferous, as Nero said to his cimitar, whin he was preparin' to daycapitate the univarsal worldt wid one blow!"

Saying this, Roreen buckled the sword to his side, bade a ceremonious farewell to the polite Fieryfoot and his workmen, left the house, and proceeded on his adventures. He took the west and broader road that led by the forge, and travelled on gaily till night. For seven days he travelled thus, meeting various small adventures by the way, and getting through them with his usual light-heartedness, till at length he saw a huge dark castle before him, standing on a rock over a solitary lake. He accosted an old man by the way-side, who told him that a huge giant of unusual size, strength, and ferocity dwelt there, and that he had kept there in thrall, for the past year and a day, a beautiful princess, expecting that in the end she'd give her consent to marry him. The old peasant told him also that the giant had two brothers, who dwelt far away in their castles, and that they were the strangest objects ever seen by mortal eyes; one being a valiant dwarf as broad as he was long, and the other longer than he was broad, for he was tall as the giant, but so slightly formed that he was designated by the inhabitants of the country round Snohad na Dhial, or the Devil's Needle. Roreen thanked the old man with great urbanity, and proceeded on his way toward the castle. When he came to the gate, he knocked as bold as brass, and demanded admittance. He was quickly answered by a tremendous voice from the inside, which demanded what he wanted.

"Let me in, ould steeple," said Roreen; "I'm a poor disthressed boy that's grown wary o' the worldt on account o' my fatness, an' I'm come to offer myself as a volunthary male for your voracious stomach!"

At this the gate flew open with a loud clang, and Roreen found himself in the great court-yard of the castle, confronting the giant. The giant was licking his lips expectantly while opening the gate, but seemed now not a little disappointed as he looked upon the spare, wiry form standing before him.

"If you're engaged, ould cannibal," said Roreen again, "in calkalatin' a gasthernomical ploberm, as I'm aweer you are, by the way you're lookin' at me, allow me perlitely to help you in hallucidatin' it. In the first place, if {234} you intend to put me in a pie, I must tell you that you'll not get much gravy from my carkiss, an' in the next, if you intend to ate me on the spot, raw, I must inform you that you'll find me as hard as a Kerry dimon, an' stickin' in your throat, before you're half acquainted with the politics of your abdominal kingdom!"

As an answer to this the giant did precisely what Roreen Shouragh expected he would do. He stooped down, caught him up with his monstrous hand, intending to chop off his head with the first bite; but Roreen, the moment he approached his broad, hairy chest, pulled suddenly out the sword presented to him by Fiery foot, and drew it across the giant's windpipe, with as scientific a cut as ever was given by any champion at the battle of Gaura, Clontarf, or of any other place on the face of the earth. The giant did not give the usual roar given by a giant in the act of being killed. How could he, when his windpipe was cut? He only fell down simply by the gate of his own castle, and died without a groan. Roreen, by way of triumph, leaped upon his carcass, and with a light heart cut a few nimble capers thereon, and then proceeded on his explorations into the castle. There he found the beautiful princess sad and forlorn, whom he soon relieved from her apprehensions of further thraldom. She told him that she was not the only lady whose wrongs were unredressed in that strange country, for that the two remaining brothers of the giant, to wit, the dwarf and the Devil's Needle, had kept, during her time of thrall, her two younger sisters in an equally cruel bondage.

"An' now, my onrivalled daisy," said Roreen, after some conversation had passed between them, "allow me, while I'm in the humor for performin' deeds o' valior, to thramp off an' set them free!"

"But," said the princess, "am I to be left behind pining in this forlorn dungeon of a castle?"

"Refulgint leedy," answered Roreen, "a pair of eyes like yours, when purferrin' a request, are arrisistible, but this Kerry-dimon' heart o' mine is at present onmovable; and in ferlosophy, when an arrisistible affeer conglomerates against an onmovable one, nothin' occurs, an' so I must have the exthrame bowldness of asking you to stay where you are till I come back, for 'tis always the maxim of an exparienced an' renowned gineral not to oncumber himself with too much baggage when settin' out on his advinthures!"

And so the young princess consented to stay, and Roreen, with many bows and compliments, took his leave. For three days he travelled, till at length he espied the castle of the dwarf towering on the summit of a great hill. He climbed the hill as fast as his nimble legs could carry him, blew the horn at the gate, and defied the dwarf to single combat. To work they went. The skin of the dwarf was as hard and tough as that of a rhinoceros, but at length Roreen's sword found a passage through it, and the dwarf fell dead by his own gate. Roreen went in, brought the good news of her sister's liberation to the lady, and after directing her to remain where she was till his return, set forward again. For three days more he travelled, till he came to the shore of a sea, where he saw the castle of Snohad na Dhial towering high above the waves. He climbed up the rock on which the castle stood, found the gate open, and whistling the romantic pastoral of "The piper in the meadow straying," he jovially entered the first door he met. On he went, through room after room, and saw no one, till at last he came before an exceedingly lofty door, with a narrow and perpendicular slit in it, extending almost from threshold to lintel. He peeped in through the open slit, and beheld inside the most beautiful young lady his eyes ever rested upon. She was weeping, and seemed sorely troubled. Roreen opened the door, presented himself before her, and told her how he had liberated her {235} sisters. In return she told him how that very day she was to be married to Snohad na Dhial, and wept, as she further related that it was out of the question to think of vanquishing him, for that he was as tall as the giant, yet so slight that the slit in the door served him always for an entrance, but then he was beyond all heroes strong, and usually killed his antagonist by knotting his long limbs around him and squeezing him to death.

"No matther," said Roreen. "I'll sing a song afther my victory, as the gamecock said to the piper. An' now, most delightful an' bloomin' darlint o' the worldt, this purriliginious heart o' mine is melted at last with the conshumin' flame o' love. Say, then, the heart-sootherin' an' merlifluous word that you'll have me, an' your thrubbles are over in the twinklin'—"

"Not over so soon!" interrupted a loud, shrill voice behind them, and Roreen, turning round, beheld Snohad na Dhial entering at the slit, with deadly rage and jealousy in his fiery eyes. Snohad, however, in his haste to get in and fall upon Roreen, got his middle in some way or other entangled in the slit, and in his struggles to free himself, his feet lilted upward, and there he hung for a few moments, inward and outward, like the swaying beam of a balance. For a few moments only; for Roreen, running over, with one blow of his faithful sword on the waist cut him in two, and down fell both halves of Snohad na Dhial as dead as a door-nail. After this Roreen got the heart-sootherin' answer he so gallantly implored. He then bethought himself of returning. After a few weeks he found himself with the three sisters, and with a cavalcade of horses laden with the most precious diamonds, pearls, and other treasures belonging to the three castles, in front of the forge where he had met Fieryfoot, and talking merrily to that worthy.

"An' now," said Fieryfoot, after he had complimented the ladies on their beauty, and Roreen on his success and bravery, "I am about to give my three workmen lave of absence. But they must work seven days for you first. Then they may go on their peregrinations about ould Ireland. Farewell. Give my ondeniable love to the ladle, and remember me to your brothers balligerently!"

With that the two friends embraced, on which Fieryfoot drew out a small whistle and blew a tune, which set Roreen Shouragh and the three princesses into a pleasant sleep; on awakening from which they found themselves by the side of the little hut on the knoll, with the three workmen beneath them, holding the horses and guarding their loads of treasure. Roreen's two brothers had just returned from the chase, and were standing near them in mute wonderment at the spectacle. After some brief explanations, the whole cavalcade set out on their journey home, and travelled on till they came to the hut of the lonely widow on the banks of the Clydagh. It was nightfall when they reached the place. Roreen told the three workmen that he wanted to have a castle built on the meadow beside the hut, and then went in and embraced his mother. The workmen went to the meadow, and when the next morning dawned, had a castle of unexampled strength and beauty built for Roreen and his intended bride. The two succeeding mornings saw two equally splendid castles built for the two brothers and their brides elect, for they were about to be married to the two elder princesses. By the next morning after that they had a castle finished for Roreen's mother. On the second morning afterward they had a town built, and at length, on the seventh morning, when Roreen went out, he found both castles and town' enclosed by a strong wall, with ramparts, gateways, and every other necessary appliance of defence. The three workmen then took their leave, and by the loud smacking of their lips as they departed, Roreen knew that they were going off to the west in search of the "say" of whiskey. After this the three {236} brothers were married to the three lovely princesses, mercenary soldiers flocked in from every quarter, and took service under their banners; the inhabitants of the surrounding country removed into the town, and matters went on gaily and prosperously. The name of Roreen's wife was Mourne Blanaid, or the Blooming, and on a great festival day got up for the purpose, he called the town Mourne, in honor of her. In a pitched battle they defeated and killed the slayer of their father, and drove his followers out of their patrimony, and after that they lived in glory and renown till their death.

For centuries after the town of Mourne flourished, still remaining in possession of the race of the Mac Carthys. At length the Normans came and laid their mail-clad hands upon it. In the reign of King John, Alexander de St. Helena founded a preceptory for Knights Templars near it, the ruins of which stand yet in forlorn and solitary grandeur beside the little river. Still the town flourished and throve, though many a battle was fought within it, and around its gray walls, till at length, according to Spenser, Murrogh na Ranagh, prince of Thomond, burst out like a fiery flame from his fastnesses in Clare, overran all Munster, burnt almost every town in it that had fallen into the possession of the English, and among the rest Mourne, whose woeful burning did not content him, for he destroyed it altogether, scarcely leaving one stone standing there upon another. And now only a few mounds remain to show the spot where Roreen Shouragh got his town built, and where he ruled so jovially.

And so, gentle reader, if you look with me to the history of Troy, Rome, the battle of Ventry Harbor, the Pyramids, or Tadmor in the Desert, I think you will say that there is none of them so clear, so circumstantial, and so trustworthy as the early history of the old town of Mourne.

{237}

HANS EULER.

FROM THE GERMAN OF J. G. SEIDL.

  "Hark, child—again that knocking!  Go, fling wide the door, I pray;
  Perchance 'tis some poor pilgrim who has wandered from his way.
  Now save thee, gallant stranger! Sit thou down and share our cheer:
  Our bread is white and wholesome—see! our drink is fresh and clear."

  "I come not here your bread to share, nor of your drink to speak.
  Your name?"—"Hans Euler."—"So! 'tis well: it is your blood I seek.
  Know that through many a weary year I've sought you for a foe:
  I had a goodly brother once: 'twas you who laid him low.

  "And as he bit the dust, I vowed that soon or late on you
  His death should be avenged; and mark! that oath I will keep true."
  "I slew him; but in quarrel just. I fought him hand to hand:
  Yet, since you would avenge his fall,—I'm ready; take your stand.

  "But I war not in my homestead, by this hearth whereon I tread;
  Not in sight of these—my dear ones—for whose safety I have bled.
  My daughter, reach me down yon sword,—the same that laid him low;
  And if I ne'er come back again, Tyrol has sons enow."

  So forth they fared together, up the glorious Alpine way,
  Where newly now the kindling east led on the golden day.
  The sun that mounted with them, as he rose in all his pride,
  Still saw the stranger toiling on, Hans Euler for his guide.

  They climbed the mountain summit; and behold! the Alpine world
  Showed clear and bright before them, 'neath the mists that upward curled.
  Below them, calm and happy, lay the valley in her rest,
  With the châlets in her arms, and with their dwellers on her breast.

  Amidst were sparkling waters; giant chasms, scarred and riven;
  Vast, crowning woods; and over all, the pure, blest air of heaven:
  And, sacred in the sight of God, where peace her treasures spread,
  On every hearth, on every home, the soul of freedom shed!

  Both gazed in solemn silence down. The stranger stayed his hand.
  Hans Euler gently pointed to his own beloved land:
  "'Twas this thy brother threatened; such a wrong might move me well.
  'Twas in such a cause I struggled:—'twas for such a fault he fell."

  The stranger paused: then, turning, looked Hans Euler in the face;
  The arm that would have raised the sword fell powerless in its place.
  "You slew him. Was it, then, for this—for home and fatherland?
  Forgive me! 'Twas a righteous cause. Hans Euler, there's my hand!"

    ELEANORA L. HERVEY.

{238}

From All the Year Round.

THE MODERN GENIUS OF THE STREAMS.

Water to raise corn from the seed, to clothe the meadow with its grass, and to fill the land with fruit and flowers; water to lie heaped in fantastic clouds, to make the fairy-land of sunset, and to spread the arch of mercy in the rainbow; water that kindles our imagination to a sense of beauty; water that gives us our meat, and is our drink, and cleans us of dirt and disease, and is our servant in a thousand great and little ways—it is the very juice and essence of man's civilization. And so, whether we shall drag over cold water, or let hot water drag us, is one way of putting the question between canal and steam communication for conveyance of our heavy traffic. The canal-boat uses its water cold without, the steam-engine requires it hot within. Before hot water appeared in its industrial character to hiss off the cold, canals had all the glory to themselves. They are not yet hissed off their old stages and cat-called into contempt by the whistle of the steam-engine, for canal communication still has advantages of its own, and canal shares are powers in the money market.

Little more than a century ago, not only were there neither canals nor railroads in this country, but the common high-roads were about the worst in Europe. Corn and wool were sent to market over those bad roads on horses' or bullocks' backs, and the only coal used in the inland southern counties was carried on horseback in sacks for the supply of the blacksmiths' forges. Water gave us our over-sea commerce, that came in and went out by way of our tidal rivers; and the step proposed toward the fostering of our home industries was a great one when it occurred to somebody to imitate nature, by erecting artificial rivers that should flow whereever we wished them to flow, and should be navigable along their whole course for capacious, flat-bottomed carrying-boats.

The first English canal, indeed, was constructed as long as three hundred years ago, at Exeter, by John Trew, a native of Glamorganshire, who enabled the traders of Exeter to cancel the legacy of the spite of an angry Countess of Devon, who had, nearly three hundred years before that time, stopped the ascent of sea-going vessels to Exeter by forming a weir across the Exe at Topham. Trew contrived, to avoid the obstruction, a canal from Exeter to Topham, three miles long, with a lock to it. John Trew ruined himself in the service of an ungrateful corporation.

After this time, improvements went no further than the clearing out of some channels of natural water-communication, until the time of James Brindley, the father of the English canal system.

James Brindley was born in the year 1716, the third of the reign of George the First, in a cottage in the parish of Wormhill, midway between the remote hamlets of the High Peak of Derby. There his father, more devoted to shooting, hunting, and bull-running, than to his work as a cottier, cultivated the little croft he rented, got into bad company and poverty, and left his children neglected and untaught. The idle man had an industrious wife, who taught the children, of whom James was the eldest, what little she knew; but they must all help to earn as soon as they were able, and James Brindley earned wages at any ordinary laborer's work that he could get until he was seventeen years old. {239} He was a lad clever with his knife, who made little models of mills, and set them to work in mill-streams of his own contrivance. The machinery of a neighboring grist-mill was his especial delight, and had given the first impulse to his modellings. He and his mother agreed that he should bind himself, whenever he could, to a millwright; and at the age of seventeen he did, after a few weeks' trial, become apprentice for seven years to Abraham Bennett, wheelwright and millwright, at the village of Sutton, near Macclesfield, which was the market-town of Brindley's district.

The millwrights were then the only engineers; they worked by turns at the foot-lathe, the carpenter's bench, and the anvil; and, in country places where there was little support for division of labor, they had to find skill or invention to meet any demand on mechanical skill. Bennett was not a sober man, his journeymen were a rough set, and much of the young apprentice's time was at first occupied in running for beer. He was taught little, and had to find out everything for himself, which he did but slowly; so that, during some time, he passed with his master for a stupid bungler, only fit for the farm-work from which he had been taken. But, after two years of this sort of pupilage, a fire having injured some machinery in a small silk-mill at Macclesfield, Brindley was sent to bring away the damaged pieces; and, by his suggestions on that occasion, he showed to Mr. Milner, the mill superintendent, an intelligence that caused his master to be applied to for Brindley's aid in a certain part of the repairs. He was unwillingly sent, worked under the encouragement of the friendly superintendent with remarkable ability, and was surprised that his master and the other workmen seemed to be dissatisfied with his success. When they chaffed him, at the supper celebrating the completion of the work, his friend Milner offered to wager a gallon of the best ale that, before the lad's apprenticeship was out, he would be a cleverer workman than any of them there present, master or man. This was a joke against Brindley among his fellow-workmen; but in another year they found "the young man Brindley" specially asked for when the neighboring millers needed repairs of machinery, and sometimes he was chosen in preference to the master himself. Bennett asked "the young man Briudley" where he had learnt his skill in mill-work, but he could tell no more than that it "came natural like." He even suggested and carried out improvements, especially in the application of the water-power, and worked so substantially well, that his master said to him one day, "Jem, if thou goes on i' this foolish way o' workin', there will be very little trade left to be done when thou comes oot o' thy time: thou knaws firmness o' wark's h' ruin o' trade."

But presently Jem's "firmness o' wark" was the saving of his master. Bennett got a contract to set up a paper-mill on the river Dane, upon the model of a mill near Manchester. Bennett went to examine the Manchester mill, brought back a confused and beery notion of it, and, proceeding with the job, got into the most hopeless bewilderment. An old hand, who had looked in on the work, reported, over his drink at the nearest public-house, that the job was a farce, and that Abraham Bennett was only throwing away his employer's money. Next Saturday, after his work, young Jem Brindley disappeared. He was just of age, and it was supposed he had taken it into his head to leave his master and begin life on his own account. But on Monday morning, there he was at his work, with his coat off, and the whole duty to be done clear in his head. He had taken on Saturday night a twenty-five mile walk to the pattern mill, near Manchester. On Sunday morning he had asked leave of its proprietor to go in and examine it. He had spent {240} some hours on Sunday in the study of its machinery, and then had walked the twenty-five miles back, to resume his work and save his master from a failure that would have been disastrous to his credit. The conduct of the work was left to him; he undid what was amiss, and proceeded with the rest so accurately, that the contract was completed within the appointed time, to the complete satisfaction of all persons concerned. After that piece of good service, Bennett left to James Brindley the chief care over his business. When Bennett died, Brindley carried on to completion all work then in hand, and wound up the accounts for the benefit of his old master's family. That done, he set up in business on his own account at the town of Leek, in Staffordshire; he was then twenty-six years old, having served seven years as an apprentice and two years as journeyman.

Leek was then but a small market-town, with a few grist-mills, and Brindley had no capital; but he made himself known beyond Leek as a reliable man, whose work was good and durable, who had invention at the service of his employers, and who always finished a job within the stipulated time. He did not confine himself to mill-work, but was ready to undertake all sorts of machinery connected with the draining of mines, the pumping of water, the smelting of iron and copper, for which a demand was then rising, and became honorably known to his neighbors as "the Schemer." At first he had no journeyman or apprentice, and he cut the tree for his own timber. While working as an apprentice, he had taught himself to write in a clumsy, half-illegible way—he never learnt to spell—and when he had been thirteen years in business, he would still charge an employer his day's work at two shillings for cutting a big tree, for a mill-shaft or for other use. When he was called to exercise his skill at a distance upon some machinery, he added a charge of sixpence a day for extra expenses.

When the brothers John and Thomas Wedgwood, potters in a small way at the outset of their famous career, desired to increase the supply of flint-powder, they called "the Schemer" to their aid, and the success of the flint-mill Brindley then erected brought him business in the potteries from that time forward.

About this time, also, a Manchester man was being married to a young lady of mark in the potteries, and, during the wedding festivities, conversation once turned on the cleverness of the young millwright of Leek. The Manchester man wondered whether he was clever enough to get the water out of some hopelessly drowned coal mines of his, and thought he should like to see him. Brindley was sent for, told the case and its hitherto insuperable difficulties, went into a brown study, then suddenly brightened up, and told in what way he thought that, without great expense, the difficulty might be conquered. The gist of his plan was to use the fall of the river Irwell, that formed one boundary of the estate, and pump the water from the pits by means of the greater power of the water in the river. His suggestion was thought good, and, being set to work upon this job, he drove a tunnel through six hundred yards of solid rock, and by the tunnel brought the river down upon the breast of an immense water-wheel, fixed in a chamber thirty feet below the surface of the ground; the water, when it had turned the wheel, was carried on into the lower level of the Irwell. That wheel, with its pumps, working night and day, soon cleared the drowned outworkings of the mine; and for the invention and direction of this valuable engineering work, he seems only to have charged his workman's wages of two shillings a day.

An engineer from London had been brought down to superintend the building of a new silk-mill at {241} Congleton, and Brindley was employed under him to make the water-wheel and do the common work of his trade. The engineer from London got his work into a mess, and at last was obliged to confess his inability to carry out his plan. "The Schemer" Brindley was applied to by the perplexed proprietor. Could he put the confusion straight? James Brindley asked to see the plans; but the great engineer refused to show them to a common millwright. "Well, then," said Brindley to the proprietor of the mill, "tell me exactly what you want the machinery to do, and I will try to contrive what will do it. But you must leave me free to work in my own way." He was told the results desired, and not only achieved them, but achieved much more, adding new contrivances, which afterward proved of the greatest value.

After this achievement, Brindley was employed by the now prospering potters to build flint-mills of more power upon a new plan of his own. One of the largest was that built for Mr. Baddely, of which work there is record in such trade entries of his as "March 15, 1757. With Mr. Baddely to Matherso about a now" (new) "flint-mill upon a windey day 1 day 3s. 6d. March 19 draing a plann 1 day 2s. 6d. March 23 draing a plann and to sat out the wheelrace 1 day 4s."

At this time Brindley is also exercising his wit on an attempt at an improved steam-engine; but though his ideas are good, it is hard to bring them into continuously good working order, and after the close of entries about it in his memorandum-book, when it seems to have broken down for a second time, he underlines the item "to Run about a Drinking Is. 6d." But he confined his despair to the loss of a day and the expenditure of eighteen pence. Not long afterward he had developed a patent of his own, and erected, in 1763, for the Walker Colliery at Newcastle, a steam-engine wholly of iron, which was pronounced the most "complete and noble piece of iron-work" that had up to that time been produced. But the perfecting of the steam-engine was then safe in the hands of Watt, and Brindley had already turned into his own path as the author of our English canal system.

The young Duke of Bridgewater, vexed in love by the frailty of fair woman, had abjured interest in their sex, had gone down to his estate of Worsley, on the borders of Chat Moss, and, to give himself something more wholesome to think about than the sisters Gunning and their fortunes, conferred with John Gilbert, his land steward, as to the possibility of cutting a canal by which the coals found upon his Worsley estate might be readily taken to market at Manchester. Manchester then was a rising town, of which the manufacturers were yet unaided by the steam-engine, and there was no coal smoke but that which arose from household fires. The roads out of Manchester were so bad as to be actually closed in winter, and in summer the coal, sold at the pit mouth by the horse-load, was conveyed on horses' backs at an addition to its cost of nine or ten shillings a ton.

When the duke discussed with Gilbert old abandoned and new possible schemes of water conveyance for his Worsley coal, Gilbert advised the calling in of the ingenious James Brindley of Leek, "the Schemer." When the duke came into contact with Brindley, he at once put trust in him, and gave him the direction of the proposed work; whereupon he was requested to base his advice upon what he enters in his memorandum-book of jobs done, as an "ochilor," (ocular) "servey or a ricconitering."

Brindley examined the ground, and formed his own plan. He was against carrying the canal down into Irwell by a flight of locks, and so up again on the other side to the proposed level, but counselled carrying the canal by solid embankments and a stone aqueduct right over the river upon one {242} level throughout. The duke accepted his opinion, and had plans prepared for a new application to parliament, Brindley often staying with him at work and in consultation for weeks together, while still travelling to and fro in full employment upon mills, water-wheels, cranes, fire-engines, and other mechanical work. Small as his pay was, he lived frugally. He had by this time even saved a little money, and gained credit enough to be able, by borrowing from a friend at Leek, to pay between five and six hundred pounds for a fourth share of an estate at Turnhurst, in Staffordshire, supposed by him to be full of minerals.

The Duke of Bridgewater obtained his act in the year 1760, but the bold and original part of Brindley's scheme, which many ridiculed as madness, caused the duke much anxiety. In England there had never been so great an aqueduct, but the scheme was not only for the carrying of water in a water-tight trunk of earth over an embankment, but also for the carrying of ships on a bridge of water over water. Brindley had no misgivings. To allay the duke's fears, he suggested calling in and questioning another engineer, who surprised the man of genius by ending an adverse report thus: "I have often heard of castles an the air; but never before saw where any of them were to be erected."

The duke, however, with all his hesitation, had most faith in the head of James Brindley, bade him go on in his own way, and resolved to run the risk of failure. And so, on a bridge of three arches, the canal was carried over the Irwell by the Barton aqueduct, thirty-nine feet above the river. The water was confined within a puddled channel, to prevent leakage, and the work is at this day as sound as it was when first constructed. For the safe carrying of water along the top of an earthen embankment, Brindley had relied upon the retaining powers of clay puddle. It was by help also of clay puddle that he carried the weight of the embankment safe over the ooze of Trafford Moss.

With great ingenuity, also, Brindley provided for the crossing of his canal by streams intercepting its course, without breach of his rule that it is unsafe to let such waters freely mix with the canal stream. Thus, to provide for the free passage of the Medlock without causing a rush into the canal, an ingenious form of weir was contrived, over which its waters flowed into a lower level, and thence down a well several yards deep, leading to a subterranean passage by which the stream was passed into the Irwell, near at hand. Arthur Young, who saw Brindley's canal soon after it was opened, said that "the whole plan of these works shows a capacity and extent of mind which foresees difficulties, and invents remedies in anticipation of possible evils. The connection and dependence of the parts upon each other are happily imagined; and all are exerted in concert, to command by every means the wished-for success." At the Worsley end Brindley constructed a basin, into which coal was brought from different workings of the mine by a subterranean water channel. Brindley also invented cranes for the more ready loading of the boats, laid down within the mines a system of underground railways leading from the face of the coal where the miners worked, to the wells that he had made at different points in the tunnels for shooting the coal down into the boats waiting below. He drained and ventilated with a water-bellows the lower parts of the mine. He improved the barges, invented water-weights, raising dams, riddles to wash the coal for the forges. At the Manchester end Brindley made equally ingenious arrangements for the easy delivery of the coal at the top of Castle Hill. At every turn in the work his inventive genius was felt. When the want of lime for the masonry was a serious impediment, Brindley discovered how to make, of a useless, unadhesive lime-marl, by tempering it and casting it in {243} moulds before burning, an excellent lime, a contrivance that alone saved the duke several thousands of pounds cost. When the water was let in, and the works everywhere stood firm, people of fashion flocked to see Brindley's canal, as "perhaps the greatest artificial curiosity in the world:" and writers spoke in glowing terms of the surprise with which they saw several barges of great burden drawn by a single mule or horse along a "river hung in the air," over another river flowing beneath.

As for Manchester, with the price of coal reduced one half, it was ready to make the best use of the steam-engine when it was established as the motive-power in our factories.

Within two months of the day, seventeenth of July, 1761, when the first boat-load of coals travelled over the Barton viaduct, Brindley's notes testify that he was at Liverpool "recconitoring" and by the end of September he was levelling for a proposed extension of his canal from Manchester to Liverpool, by joining it with the Mersey, eight miles below Warrington Bridge, whence there is a natural tideway to Liverpool, about fifteen miles distant. At that time there was not even a coach communication over the bad roads between Manchester and Liverpool, the first stage-coach having been started six years later, when it required six, and sometimes eight horses to pull it the thirty miles along the ruts and through the sloughs. The coach started from Liverpool early in the morning, breakfasted at Prescot, dined at Warrington, and reached Manchester by supper-time. From Manchester to Liverpool it made the return journey next day. The Duke of Bridgewater's proposed canal was strongly opposed as an antagonist interest by the Mersey and Irwell Navigation Company. The canal promised to take freights at half the price charged by the Navigation Company. A son of the Earl of Derby took the part of the "Old Navigators," and as the Duke of Bridgewater was a Whig, Brindley had to enter in his note-book that "the Toores" (Tories) had "mad had" (made head) "agane ye Duk." But at last his entry was: "ad a grate Division of 127 fort Duk 98 nos for t e Duke 29 Me Jorete," and the Duke's cause prospered during the rest of the contest.

Brindley bought a new suit of clothes to grace his part as principal engineering witness for the canal, and having upset his mind for some days by going to see Garrick play Richard the Third, (wherefore he declared against all further indulgence in that sort of excitement), he went to the committee-room duly provided with a bit of chalk in his pocket, and made good the saying that originated from his clear way of showing what he meant, upon the floor of the committee-room, that "Brindley and chalk would go through the world." When asked to produce a drawing of a proposed bridge, he said he had none, but could immediately get a model. Whereupon he went out and bought a large cheese, which he brought into the committee-room and cut into two equal parts, saying, "Here is my model." The two halves of the cheese represented the two arches of his bridge, the rest of the work connected with them he built with paper, with books, or with whatever he found ready to hand. Once when he had repeatedly talked about "puddling," some of the members wished to know what puddling was. Brindley sent out for a lump of clay, hollowed it into a trough, poured water in, and showed that it leaked out. Then he worked up the clay with water, going through the process of puddling in miniature, again made a trough of the puddled clay, filled it with water, and showed that it was water-tight. "Thus it is," he said, "that I form a water-tight trunk to carry water over rivers and valleys, wherever they cross the path of the canal."

And so the battle was fought, and the canal works completed at a total {244} cost of two hundred and twenty thousand pounds, of which Brindley was content to take as his share a rate of pay below that of an ordinary mechanic at the present day. The canal yielded an income which eventually reached eighty thousand pounds a year; but three and sixpence a day, and for a greater part of the time half a crown a day, was the salary of the man of genius by whom it was planned and executed. Yet Brindley was then able to get a guinea a day for services to others, though from the Duke of Bridgewater he never took more than a guinea a week, and had not always that. The duke was investing all the money he could raise, and sometimes at his wit's end for means to go on with the work. Brindley gave his soul to the work for its own sake, and if he had a few pence to buy himself his dinner with—one day he enters only "ating and drinking 6d."—he could live, content with having added not a straw's weight of impediment to the great enterprise he was bent with all the force of his great genius upon achieving. It gave him the advantage, also, of being able, as was most convenient, to treat with the duke on equal terms. He was invited as a canal maker to Hesse by offers of any payment he chose to demand, but stuck to the duke, who is said even to have been in debt to him for travelling and other expenses, which he had left unpaid with the answer, "I am much more distressed for money than you; however, as soon as I can recover myself, your services shall not go unrewarded." After Brindley's sudden death his widow applied in vain for sums which she said were due to her late husband.

The Staffordshire Grand Trunk Canal, Brindley's other great work, started from the duke's canal, near Runcorn, passed through the salt-making districts of Cheshire and the Pottery district, to unite the Severn with the Mersey by one hundred and forty miles of water-way. This canal went through five tunnels, one of them, that at Harecastle, being nearly three thousand yards long, a feature in the scheme accounted by many to be as preposterous as they had called his former "castle in the air." The work was done; bringing with it traffic, population, and prosperity into many half-savage midland districts. It gave comfort and ample employment in the Pottery district, while trebling the numbers of those whom it converted, from a half-employed and ill-paid set of savages, into a thriving community.

Once, when Brindley was demonstrating to a committee of the House of Commons the superior reliableness and convenience of equable canals as compared with rivers, liable to every mischance of flood and drought, he was asked by a member, "What, then, he took to be the use of navigable rivers?" and replied, "To make canal navigations, to be sure!" From the Grand Trunk, other canals branched, and yet others were laid out by Brindley before he died. He found time when at the age of fifty to marry a girl of nineteen, and the house then falling vacant on the estate of Turnhurst, of which he had, for the sake of its minerals, bought a fourth share, and by that time had a colliery at work, he took his wife home as the mistress of that old, roomy dwelling. He was receiving better pay then as the engineer of the Grand Trunk Canal, and his new home was conveniently near to the workings of its great Harecastle Tunnel, into which he and his partners sent a short branch canal—of a mile and a half long—from their coal mine, which was only a few fields distant from his house.

Water, that made his greatness, was at last the death of Brindley. He got drenched one day while surveying a canal, went about in his wet clothes, and when he went to bed at the inn was put between damp sheets. This produced the illness of which he died, at the age of fifty-six. It was not the first time that he had taken to his bed. Scarcely able to read, and if he could have read, engaged on work so new that no book precedents could have {245} helped him, whenever Brindley had some difficulty to overcome that seemed for a time insuperable, he went to bed upon it, and is known to have stopped in bed two or three days, till he had quietly thought it all over, and worked his way to the solution. It is said that when he lay on his death-bed some eager canal undertakers urged to see him and seek from him the solution of a problem. They had met with a serious difficulty in the course of their canal, and must see Mr. Brindley and get his advice. They were admitted, and told him how at a certain place they had labored in vain to prevent their canal from leaking. "Then puddle it," murmured Brindley. "Sir, but we have puddled it." "Then"—and they were almost his last words in life—"puddle it again—and again." As he had wisely invested his savings in Grand Trunk shares, they and his share in the colliery enabled him to leave ample provision for his widow and two daughters.

As for the canal system that he established, it has not been made obsolete by its strong younger brother, the railway system. The duke's canal is as busy as ever. Not less than twenty million tons of traffic are at this date carried yearly upon the canals of England alone, and this quantity is steadily increasing.

We have taken the facts in this account of Brindley, from a delightful popular edition of that part of Mr. Smiles's Lives of the Engineers which tells of him and of the earlier water engineers. Of Mr. Smiles's Lives of George and Robert Stephenson there is a popular edition as a companion volume, and therein all may read, worthily told, the tale of the foundation and of the chief triumphs of that new form of engineering which dealt with water, not by the riverful, but by the bucketful, and made a few buckets of water strong as a river to sweep men and their goods and their cattle in a mighty torrent from one corner of the country to another.

From Chambers's Journal.

A LIE.

  A thistle grew in a sluggard's croft,
  Rough and rank with a thorny growth,
  With its spotted leaves, and its purple flowers
  (Blossoms of Sin, and bloom of Sloth);
  Slowly it ripened its baneful seeds,
  And away they went in swift gray showers.

  But every seed was cobweb winged,
  And they spread o'er a hundred miles of land.
  'Tis centuries now since they first took flight,
  In that careless, gay, and mischievous band,
  Yet still they are blooming and ripening fast,
  And spreading their evil by day and night.

{246}

From The Dublin Review.

CHRISTIAN ART.

The History of our Lord as exemplified in Works of Art; with that of the Types, St. John the Baptist and other persons of the Old and New Testament. Commenced by the late Mrs. JAMESON; continued and completed by Lady EASTLAKE. 2 vols. London: Longman. 1864.

The series of works on Christian Art brought out by the late Mrs. Jameson, and which earned for her so high a reputation as an art critic, was conceived upon a plan of progressive interest and importance. From "Sacred and Legendary Art," published in 1848, she passed to the special legends connected with Monastic Orders, and in 1852 gave to the public her most charming volume, entitled "Legends of the Madonna." The series was to have closed with the subject of the volume now before us, and some progress had been made by Mrs. Jameson in collecting notes on various pictures, when, in the spring of 1860, death cut her labors short. The work, however, has passed into hands well able to complete it worthily. We may miss some of the freshness and genuine simplicity with which Mrs. Jameson was wont to transfer to paper rare impression made on her mind and heart; but Lady Eastlake, while bringing to her task the essential qualification of earnestness and exhibiting considerable grace and force of style, is possessed of a far wider and more critical acquaintance with the history of art than her amiable predecessor either had or pretended to have. It is pleasant to find in these pages, as in those which preceded them, the evidence of a desire to avoid controversial matter; and that, without compromise of personal conviction, care has been generally taken not to wound the feelings of those who differ from the writer in religious belief. The primary object of the work is aesthetic and artistic, not religious; and it is seldom that the laws of good taste are transgressed in its pages by gratuitous attacks upon the tenets of the great body of artists who are the immediate subject of criticism. Indeed, considering that these volumes are the production of a Protestant, we think that less of Protestant animus could hardly be shown, at all consistently with honesty of purpose and frankness of speech. That no traces of the Protestant spirit should appear, would be next to an impossibility; and the affectation of Catholic feeling, where it did not exist, would be offensive from its very unreality. So much self-control in traversing a vast extent of delicate and dangerous ground deserves all the more hearty acknowledgment, as it must have been peculiarly difficult to a person of Lady Eastlake's ardent temperament and evident strength of conviction. If, therefore, in the course of our remarks, we feel bound to point out the evil influence which Lady Eastlake's religious views seem to us to have exercised on her critical appreciations, it will be understood that theories, not persons, are the object of our animadversions. It is at all times an ungrateful task to expose the weak points of an author; it would be especially ungenerous to be hard upon the shortcomings of one who has done such good service to the cause of truth, in proving, however unconsciously, by the mere exercise of persistent candor, the identity of Christian and Catholic art. Catholics, indeed, do not ordinarily stand in need of such proof. If they know anything of art, the fact of this identity must be with them an early discovery; but it is gratifying, especially in a time and country in which scant justice on such matters is too often dealt out to us, to be able to adduce a {247} testimony the more valuable because given in despite of an adverse bias. It is quite possible, indeed, that the writer has not perceived the full import of her work; but no one, we think, can study her examples or weigh the force of her criticism with out coming to the true conclusion upon this subject.

But, before establishing the correctness of this assertion, we must draw attention to one point upon which we are at issue with Lady Eastlake: a point, moreover, of no small importance, as it vitally affects the value of a large part of her criticisms. A question arises at the outset, what standard or test of Christian art is to be set up; and Lady Eastlake makes an excellent start in the investigation. There is, perhaps, no principle so steadily kept in view throughout the work, or so often and earnestly insisted on, as this: that genuine Christian art and true Christian doctrine are intimately and essentially connected. Art is bound to depict only the truth in fact or doctrine (vol. ii., p. 266, note). Departure from sound theology involves heresy in art. Now, no principle can be more true than this, or of greater importance toward forming a correct judgment upon works professing to belong to Christian art. Beauty and truth are objectively identical, for beauty is only truth lighted up and harmonized by the reason; and to supernatural beauty, which Christian art essentially aims at expressing, supernatural truth must necessarily correspond. For here we have nothing to do with mere material beauty, "the glories of color, the feats of anatomical skill, the charms of chiaroscuro, the revels of free handling." Admirable as these are in themselves, and by no means, theoretically at least, injurious to Christian art, they belong properly to art as art, and are more or less separable from art as Christian. Christian art is never perfect as art, unless material beauty enters into the composition; but as Christianity is above art, and the soul superior to the body, so material beauty must never forget its place, never strive to obtain the mastery, or constitute itself the chief aim of the artist, upon pain of total destruction of the Christian element. The soul of Christian art is in the idea—the shadowing out by symbol or representation, under material forms and conditions, of immaterial, supernatural, even uncreated beauty, the beauty of heavenly virtue, or heavenly mystery or divinity itself. But how are these objects, in all their harmony, proportion, and splendor, to be realized—how is supernatural beauty to be conceived—except by a soul gifted with supernatural perceptions? Faith, at least, is indispensably requisite to the truthfulness of any artistic work intended to represent the supernatural. Without faith, distortion and caricature are inevitable. With faith—the foundation of all knowledge of the supernatural in this life—much, very much, may be accomplished. But it is when faith, enlivened and perfected by supernatural love, exercises itself in contemplation, that the spiritual sight becomes keen, and the soul, from having simply a just appreciation, passes to a vision of exquisite beauty, sublimity, and tenderness, which a higher perception of divine mysteries has laid open to its gaze. The hand may falter, and be faithless to the mental conception, so as to produce imperfect execution and inadequate artistic result. Faith and love do not make a man an artist. But, amidst deformity or poverty of art in the material element, if there is any, however slight, artistic power employed, the outward defects will be qualified, and almost transformed, to the eye of an appreciating spectator, through the inner power which speaks from the painter's soul to his own: just as we learn to overlook, or even to admire, plain features, and anything short of positive ugliness of outline, in those whose mental greatness and moral beauty we have learned to venerate and to love. On the other hand, any amount of material perfection in contour and color is insipid as a doll, {248} a mere mask of nothingness, incapable of arresting attention or captivating the heart, unless within there be a soul of beauty—that inward excellence which subordinates to itself, while it gives life and meaning to, the outward form. On the side of the object, truth; on the part of the spectator, faith and love—these are the palmary conditions of Christian art and its appreciation. For it must ever be remembered that supernatural truth lies beyond the ken of any but souls elevated by faith; and, what is of equal importance, that faith can have no other object than the truth. Its object is infallible truth, or it is not faith. No wonder, then, that, when we see a prodigality of manual skill and grace of form, and even moral beauty of the natural order, devoid of the inspiration of supernatural faith and love, we are forced to exclaim with St. Gregory, as he gazed on the fair Saxon youths, Heit proh dolor! quod tam lucidi vultus homines tenebrarum auctor possideret, tantaque gratia frontis conspicui mentem ab aeterna gratia vacuam gestarent. [Footnote 51] Alas! that so much physical beauty should embody nothing but a pagan idea! It were as unreasonable to look for Christian art as the product of an heretical imagination, as to demand Christian eloquence or Christian poetry from an heretical preacher or a free-thinking poet. The vision is wanting, the appreciation is not there—how, then, is the expression possible?

[Footnote 51: "Alas! what pain it is to think that men of such bright countenance should be the possession of the Prince of Darkness; and that though conspicuous for surprising grace of feature, they should bear a soul within untenanted by everlasting grace."]

Nor is this a mere abstract theory, erected on a priori principles. It would be easy to verify our position by a large induction from the history of art. Is there a picture whose mute eloquence fills the soul with reverential awe, or holy joy, or supernatural calm, or deep, deep sympathy with the sufferings of our Lord, or the sorrows of his Immaculate Mother, we may be sure the painter was some humble soul, ascetical and pious, who, like Juan de Joanes, or Zurbaran, spent his days in lifelong seclusion, given up to the grave and holy thoughts which their pictures utter to us; or that other Spaniard, Luis de Vargas, famed alike for his austerity and amiable Christian gaiety; or a Sassoferrato, or a Van Eyck, seeking in, holy communion the peace of soul which can alone reflect the calmness of sanctity, or the bliss of celestial scenes; or the holy friar, John of Fiesoli, known to all as the Angelic whose heroic humility and Christian simplicity, learned in a life of prayer and contemplation, invest his pictures with an unearthly charm. These, and many another pious painter, known or unknown by name to men, looked on their vocation as a holy trust, and sought to keep themselves unspotted from the world. Theirs was the practical maxim so dear to the blessed Angelico, that "those who work for Christ must dwell in Christ." On the other hand, does a picture, albeit Christian in subject and in name, offend us by false sentiment, or cold conventionalism, or sensuality, or affectation, or strain after theatrical effect, or any of the hundred forms which degraded art exhibits when it has wandered from the Christian type—we know that we are looking on the handiwork of some schismatic Greek, or modern Protestant; or that, if the painter be a Catholic, he lived in the days or wrought under the influence of the Renaissance, when paganism made its deadly inroads upon art, substituting the spirit of voluptuousness for the sweet and austere graces that spring of divine charity; or under the blighting influence of Jansenism, which killed alike that queenly virtue and her sister humility by false asceticism and pharisaic rigor. We might even trust the decision as to the truthfulness of our view to an inspection of the examples with which Lady Eastlake has so abundantly illustrated her volumes. Indeed, hitherto her principle and ours are one.

{249}

But unfortunately, though the major premise of the art-syllogism is granted on both sides, Lady Eastlake adopts a minor, from which we utterly dissent. It is implied in one and all of the following statements, and is more or less interwoven with the whole staple of her work. She tells us that "the materials for this history in art are only properly derivable from Scripture, and therefore referable back to the same source for verification" (vol. i., p. 3). And again: "It may be at once laid down as a principle, that the interests of art and the integrity of Scripture [by integrity is meant literal adherence to the text of Scripture] are indissolubly united. Where superstition mingles, the quality of Christian art suffers; where doubt enters, Christian art has nothing to do. It may even be averred that, if a person could be imagined, deeply imbued with aesthetic instincts and knowledge, and utterly ignorant of Scripture, he would yet intuitively prefer, as art, all those conceptions of our Lord's history which adhere to the simple text. … All preference for the simple narrative of Scripture he would arrive at through art—all condemnation of the embroideries of legend through the same channel" (vol. i., p. 6). And again: "The simplicity of art and of the Gospel stand or fall together. The literal narrative of the agony in the garden lost sight of, all became confusion and error" (vol. ii., p. 30).

Now, whatever obscurity and confusion these passages contain—and they do contain a great deal—one thing is unmistakably clear, that the orthodoxy of the ultra-Protestant maxim, "The Bible and the Bible only," is a fixed principle with Lady Eastlake. And the consequence is, that, whenever she looks at a religious picture, she refers to the Gospel narrative for its verification. If it does not stand this test, it is nowhere in her esteem. What is not in Scripture is legendary and unartistic, because necessarily at variance with scriptural truth. Thus whole provinces of art in connection with our Lord are banished from her pages. Surely such a canon of taste is not only narrow, but arbitrary: narrow, as excluding whatever comes down to us hallowed by tradition, considered apart from or beyond the limits of scriptural statement; arbitrary, because it leaves art at the mercy of the sects, with their manifold dissensions as to the extent of Scripture, or its true interpretation. Thus, Lady Eastlake, being herself no believer in the doctrine of the real presence, does not recognize its enunciation in the sacred pages, and loses, apparently, all interest in the great pictures which symbolize or relate to the most holy sacrament of the altar. So, too, most of the special devotions to the person of our Lord, which have sprung out of the living faith of the church, and have furnished subjects for pictures incontestably of a high order, are totally omitted from her classification of devotional compositions. We can hardly imagine it possible for her to adhere consistently to her rule in other departments of Christian art. The Immaculate Conception, for instance, the Assumption, the Coronation of our Lady, the marriage of St. Catherine, the stigmata of St. Francis, the vision of St. Dominic, the miracles of the saints—subjects, many of which have inspired some of the noblest productions of her favorite Fra Angelico, or of Raphael, or Murillo, or Velasquez—undoubtedly do violence to her criteria of artistic merit, though we cannot believe that she would contest their universally acknowledged claim to the highest honors in Christian art. Indeed, fidelity to this narrow Protestant maxim would have rendered these two volumes an impossibility. Strange, then, that it should not have occurred to the mind of the authoress that by far the larger part, and, on her own showing, the most glorious part, of the fraternity of Christian artists have been men full to overflowing of the spirit of a church which has never adopted her standard of orthodoxy.

{250}

The Catholic Church is at once the parent, historically, of all Christian art and the upholder of that grand principle of tradition which gives to art, no less than to doctrine, a range far wider and more ample than the mere letter of the biblical records. Of course, contradiction of Scripture, or "alterations of the text, which, however slight, affect the revealed character of our Lord," must give offence to every judicious critic; but it is tradition and the voice of the living Church—together with that instinctive sense of the faithful which, so long as they live in submission to their divinely-appointed teachers, is so marvellously true and unerring—that must be the criteria of orthodoxy, and determine when the artist's conceptions or mode of treatment are contrary to, or in accordance with, the spirit of the sacred text.

Lady Eastlake does not like the notion of our Lord's falling under the cross. It is not in the Bible, and she pronounces it to be counter to the spirit and purport of the Gospel narrative. She grows positively angry with some painters for having represented an angel holding the chalice, surmounted by a cross or host, before the eyes of our blessed Redeemer in his agony. She has her own standard of feeling, abstract and arbitrary, to which she refers the decision of such points. But where is the guarantee for the correctness of that standard, or the security for its general acceptance? The Bible does not tell us what its own spirit and purport are, and outside the Bible Lady Eastlake, at least, cannot point to any infallible authority. She is, therefore, imposing her own judgment, unsupported by any assigned reason, upon the world, as a rule to be followed. So, too, St. Veronica to her is always de trop, morally and pictorially, in the Way of the Cross; and scholastic interpretations, seemingly because they are scholastic, of the types of the Old Testament, are invariably pronounced by her to be strained, unreal, and superstitious. So effectually does Protestantism interfere with the capacity of a critic to appreciate the higher developments and fuller expression of Christian art.

Not that a Protestant or a free-thinker can have no sense at all of the supernaturally beautiful. If they are trained to a high degree of moral and intellectual cultivation in the natural order, and in proportion to the height of their attainments in that order, they will not fail to be affected by beauty of a superior order. For there is no contradiction between the truth of nature and the truth which is above nature. The Protestant, indeed, as sincerely holding large fragments of Christian truth, will necessarily have much sympathy with many exhibitions of supernatural beauty. But he lacks the clue to it as a whole; and if he can often admire, rarely, if ever, can he create. Both Protestant and unbeliever must therefore labor under much vagueness and uncertainty of judgment, inasmuch as they can have no fixity of principle. Often they will not know what they want; they will praise in one page what they condemn in the next; or, when moved, will be at a loss to account for their emotion. They will exhibit phenomena not unlike those so often presented in this country by unbelievers, who, entering our churches, are one while overawed by a presence they cannot define, and which bewilders their intellect, whilst it captivates their imagination; and another while, as unaccountably, are moved to disgust and derision by what to them is an insoluble riddle, a perplexity, and an annoyance. To such critics some phases of the supernatural will never be welcome. The tortures of the martyrs, the self-inflicted macerations of ascetics, the sublime self-abandonment of heroic charity—whatever, in a word, embodies and brings home the grand, sacred, but, to the natural man, repugnant idea of the cross, will always be offensive, and produce a sense of irritation, such as even Lady Eastlake, with all her {251} self-mastery and good taste, cannot wholly suppress or conceal. So true is it in the sphere of Christian art, as in that of Christian doctrine and devotion, Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. Casual excitement, transient enthusiasm, unmeaning admiration, are at best the pitiful substitutes for an intelligent and abiding appreciation of excellence, in those who are not possessed of supernatural ideas in common with the subjects and authors of the works of genuine Christian art.

It would be unfair, however, not to mention that Lady Eastlake admits many important modifications of this rigid principle of adherence to the letter of Scripture. The following secondary canons go far to soften down the asperity of her Protestantism. They shall be stated in her own words:

"On the other hand, additions to Scripture given in positive images, if neither prejudicial to art nor inconsistent with our Lord's character, are not in themselves necessarily objectionable; but will, according to their merits, be looked upon with indulgence or admiration. The pictures, for instance, representing the disrobing of our Lord—a fact not told in Scripture, yet which must have happened—will be regarded with pathetic interest. The same will be felt of Paul Delaroche's exquisite little picture, where St. John is leading the Virgin home; for such works legitimately refresh and carry on the narrative in a scriptural spirit. Nay, episodes which are more purely invention—such as the ancient tradition of the Mother of Christ wrapping the cloth round her son, previous to his crucifixion; or, again, the picture by Paul Delaroche, of the agony of her and of the disciples, represented as gathered together in a room while Christ passes with his cross—even such imaginary episodes will silence the most arrant Protestant criticism, by their overpowering appeal to the feelings; since in neither case is the great duty of art to itself or to its divine object tampered with.

"The same holds good where symbolical forms, as in Christian art of classic descent, are given, which embody the idea rather than the fact. For instance, where the Jordan is represented as a river god, with his urn under his arm, at the baptism of our Lord; or when, later, the same event is accompanied by the presence of angels, who hold the Saviour's garments. Such paraphrases and poetical imaginings in no way affect the truth of the facts they set forth, but rather, to mortal fancy, swell their pomp and dignity.

"Still less need the lover of art and adorer of Christ care about inconsistencies in minor matters. As, for example, that the entombment takes place in a renaissance monument, in the centre of a beautiful Italian landscape, and not in a cave in a rock in the arid scenery of Judea. On the contrary, it is right that art should exercise the utmost possible freedom in such circumstances, which are the signs and handwriting of different schools and times, and enrich a picture with sources of interest to the historian and the archaeologist. It is the moral expression which touches the heart and adorns the tale, not the architecture or costume; and whether our Lord be in the garb of a Roman citizen or of a German burgher (though his dress is usually conventional in color and form), it matters not, if he be but God in all."

The arbitrariness of the principles set forth in the earlier portion of this passage, and the quiet assumption that all ancient traditions are pure inventions, may well be excused by the reader for the sake of the inconsistency which saves from condemnation not a few glorious pictures, which could never otherwise have been made to square with the rule of literal adherence to the Gospel narrative.

Another principle essential to the right appreciation of art is admirably stated by Lady Eastlake:

"All will agree that the duty of the Christian artist is to give not only the {252} temporary fact, but the permanent truth. Yet this entails a discrepancy to which something must be sacrificed. For, in the scenes from our Lord's life, fact and truth are frequently at variance. That the Magdalen took our Lord for a gardener, was the fact; that he was Christ, is the truth. That the Roman soldiers believed him to be a criminal, and therefore mocked and buffeted him without scruple, is the fact; that we know him through all these scenes to be the Christ, is the truth. Nay, the very cruciform nimbus that encircles Christ's head is an assertion of this principle. As visible to us, it is true; as visible even to his disciples, it is false. There are, however, educated people so little versed in the conditions of art, as to object even to the nimbus, as a departure from fact, and, therefore, an offence to truth; preferring, they say, to see our Lord represented as he walked upon earth. But this is a fallacy in more than one sense. Our Lord, as he walked upon earth, was not known to be the Messiah. To give him as he was seen by men who knew him not, would be to give him not as the Christ. It may be urged that the cruciform nimbus is a mere arbitrary sign, nothing in itself more than a combination of lines. This is true; but there must be something arbitrary in all human imaginings (we should prefer to say symbolizings) of the supernatural. Art, for ages, assumed this sign as that of the Godhead of Christ, and the world for ages granted it. It served various purposes; it hedged the rudest representations of Christ round with a divinity, which kept them distinct from all others. It pointed him out to the most ignorant spectator, and it identified the sacred head, even at a distance."

This principle may, indeed, be legitimately extended much further. The purpose of Christian art is instruction, either in morals or in dogma, or in both. It is not, therefore, a sin in art to sacrifice upon occasion some portion of historical truth, in subservience to this end. Nor in fact, in Catholic ages, was there danger of the people being led into error on the fundamental facts of religion. The Gospel narrative was too familiar to them for that. They seem, as is well remarked by Father Cahier, to have had hearts more elevated than ours, and more attuned by meditation and habitual catholicity of spirit to mystery, and its sublimer lessons; and therefore, whenever we find in early paintings what seems to us anomalous in an historic point of view, we may conclude with safety that there was a dogmatic intention.

There are, however, limits to liberties of this kind, which may not be transgressed without incurring censure. Overbold speculation has ere now betrayed even orthodox theologians into accidental error. And a Catholic artist may depict, as a Catholic schoolman may enunciate, views which deserve to be stigmatized as rash, offensive, erroneous, scandalous, or even, in themselves, heretical. There have been occasions in which the Church has felt herself bound to interfere with wanderings of the artistic imagination, as injurious, morally or doctrinally, to the faithful committed to her charge. Nor have theologians failed to protest from time to time against similar abuses. Bellarmine frowned upon the muse in Christian art. Savonarola, in his best days, made open war upon the pagan corruptions which in his time had begun to abound in Florentine paintings. Father Canisius denounces those painters as inexcusable who, in the face of Scripture, represent our Lady as swooning at the foot of the cross; and Father de Ligny reprobates, on the same grounds, the introduction of St. Joseph into pictures of the meeting between the Blessed Virgin and St. Elizabeth. For—whatever we may think as to his having accompanied our Lady on the journey—had he been present at the interview, he would have been enlightened upon the mystery, his ignorance of which afterward threw him into such perplexity.

{253}

As to the order of the work, Lady Eastlake gives ample explanation in the preface:

"In the short programme left by Mrs. Jameson, the ideal and devotional subjects, such as the Good Shepherd, the Lamb, the Second Person of the Trinity, were placed first; the scriptural history of our Lord's life on earth next; and, lastly, the types from the Old Testament. There is reason, however, to believe, from the evidence of what she had already written, that she would have departed from this arrangement. After much deliberation, I have ventured to do so, and to place the subjects chronologically. The work commences, therefore, with that which heads most systems of Christian art—The Fall of Lucifer and Creation of the World—followed by the types and prophets of the Old Testament. Next comes the history of the Innocents and of John the Baptist, written by her own hand, and leading to the Life and Passion of our Lord. The abstract and devotional subjects, as growing out of these materials, then follow, and the work terminates with the Last Judgment."

Mrs. Jameson's own share in the work is confined mainly to some of the types, the histories specified above, and familiar scenes in the earlier portions of the Gospel narrative, including a few of the miracles and parables of our Lord. The notes are fragmentary, but written in her usual interesting and lively style. How refreshing, for instance, and characteristic are the following comments upon some pictures representing the dismissal of Hagar and Ishmael at the imperious request of Sarah:

"I believe the most celebrated example is the picture by Guercino, in the Brera; but I do not think it deserves its celebrity—the pathetic is there alloyed with vulgarity of character. I remember that, when I first saw this picture, I could only think of the praises lavished on it by Byron and others, as the finest expression of deep, natural pathos to be found in the whole range of art. I fancied, as many do, that I could see in it the beauties so poetically described. Some years later, when I saw it again, with a more cultivated eye and taste, my disappointment was great. In fact, Abraham is much more like an unfeeling old beggar than a majestic patriarch, resigned to the divine will, yet struck to the heart by the cruel necessity under which he was acting. Hagar cries like a housemaid turned off without wages or warning, and Ishmael is merely a blubbering boy. For expression, the picture by Govaert Hiricke (Berlin Gallery, 815) seems to me much superior; the look of appealing anguish in the face of Hagar as she turns to Abraham, and points to her weeping boy, reaches to the tragic in point of conception, but Ishmael, if very natural, with his fist in his eye, is also rather vulgar. Rembrandt's composition is quite dramatic, and, in his manner, as fine as possible. Hagar, lingering on the step of the dwelling whence she is rejected, weeps reproachfully; Ishmael, in a rich Oriental costume, steps on before, with the boyish courage of one destined to become an archer and a hunter in the wilderness, and the father of a great and even yet unconquered nation; in the background Sarah is seen looking out of the window at her departing rival, with exultation in her face."

Those who are acquainted with Italian paintings of the 15th century must have remarked the frequency with which the great masters of the Tuscan school in that era treat the subject of "The Massacre of the Innocents." Though our Lord is not an actor in the scene, it is intimately connected with his history. The Innocents were the first martyrs in his cause, and from the earliest times attracted the veneration and tender affection of Christians. Painful as the subject is, it affords scope for the exercise of the highest tragic power. The mere fact that Herod's sword swept the nurseries of Bethlehem, though necessarily entering into the picture, becomes subordinate to the {254} sorrow which then started into life in so many mothers' hearts. That is the point made most prominent in the Gospel by the citation of the pathetic words of Jeremias in the prophecy: "In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentations, and weeping, and great mourning. Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not." The mind is carried back to the time when the very sound of those tottering feet sufficed to waken the pulses of love in the mother's bosom; when those confiding hands were ever locked in hers. How dear had been the pretty prattle of those little ones, the first stammerings of the tongue, the silvery laughter, even the cries of passion or of pain! Hitherto all had bsen sunshine, or once and again the shadow of some light cloud had drifted across the face of heaven; but now agony comes on the wings of the whirlwind—a pitiless storm that leaves nothing but blank, broken hearts behind. Here we see a bereaved mother, wildly passionate, tossing her frantic arms heavenward; we almost fancy we hear her rave and moan. There we mark the wandering footsteps, no longer obedient to the helm of reason. Another, with clasped hands, kneels, gazing on the purple stains which dye the ivory limbs of her slaughtered darling. Or the eye rests with awful compassion on a standing figure, another speechless Niobe, pale and unconscious as a statue, still pressing her dead infant to her breast. Upon one or two upturned faces a light has broken; the grand thought seems just to have flashed upon their souls —that the purple stains are the dye of martyrdom, destined by a loving Providence to adorn a robe of unfading glory. And so sorrow passes almost into joy, and the imagination reaches forward to another sorrowful Mother —Mother of sorrows—who is to sit in desolation, yet mastering her deep woe, and, with a sacrificing love that transcends resignation, entering into and uniting herself with the mysterious designs of God. In spite, however, of the interest of the subject, for ages it was rarely depicted. Mrs. Jameson gives the following account of its sudden rise into general favor:

"All at once, however, in the latter half of the 15th century—that is, after 1450—we find the subject of the Holy Innocents assuming an extraordinary degree of popularity and importance. Then, for the first time, we find chapels dedicated to them, and groups of martyred children in altar-pieces round the throne of Christ or the Virgin. From this period we have innumerable examples of the terrible scene of the massacre at Bethlehem, treated as a separate subject in pictures and prints, while the best artists vied with each other in varying and elaborating the details of circumstantial cruelty and frantic despair.

"For a long time, I could not comprehend how this came about, nor how it happened that through all Italy, especially in the Tuscan schools, a subject so ghastly and so painful should have assumed this sort of prominence. The cause, as it gradually revealed itself, rendered every picture more and more interesting; connecting them with each other, and showing how intimately the history of art is mixed up with the life of a people.

"There had existed at Florence, from the 13th century, a hospital for foundlings, the first institution of the kind in Europe. It was attached to the Benedictine monastery of San Gallo, near one of the gates of the city still bearing the name. In the 15th century, when the population and extent of the city had greatly increased, it was found that this hospital was too small, and the funds of the monastery quite inadequate to the purpose. Then Lionardo Buruni, of Arezzo, who was twice chancellor of Florence—the same Lionardo who gave to Ghiberti the subjects of his famous gates—filled with compassion for the orphans and neglected children, addressed the senate on the subject, and made such an affecting appeal in their behalf, that not the senate only, but the whole people of {255} Florence, responded with enthusiasm, frequently interrupting him with cries of 'Viva Messer Lionardo d'Arezzo!' 'And,' adds the historian, 'never was a question of importance carried with such [more] quickness and unanimity' (mai con maggior celerità e pienezza de' voti fu vinto partito di cosa grave come questa). Large sums were voted, offerings flowed in, a superb hospital was founded, and Brunelleschi was appointed architect. When finished, which was not till 1444, it was solemnly dedicated to the 'Holy Innocents.' The first child consigned to the new institution was a poor little female infant, on whose breast was pinned the name 'Agata,' in remembrance of which an altar in the chapel was dedicated to St. Agatha. We have proof that the foundation, progress, and consecration of this refuge for destitute children excited the greatest interest and sympathy, not only in Florence, but in the neighboring states, and that it was imitated in Pisa, Arezzo, and Siena. The union of the two hospitals of San Gallo and the 'Innocenti' took place in 1463. Churches and chapels were appended to the hospitals, and, as a matter of course, the painters and sculptors were called upon to decorate them. Such are the circumstances which explain, as I think, the popularity of the story of the Innocents in the 15th century, and the manner in which it occupied the minds of the great cotemporary artists of the Tuscan school, and others after them."

We cannot pretend to decide upon the truth of this supposed connection between the establishment of an institution to minister to the wants of the forsaken and the development of a special branch of Christian art. Whether true or not, this much is certain, that it is in keeping with a multitude of instances which go to prove how favorable the practice of Catholic charity is to the progress of the arts. Love ever pours itself around in streams of radiance, lighting up whole regions which lie beyond its immediate object. It copies the creative liberality of God, who, in providing us with what is necessary for subsistence, surrounds us at the same time with a thousand superfluous manifestations of beauty.

But it is time to pass on to the second volume of this history, which we owe almost entirely to the pen of Lady Eastlake. It is mainly occupied with the Passion of our Lord; and certainly the diligent attention paid by the authoress to this subject, and the judgment displayed in the arrangement of the narrative and the selection of examples, cannot be too highly commended. The style is generally clear, simple, and earnest. Always dignified, it sometimes rises to eloquence, as in the description of Rembrandt's etching of the "Ecce Homo," and in the following criticism of Leonardo da Vinci's celebrated "Last Supper." After a clever disquisition on the difficulties of the subject, and the conditions essential to its effective treatment, she thus proceeds:

"We need not say who did fulfil these conditions, nor whose Last Supper it is—all ruined and defaced as it may be—which alone arouses the heart of the spectator as effectually as that incomparable shadow in the centre has roused the feelings of the dim forms on each side of him. Leonardo da Vinci's Cena, to all who consider this grand subject through the medium of art, is the Last Supper—there is no other. Various representations exist, and by the highest names in art, but they do not touch the subtle spring. Compared with this chef d'oeuvre, their Last Suppers are mere exhibitions of well-drawn, draped, or colored figures, in studiously varied attitudes, which excite no emotion beyond the admiration due to these qualities. It is no wonder that Leonardo should have done little or nothing more after the execution, in his forty-sixth year, of that stupendous picture. It was not in man not to be fastidious, who had such an unapproachable standard of his own {256} powers perpetually standing in his path.

"Let us now consider this figure of Christ more closely.

"It is not sufficient to say that our Lord has just uttered this sentence, viz., 'Verily, verily, I say unto you, one of you shall betray me;' we must endeavor to define in what, in his own person, the visible proof of his having spoken consists. The painter has cast the eyes down—an action which generally detracts from the expression of a face. Here, however, no such loss is felt. The outward sight, it is true, is in abeyance, but the intensest sense of inward vision has taken its place. Our Lord is looking into himself—that self which knew 'all things,' and therefore needed not to lift his mortal lids to ascertain what effect his words had produced. The honest indignation of the apostles, the visible perturbation of the traitor, are each right in their place, and for the looker-on, but they are nothing to him. Thus here at once the highest power and refinement of art is shown, by the conversion of what in most hands would have been an insipidity into the means of expression best suited to the moment. The inclination of the head, and the expression of every feature, all contribute to the same intention. This is not the heaviness or even the repose of previous silence. On the contrary, the head has not yet risen, nor the muscles of the face subsided from the act of mournful speech. It is just that evanescent moment which all true painters yearn to catch, and which few but painters are wont to observe—when the tones have ceased, but the lips are not sealed—when, for an instant, the face repeats to the eye what the voice has said to the ear. No one who has studied that head can doubt that our Lord has just spoken: the sounds are not there, but they have not travelled far into space.

"Much, too, in the general speech of this head is owing to the skill with which, while conveying one particular idea, the painter has suggested no other. Beautiful as the face is, there is no other beauty but that which ministers to this end. We know not whether the head be handsome or picturesque, masculine or feminine in type—whether the eye be liquid, the cheek ruddy, the hair smooth, or the beard curling—as we know with such painful certainty in other representations. All we feel is, that the wave of one intense meaning has passed over the whole countenance, and left its impress alike on every part. Sorrow is the predominant expression—that sorrow which, as we have said in our Introduction, distinguishes the Christian's God, and which binds him, by a sympathy no fabled deity ever claimed, with the fallen and suffering race of Adam. His very words have given himself more pain than they have to his hearers, and a pain he cannot expend in protestations as they do, for this, as for every other act of his life, came he into the world.

"But we must not linger with the face alone; no hands ever did such intellectual service as those which lie spread on that table. They, too, have just fallen into that position—one so full of meaning to us, and so unconsciously assumed by him—and they will retain it no longer than the eye which is down and the head which is sunk. A special intention on the painter's part may be surmised in the opposite action of each hand: the palm of the one so graciously and bountifully open to all who are weary and heavy-laden; the other averted, yet not closed, as if deprecating its own symbolic office. Or we may consider their position as applicable to this particular scene only; the one hand saying, 'Of those that thou hast given me none is lost,' and the other, which lies near Judas, 'except the son of perdition.' Or, again, we may give a still narrower definition, and interpret this averted hand as directing the eye, in some sort, to the hand of Judas, which lies nearest it, 'Behold, the hand of him that {257} betrayeth me is with me on the table.' Not that the science of Christian iconography has been adopted here, for the welcoming and condemning functions of the respective hands have been reversed—in reference, probably, to Judas, who sits on our Lord's right. Or we may give up attributing symbolic intentions of any kind to the painter—a source of pleasure to the spectator more often justifiable than justified—and simply give him credit for having, by his own exquisite feeling alone, so placed the hands as to make them thus minister to a variety of suggestions. Either way, these grand and pathetic members stand as preeminent as the head in the pictorial history of our Lord, having seldom been equalled in beauty of form, and never in power of speech.

"Thus much has been said upon this figure of our Lord, because no other representation approaches so near the ideal of his person. Time, ignorance, and violence have done their worst upon it; but it may be doubted whether it ever suggested more overpowering feelings than in its present battered and defaced condition, scarcely now to be called a picture, but a fitter emblem of him who was 'despised and rejected of men.'"

Perhaps there is no other passage in the work so lovingly elaborated as this. Rivalling in energy, it surpasses in delicate discrimination even such brilliant criticisms as that of the eloquent Count de Montalembert on Fra Angelico's "Last Judgment"—a criticism which must have struck all readers of "Vandalism and Catholicism in Art" as worthy of the painting it describes. But the mention of the blessed friar of Fiesoli reminds us that he is a special favorite with Lady Eastlake also. The spell of his tender and reverent contemplations has told upon her with considerable power, to an extent, indeed, which makes her scarcely just toward Raphael himself. Several graphic pages are devoted to a description of Fra Angelico's "Last Judgment." His "Adoration of the Cross" also is dwelt upon with much affection, and in great detail. But our readers will be enabled, we hope, to form some idea of the feelings with which Lady Eastlake regards this most Christian of all artists, from the shorter extracts which we subjoin. After criticizing a fine fresco by Giotto of "Christ washing the Disciples' feet," she thus comments upon Fra Angelico's treatment of the same subject:

"Of all painters who expressed the condescension of the Lord by the impression it produced upon those to whom it was sent, Fra Angelico stands foremost in beauty of feeling. Not only the hands, but the feet of poor shocked Peter protest against his Master's condescension. It is a contest for humility between the two; but our Lord is more than humble, he is lovely and mighty too. He is on his knees; but his two outstretched hands, so lovingly offered, begging to be accepted, go beyond the mere incident, as art and poetry of this class always do, and link themselves typically with the whole gracious scheme of redemption. True Christian art, even if theology were silent, would, like the very stones, cry out and proclaim how every act of our Lord's course refers to one supreme idea."

And, once more, speaking of the same artist's picture of the "Descent from the Cross," she thus contrasts his conception with those of Luca Signorelli, Michael Angelo, Raphael, Razzi, Da Volterra, and other Italian versions of the 15th and 16th centuries:

"After contemplating these conceptions of the deposition in which a certain parade of idle sorrow, vehement action, and pendent impossibilities are conspicuous, it is a relief to turn to one who here, as ever, stands alone in his mild glory. Fra Angelico's Descent, painted for the Sta. Trinita at Florence, now in the Accademia there, is the perfect realization of the most pious idea. No more Christian conception of the subject, and no more probable {258} setting forth, of the scene, can perhaps be attained. All is holy sorrow, calm and still; the figures move gently, and speak in whispers. No one is too excited to help, or not to hinder. Joseph and Nicodemus, known by their glories, are highest in the scale of reverential beings who people the ladder, and make it almost look as if it lost itself, like Jacob's, in heaven. They each hold an arm close to the shoulder. Another disciple sustains the body as he sits on the ladder, a fourth receives it under the knees; and St. John, a figure of the highest beauty of expression, lifts his hands and offers his shoulder to the precious burden, where in another moment it will safely and tenderly repose. The figure itself is ineffably graceful with pathetic helplessness, but Corona gloriae, victory over the old enemy, surrounds a head of divine peace. He is restored to his own, and rests among them with a security as if he knew the loving hands so quietly and mournfully busied about him. And his peace is with them already: 'Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you.' In this picture it is as if the pious artist had sought first the kingdom of God, and all things, even in art, had been added unto him. … We have taken only the centre group (the size forbidding more), leaving out the sorrowing women on the right, with the Mother piously kneeling with folded hands, as if so alone she could worthily take back that sacred form."

Such a picture might have been supposed to be the source of Father Faber's most pathetic description of the same scene in his "Foot of the Cross," did we not know that there is sure to be a strong family likeness between the conceptions of two gentle, humble souls, deriving their inspiration from the same exercise of prayerful and compassionate contemplation.

It would be a pity to mar the impression made upon our readers by passages such as we have quoted, and of which there are many kindred examples scattered throughout Lady Eastlake's volume, by the painful contrast of a sad passage upon the Agony in the Garden (vol. ii., p. 30). Though not the sole, it is the most serious, blot upon her work. Misconceiving altogether the symbolic intention of Catholic artists in placing the chalice and host in the hand of the ministering angel, Lady Eastlake for once allows the Protestant spirit within to break through all bounds of decorum. In what sense the eucharistic chalice, introduce it where you will, can be a profane representation, it is impossible to conceive. Good taste, not to say reverence, should have proscribed the employment of such an epithet. A little patient reflection, or the still easier and surer method of inquiry at some Catholic source, would, we venture to think, have overcome her repugnance, and have saved her Catholic readers some unnecessary pain. But we are willing to let this offence pass, and to leave the logic of the accompanying strictures, bad as it is, unchallenged, in consideration of the eminent service rendered by the work, as a whole, to the cause of Christian art. Few could have brought together a larger amount of instructive and interesting matter. Few, perhaps no one, at least among Protestants, could have undertaken the task with so much to qualify, so little to disqualify, them for the office of historian and critic of the glorious series of monuments which Christian artists have bequeathed to us.

One lesson, above all, every unprejudiced reader ought to derive from these volumes—that Christian art and Catholic art are identical. Not to every Catholic artist is it given to produce true Christian art; but he, caeteris paribus, is most certain of attaining the true standard who is most deeply imbued with true Catholic principles, most highly gifted with the Catholic virtues of supernatural faith and love. Looking at the whole range of Christian art, it may be safely averred that whatever shortcomings there have been within the Church have been owing to {259} the influence of principles foreign to her spirit; and that, outside the Church (we say it in spite of Lady Eastlake's admiration of Rembrandt), there has simply never existed any Christian art at all. In our own days the rule is not reversed. Whom have Protestants to set against Overbeck, Cornelius, Deger, Molitor, and we are proud to add our own illustrious countryman, Herbert? Not surely the Pre-Raphaelite school in England, though it is the only one that has the least pretensions to the cultivation of Christian art. No, it is the Catholic Church alone that can stamp upon the painter's productions the supernatural impress of those notes by which she herself is recognizable as true.

There is a unity of intention, scope, and spirit in Catholic art of every age and clime. Like the doctrines and devotions of the Church, Catholic art, in all its various forms—symbolical, historical, devotional, ideal—ever revolves round one centre, and is referable to one exemplar. Divine beauty "manifest in the flesh"—the image of the Father clothed in human form and living in the Church—he is the inspirer of Christian art. Deum nemo vidit unquam: unigenitus Filius, qui est in sinu Patris, ipse narravit. [Footnote 52] The God-man is the primary object of artistic contemplation. As in doctrine, so in aestheticism, every truly Catholic artist may exclaim, Verbum caro factum est, et habitavit in nobis; et vidimus gloriam ejus, gloriam quasi unigeniti a Patre, plenum gratia et veritatis. [Footnote 53]

[Footnote 52: "No man hath seen God at any time: the only-begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him."—John i. 18.]

[Footnote 53: "The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us; and we saw his glory, the glory as it were of the only-begotten of the father, full of grace and truth."—John i. 14.]

But this unity, how exuberant in its fertility! The unity of the Church is the source of her catholicity. The two stand or fall together. And, so, too, the oneness of Catholic art is the secret of its universality. It admits of no partial view, excludes no variety or difference. Unity of spirit binds all together in perfect harmony, just as diversity of race and multiplicity of individual gifts, in her members, are fitted together, organized, and held in balance by the unity of the Church. Unity is the basis and safeguard of catholicity; catholicity the glory and crown of unity.

Nor is the note of apostolicity wanting. For the Bible, and the Bible only, as the rule and standard of art, substitute Catholic tradition handed down from the apostles, inclusive of all that is in Scripture, but reaching beyond the limits of the written word, and ever interpreted to the artist, no less than to the rest of the faithful, by the living voice of the teaching Church, and then the principle which identifies orthodoxy with Christian art may safely be applied as a test to religious painting.

Lastly—we had almost said above all—the beauty of holiness is stamped exclusively upon all art created after the mind of the Church. For Catholic art is nothing else than the product of contemplation in souls gifted with artistic capacities; and contemplation is only another word for the gaze of supernatural faith, quickened and perfected by supernatural love, upon one or other of those mysteries which the Church sets before the minds of her children. So at least we have learned from the Angelic Doctor; who tells us [Footnote 54] that beauty is found primarily and essentially in the contemplative life. For, although St. Gregory teaches that contemplation consists in the love of God, we are to understand this rather of the motive than of the precise act. The will inflamed with love desires to behold the beauty of the beloved object, either for its own sake—the heart always being where the treasure is—or for the sake of the knowledge itself which results from the act of vision. Sometimes it is the senses which are thus compelled to act, sometimes the intellect which is prompted to this gaze, according as the object is material or spiritual. But how is the beauty of the object {260} perceived? What is the faculty whose office it is to light up and reduce to order and due proportion what is seen? Evidently, the reason. For reason is light, and where there is reason there is harmony and proportion. And so beauty, whose essence is brightness and due proportion, is, as we have said, primarily and necessarily found in the contemplative life; or, which is the same thing, in the exercise of the reason—its natural exercise, if the beauty contemplated be in the natural order; its supernatural exercise, if revealed mystery be that which attracts and occupies the soul.

[Footnote 54: 2. 2. Q. clxxx. a. 1, and a. 2. ad 3.]

From Chambers's Journal.

POUCETTE.

Nearly seven years ago, I was walking hurriedly along the boulevards of Paris one winter's evening; it was Christmas-eve, and had been ushered in by thick fog and miserable drizzling rain, which provoked the inhabitants of the gay capital to complain loudly of the change which they fancied had taken place in the seasons of late years, whereby the detested brouillards de Londres had been introduced into their once clear, pure atmosphere. The weather was certainly most unseasonable, and took away almost entirely the small remnant of Christmas-like feeling, which an Englishman, with all his efforts, can manage to keep up in a foreign land. I had sat chatting with a friend over a cosey fire until dusk; and, on leaving his house, neither a remise nor a fiacre was to be met with empty; so I made up my mind to a wet walk, and amused myself, as I went on, by observing the various groups of passengers, some of them suddenly benighted like myself, as they sped on their way along the crowded thoroughfare. The brilliant lamps hung from the shops threw a glare over each face as it flitted past, or paused to look in at the windows; and the noise of hammers resounded incessantly from the edge of the pavement, where workmen were busy erecting small wooden booths for the annual New-Year's fair. Some were already completed, and their owners hovered about, ever and anon darting forth from behind their small counters, to pounce upon a likely customer, to whom they extolled the beauty and cheapness of their wares in tempting terms.

"Tenez, monsieur!" cries an old woman, whose entire stock-in-trade consists of a few pairs of doll's shoes of chocolate, displayed upon a tin tray, over which she carefully holds a weather-beaten umbrella. "Two sous the pair, two sous!" "Voilà, mesdames," bawls a youth of ten, who, in London, would probably execute an unlimited number of Catherine-wheels under the feet of paterfamilias, as he crosses a crowded street; here he is carefully watching a basinful of water, in which float a number of glass ducks of the most brilliant and unnatural colors. "Pour un sou!" and he holds up one tiny image between his finger and thumb, with a business-like air. "Fi done!" answers a sharp-visaged elderly woman, as she withdraws six of the ducks from their watery bed, and places them gently in a corner of her capacious basket, offering the owner at the same time four sous, {261} which he accepts with the invariable "Merci, madame," and the polite Parisian bow; and depositing the coins in some deep recess of his huge trouser-pockets, he resumes his cry of "Un sou, mesdames, pour un sou," with unblushing mendacity. Just at the corner of the boulevard, where the Rue de la Paix joins it, stood a lively, wiry-looking little man, whose bows and cries were incessant, holding something in his outstretched hands carefully wrapped in wet grass, which he entreats the bystanders to purchase. As I approach him, he uncovers it, and discloses a small tortoise, who waves his thin neck from side to side deprecatingly, and looks appealingly out of his dark eyes. "Buy him, monsieur," cries the little owner: "he is my last; he will be your best friend for many years, and afterward he will make an excellent soup!" A laugh from some of the passers-by rewarded this very naive definition of a pet; and leaving the lively bustle of the boulevard, I turned down the Rue de la Paix, and into the dark-looking Rue Neuve St. Augustin; a little way down which, I perceived a small knot of people gathered under the arched entrance to a hôtel.

There were not many—a few bloused workmen returning from their daily toil, two or three women, and the usual amount of active gamins darting about the outskirts; within, I could perceive the cocked-hat of the ever-watchful sergent de ville. Prompted by that gregarious instinct which leads most men toward crowds, I went up to it; and, by the help of a tolerably tall figure, I looked over the heads of the people into the centre, at a group, the first sight of whom I shall not soon forget. There, before me, on the cold pavement, now wet with wintry rain, lay a little, a very little girl, fainting. Her face, which was deadly pale, looked worn and pinched by want into that aged, hard look so touching to see in the very young, because it tells of a premature exposure to trial and care, if not of a struggle literally for life. Her jet-black hair, of which she had a profusion, lay unbound over her shoulders like a mantle. Her dress was an old black velvet frock, covered with spangles, with a piece of something red sewn on the skirt, and a scarlet bodice. Her neck and arms were bare; and the gay dress, where it had been opened in front, showed nothing underneath it but the poor thin body. Her legs were blue and mottled with cold; and the tiny feet were thrust into wooden sabots, one of which had dropped off, a world too wide for the little foot it was meant to protect. A kind-looking elderly woman knelt on the pavement, and supported the child's head in her arms, chafing her cold hands, and trying, by every means in her power, to restore animation; and wandering uneasily up and down beside them, was a curious-looking non-descript figure, such as one can rarely meet with out of Paris. It was a poodle—at least so its restless, bead-like, black eyes and muzzle betokened, and also a suspicious-looking tuft of hair, now visible, waving above its garments—but the animal presented a most ludicrous appearance, from being dressed up in a very exact imitation of the costume of a fine lady during the century of Louis le Grand. The brilliant eyes were surmounted by a cleverly contrived wig, frizzed, powdered, and sparkling with mock jewels; the body decked out in a cherry-colored satin bodice, with a long peaked stomacher, trimmed with lace, and a stiff hoop, bell-like in shape, but, in proportion, far within the dimensions of a modern crinoline; even the high-heeled shoes of scarlet leather were not forgotten; and the strange anomaly between the animal and its disguise was irresistibly ludicrous. The dog was perfectly aware that something was going on—something strange, pitiful, and, what was more to the purpose, nearly concerning himself; and clever as he was, he could not yet see a way through his difficulties.

His misery was extreme; he pattered piteously up and down the space {262} round the fainting child, and raised himself up anxiously on his hind-legs to peer into her little wan face, presenting thus a still more ludicrous aspect than before. With his wise doggish face peeping out curiously from the ridiculous human head-dress, he sniffed all over the various feet which encircled his precious mistress, suspiciously; and finally placing himself, still on his hind-legs, close by her side, he laid his head lovingly to her cheek, and uttered a low dismal howl, followed, after an instant's pause, by an impatient bark. The child stirred—roused apparently by the familiar sound—gasped for breath once or twice; and presently opening her eyes, she cried feebly, "Mouton, où es tu done?" He leaped up in an ecstacy, trying, in the height of his joy, to lick her face; but this was not to be: she pushed him away as roughly as the little feeble hand had strength to do.

"Ah, wicked dog, go away; you do mischief," she said, fixing a pair of eyes as round and almost as black as his own upon the unfortunate animal. He dropped instantly, and with a subdued, sorrowful air, lay down, licking diligently, in his humility, the little foot from which the sabot had fallen: he had evidently proved that submission was the only plan to pursue with his imperious mistress. The girl was stronger now, and able to sit up with the help of the good woman's knee, and she drank off a cup of milk which the compassionate wife of the concierge handed to her. "Thanks, madame," said the child, with native politeness; "I am better now. You are a good Christian," she added, turning her head so as to look in the face of the woman who supported her.

"What are you called, my child?" asked her friend. "Where do you live?"

"Antoinette Elizabeth is my baptismal name," answered the child, with odd gravity; "but I am generally called Poucette, because, you see, I am small;" and a faint tinge of color came into her pale cheeks.

No wonder the name was bestowed upon her, for we could see that she was small, very small; and, from the diminutive size of her limbs, she seemed likely to remain so till the end of her days.

"Will you go home now?" asked the woman, after a moment's pause.

"No, not just yet," said the tiny being. "I have had no supper. I shall go to Emile, but Mouton may go home. Go!" she cried, imperiously, to the dog, as she swiftly slid off the marvellous dress and wig, out of which casing Mouton came forth an ordinary looking and decidedly dirty poodle. He hesitated for an instant, when she raised her little clenched fist, and shook it fiercely at him, repeating "Go!" in louder tones. He wagged his tail deprecatingly, licked his black lips, looked imploringly at her out of his loving eyes, and seemed to beg permission to remain with her; but in vain; then, seeing her endeavor to rise, he turned, fled up the street with the swiftness of a bird, and disappeared round the corner. His mistress, in the meantime, folded up the dog's finery carefully, and deposited it inside her own poor garments; then, after an instant's pause, she rose to her feet, and looked round at us. She was well named Poucette: in stature she did not exceed a child of four years old; but she was perfectly made, and the limbs were in excellent proportion with the stature, only her face showed age. There was a keen, worldly look about the mouth, with its thin scarlet lips; and a vindictive expression shining in the bold, black eyes—altogether a hard-looking face, not at all attractive in its character; and yet I felt myself drawn to the poor child.

She was evidently half-starved, fighting her own hard battle with the world, and keeping her struggle as much to herself as she could; and when, scanning curiously over the faces surrounding her, her eyes rested on mine, I stepped forward, and offered her a five-franc piece. To my surprise, she threw the money on the pavement {263} with the bitterest scorn. "I don't want money," she shrieked, passionately—"I want my supper. Go away, canaille!" I stooped down toward her, and took her hand. "Come with me," I said to her, "and you shall have some supper. I live close by." She stood on tiptoe even then, and peered into my face with her sharp eyes. Apparently, however, a short inspection satisfied her, for she said softly, "Thank you," and tried to hold my hand. Finding it too much for her small grasp, she clung to my trousers with one hand, and with the other she waved off the wondering bystanders with a most majestic air. I offered payment for the milk, which the good woman civilly refused; and then I sent for a fiacre in which to get to my lodgings in the Rue Rivoli, shrinking, I must confess, from the idea of the ridiculous figure I should cut walking along the streets with this absurd though unfortunate creature. Presently the concierge arrived with one, and we stepped in, Poucette entering majestically first. I gave the word, and we started. Hardly had we turned out of the street, when the impulsive child beside me seized me with both hands, and in an ecstacy of gratitude thanked me with streaming eyes for what I was doing for her. "I am starving," she sobbed—"I fainted from hunger. I have been dancing on the boulevards all day with Mouton, who is hungry, too, poor fellow, for he only ate a small bit of bread which a good little gentleman gave him this morning."

"Why did you not take the money, then?" I asked. "You might have bought food for yourself and Mouton."

"I did not want money," said the girl proudly—"I don't beg."

"But you say you are hungry."

"That is nothing. I never beg; I dance; and tonight, when I have had some supper, I shall dance for you, and you shall see," drawing herself up.

At this speech I hesitated. What in the world had I to do with a dancing-girl in my quiet bachelor rooms? Did she intend taking them by storm, and quartering herself upon me, whether I liked it or not? The question was a difficult one; but yet, when I looked down at the tiny figure, with its poor, woe-begone face, so thin and weary-looking, its utter weakness and dependence, I felt that, come what might, I could not act otherwise than I was doing. "There, go up stairs, au troisième" said I to my charge, as the fiacre stopped, and we got out; when lo! from behind a large stone close by the entrance to the porte-co-chère, the black round eyes of Mouton glanced furtively out upon us. His behavior was exceedingly reserved; he durst not even wag his tail for fear of giving offence, but he glanced at me in the meekest, humblest entreaty ever dog did. "Don't send him away," I said to Poucette: "take him up stairs with you; I wish him to remain."

She made no reply, but snapped her fingers encouragingly at him, and he followed her closely, as she walked up stairs. I paused a moment with the concierge, to ask her to provide some dinner for my unexpected guests; and then mounted the stairs after them. I found Antoinette Elizabeth and her faithful follower seated at my door, gravely awaiting my arrival. Mouton recognized me as a friend, and faintly wagged his tail; evidently he was careful, in the presence of his mistress, upon whom he bestowed his favors. We entered my room, all three of us; and presently the dinner arrived, and was done ample justice to. Poucette ate heartily, but not ravenously; and after the meal was over, we drew our chairs round the fire, and sat eating walnuts. She asked then, with more timidity than she had yet shown: "When shall we have the honor of dancing for monsieur?" raising her large black eyes, which had lost their fierce look, to my face.

"Not just yet, Poucette," I replied. "Tell me something about yourself first, and eat more walnuts."

{264}

She looked up sharply at this, as if to say, What business is that of yours? then away into the fire, which was evidently a novel luxury to her; and finally her glance rested on Mouton, who, having devoured every superfluous piece of meat, and gnawed the only bone at table, had now stretched himself on the hearth-rug, and slumbered peacefully at her feet. "Monsieur is very good," she said presently, with a sigh, still with her eyes fixed on Mouton. "My history is nothing very great. I am not a Parisian; my father was a Norman."

"Is he alive now?" I asked, as she paused here.

"I don't know about that," she answered haughtily. "He was a wicked man. Monsieur understands me?" she said questioningly, with a piercing look.

"Yes, poor child. And your mother, what of her?"

"She is an angel," faltered the girl. "She went up to heaven last Christmas;" and the tears filled her eyes as she said it.

"How have you lived since?'

"Oh, that was at Marseilles; and I came on here with Mouton. We dance," she continued in a firmer voice; "we go out with a man called Emile, who plays the organ very well, and he has another dog like Mouton,' only not at all clever: the stupid creature can only hold a basket in his mouth, and beg for sous; he has no talent." She shrugged her shoulders, and continued, "We live with Emile and his wife; they are not always kind to me; but I love Jean."

"Who is this Jean?" I asked.

"Ah! he is a poor boy," she replied; the whole expression of her countenance softening at his name, and her sallow cheeks crimsoning with a tender flush. "He is lame; he cannot walk, and is pulled about in a little carriage; but he does not like to beg, so Emile will not take him out with us."

"Is Emile his father?" I asked.

"No, monsieur; his father is dead but his mother is Emile's wife. I take care of Jean myself."

"Are they good to you?"

"Yes, pretty well. You see I dance for them, and people give more money because I am there; and then Mouton is so clever; one does not easily meet with a dog like that, who will stand on his hind-legs for an hour together, and dance as he does. Look at his dress too;" and she pulled out of the bosom of her frock Mouton's paraphernalia, and displayed it with evident pride. "In my opinion now, there is no such dress as that for a dog in all Paris," she said, as she held it up admiringly to the lamp. "Jean made those shoes; ar'n't they droll? And the wig; look, that is superb!"

"Who made the wig?" I asked.

"Ah! it was a little boy who is apprenticed to a wigmaker," she answered. "Monsieur, it was a bargain between us; he wanted something from me, and—and I said I would give it him if he made a wig for Mouton; and this is the wig. He is not bad himself, that little boy; but he is not at all so good as Jean."

"How old is Jean?" I asked.

"He is twelve years old, monsieur."

"And you?"

"I am ten," she replied, with a little sigh and a blush. "But I may grow still, may I not?" she asked timidly, looking up into my face so pathetically, that I had hardly sufficient gravity to answer, "Yes, of course; you will doubtless grow for a long time yet."

"Ah! that is exactly what Jean says," she exclaimed gaily; then added in a lower voice, "Jean says he likes little people best; but, you see, he may say that because he likes me."

I answered nothing to this; and presently she roused herself from a little reverie, and said, "Now we shall dance for you, because it gets late, and I must go home."

"If you like to remain here all night," I said, "the wife of the concierge will let you sleep in a little {265} room off theirs, down stairs; and when you have had some breakfast, you can then return."

"No, no," she repeated sharply; "I will not sleep here; I go home to Jean."

"Will Emile be glad to see you?"

"That depends; if he is cross, he will beat me for staying so long; but it does not matter; I wished to stay, and I liked my dinner, and this warm fire" (she looked wistfully at it). "Monsieur is very good. Come, Mouton, my friend; wake yourself up."

The dog rose, shook himself, and patiently allowed himself to be dressed once more. He took an unfair advantage of his mistress, however, when she knelt down to put on his shoes, and licked her face. "Ah, cochon, how often must I box your ears for that trick!" she said, as she gave him a tap on the side of his head, for the liberty. "Come now, walk along." The dog paced soberly toward the door on his hind-legs.—"That is the ancien régime," she explained to me.— "Now, Mouton, show us how people walk at the present day." The dog stopped, and at once imitated the short, mincing step of a Parisian belle, shaking his hoop from side to side in most ludicrous fashion; and as he reached his mistress, he dropped a little awkward courtesy.

"That is well," she said. "Now sing for us like Madame G——," naming a famous opera-singer, whose fame was then at its height, and she laid a light piece of music-paper across his paws. The dog looked closely down on the paper for an instant, licked his lips, looked round at an imaginary audience, and then throwing back his head, and fixing his black eyes on the ceiling, he uttered a howl so shrill and piercing that I stopped my ears; he then ceased for an instant, looked at his music attentively, then at his audience, and again uttered that ear-piercing howl. "That is enough," said Poucette; "bow to the company." The dog rose and sank with the grace almost of the prima donna herself.

"Now, Mouton, we are going to dance;" and taking the animal by its paw, she put the other arm round it, and the two whirled round in a waltz, keeping admirable time to a tune which Poucette whistled. "Now read a book, and rest yourself whilst I dance;" and again the piece of music was laid on Mouton's paws, and he bent his eyes on it, apparently with the most devoted attention, whilst Poucette slipped off her heavy sabots, and with naked feet thrust into a pair of old satin slippers, which she produced from some pocket in her dress, she executed a sort of fancy dance, half Cachuca, half Bolero, throwing herself into pretty, graceful attitudes, with a step as light as a fairy's; then, as she approached Mouton in the figure, she lifted the music, and taking him by one paw, she led him forward to the front of my chair on the points of her toes, the two courtesying nearly to the ground, when Mouton affectionately kissed his mistress on the cheek.

"There, it is over now," said Poucette; "that is all. He does not know the minuet perfectly yet: next week, perhaps, we shall try it for the Jour de l'An."

"Well done!" I exclaimed, and clapped my hands. "He is a famous dog; and you—you dance beautifully."

Mouton came to be patted and made much of; and his mistress now announced her intention of going home at once. Finding it useless to try and induce her to stay, I offered to go with her myself, and see her safely through the still crowded streets; but this she firmly declined.

"No, not to-night," she said. "You may come to-morrow, if you will be so kind, but not to-night. You have been very good, monsieur; I am not ungrateful. You may come to-morrow; Rue——, No.——, quite close to Notre Dame." She took my hand, raised it to her lips, courtesied, and was gone.

{266}

I followed her down stairs, and watched the little figure hurrying along with a firm step, upright as a dart, the light from the gas-lamps falling now and then on the spangles of her dress, and making them twinkle for an instant; and the dark outline of Mouton following closely behind her, under the shadow of the houses. Presently they crossed the street, and disappeared in the distance; and I turned and walked up stairs to my cosey well-lighted room, to think over the strange life of a street dancing-girl.

After this, I made inquiries about Poucette in the part of the town where she lived, and visited the man Emile and his wife often. Here I found the cripple boy Jean, to whom Poucette clung with a tenacity of affection that was touching to witness. He had had a fall as an infant, so his mother said, and never had walked; but his fingers were skilful in making toys, baskets, and small rush-mats, which Poucette sold during her daily rounds. To him she devoted her affections, her life, with a steady ardor not often met with at her age. Toward others, she was always grave, distant, often haughty and bitter in her expressions of anger, but to him never. However tired she might return home after dancing or selling his wares on the boulevard, she never showed him that she was so; if he wished to go out, she drew him in a rude wooden sledge to the gardens of the Luxembourg; and the two would sit there by the hour together on Sundays, criticising the passers-by as they walked about in their gay dresses. At night, if the invalid was restless or in pain, Poucette sat beside him, sometimes till day dawned, with a sympathizing cheerful face, ready to attend upon every want. There she shone; but take away Jean out of her world, and Poucette stood forth a vixen. Madame Emile, who was herself somewhat of a shrew, vowed that if it were not that she and Jean were so bound up together, and nothing could separate them, she must have sent away Poucette long ago. "No one could endure her temper, monsieur," she would declare to me; and when she began upon this subject, madame waxed eloquent. "She is a girl such as there is not besides in Paris. For Jean, she will give up dress, company, the theatre, everything; but except for him, she would not go one step out of her way to be made an empress. It is not natural that. After she first came here, we had a great deal of trouble with her, and Emile beat her well; but then she would run away in a rage, and come back again during the night, for fear Jean should want something. Now we are more used to her, and we let her have her own way pretty much."

Jean I could get nothing out of except a "Bonjour, monsieur" at entering and on leaving his house. He sat silently plaiting his mats or carving toys with his long fingers, looking as if he neither heard nor understood what we were talking about; but he carefully repeated all the conversation afterward to his friend Poucette, for she told me so often when we were together. She used to come and see me at my rooms, when it was wet, or business was slack; and I succeeded in finding a customer for her wares in a toy-merchant, who promised to take all Jean's work at a reasonable price, and was liberal toward the two children. Poucette was thus able to give up her public dancing, and stay more at home; and the toyman's daughter taught her dainty embroidery, in which her skilful fingers soon excelled. She tamed down wonderfully that winter, and even made some efforts to learn reading, as I suggested to her what a source of pleasure it would be to Jean, whose thirst for hearing stories related was intense, if he could read them for himself. But she was very slow at this; the letters proved a heavy task to learn, and when we came to spelling, I often despaired; still she toiled on, and when I left Paris in May, she could read a very little.

{267}

Six months passed, and again I turned my steps to my old winter-quarters. The summer and autumn had been spent by me partly in England, partly in Switzerland. My protege was unable to write, and I had heard nothing of her since I left Paris. I had not returned there longer than a week, when I set off into the cité, to discover again my little pupil. It was much the same sort of a day as that on which we had first met; cold, dank, misty rain kept falling, and streets were wet and sloppy. The part of the town where Poucette lived was wretchedly poor, dingy, and dirty-looking, especially in such weather as I now visited it, and the reputed haunt of thieves and evil-doers of various kinds. I picked my way along narrow ill-paved streets, with the gutters in the middle, and at last I reached her old abode. There was no one stirring about; but the door was ajar. I pushed it open, and walked in. The dwelling had once been some nobleman's hotel in bygone days, and its rooms were large and lofty, and at present each inhabited by different poor families. Emile's was on the ground floor—a long room, formerly used either as a guard-room or for playing billiards in. It had one large window, opening in the center, and crossed outside with thick iron bars, which partially excluded the light. I was confused on entering from the outer air, and at first could only perceive that the room was filled with a crowd of people, of various ages and sexes, but all of the lowest order, some sitting, some standing. A woman came forth to meet me, whom I recognized as Madame Emile, sobbing and holding her apron to her eyes. "Ah, mon Dieu, mon Dieu!" she whispered, as she looked at me and clasped her hands piteously; "the poor Poucette, how hard it is! Monsieur, you are welcome; but this is a sorrowful time; she is much hurt." She led me gently through the various groups, all sorrowfully silent, toward a low pallet, at the head of the room, where, crushed, bleeding, and now insensible from pain, lay the form of poor Poucette. "What is this?" I asked in a whisper. "How did it happen?"

"Ah, it was a vile remise," eagerly answered a dozen voices. "She was returning home yesterday from selling the mats, and the driver was drunk. She fell in crossing, and he did not see her. The wheel crushed her poor chest. Ah, she will die, the unhappy child!"

"Where is Jean?" I asked.

His mother silently pointed out what looked like a bundle of clothes huddled up in the bed beside the dying child. She was dying, my poor Poucette. One of the kind-hearted surgeons from the hôpital had been to see her early that morning, and pronounced that beside the blow on her chest, which was of itself a dangerous one, severe internal injuries had taken place, which must end her life in a few hours. Poor Poucette! I seated myself by the little couch in the dark room, which was so soon to be filled by the presence of death, and presently the surgeon came again. All eyes turned anxiously toward him as he walked to the bed, and kneeling down beside it, carefully examined the poor little sufferer, whose only sign of consciousness was a groan of anguish now and then.

"Can nothing be done for her?" I asked, as he rose to his feet and stood by the bed, looking pityingly down at the two children.

"Nothing whatever," he said, with a mournful shake of his head. "She will not last through the night."

"Does she suffer?" I asked.

"Acutely, but it will not be for long. Mortification is setting in rapidly." He paused, then added: "She will probably regain consciousness at the last;" and left the room.

Slowly the weary hours glided on; gradually the moans became weaker, and the pulse quick and fitful. Suddenly she opened her eyes, and looked at me inquiringly; then her eyes fell {268} on Jean, who lay at her side, and uttered an exclamation of joy. "I am not in pain now," she said faintly; "that is over.—Ah, my good monsieur, you said you would return. I am glad."

"I am grieved to find you thus, Poucette," I whispered. "Can I do anything for you?"

"Perhaps you would like to have Mouton," she said calmly, as if thinking aloud.

"I will keep him, if you like it," I replied. "Is there anything else you would like?" "Only Jean, dear Jean," and her soft dark eyes were fixed timidly yet imploringly on my face.

"I will take care of Jean."

"The good God reward you, my kind monsieur! That is all that I want.— Adieu, madame. Adieu, my good friends. It is over." Just then Mouton raised himself on his hind-legs by the bed, and peered anxiously into her face. She put out her little right hand, and gently patted his head; then, with a last effort, she turned round from us, and flung one tiny arm round the crippled boy at her side. "Je t'aime toujours," she whispered, as she bent over and kissed him. It was a last effort. A slight shiver passed over the little figure; one long-drawn sigh escaped the white lips. Poucette was gone to her mother; the wanderer had been taken home; the desolate one was comforted!

My tale is ended, except to say that, from that evening, Mouton has been my inseparable companion. He is by no means, however, as complaisant to me as he was to his mistress; on the contrary, Mouton, like many other nouveaux riches, is rather a spoiled dog, and the tyrant of my small household. Jean became a basket-maker, and it is not improbable that my fair readers may have in their possession some of the productions of his skilful fingers. Such was the fruit of my Christmas-eve in Paris six years ago. I have never spent one there since.

Translated from Der Katholik.

DANTE'S DIVINA COMMEDIA.

There is none of the Christian poets who has exercised so great an influence in the intellectual world as Dante Alighieri. His "Vision of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise" has been, ever since its appearance, a mine in which artists, poets, philosophers, theologians, historians, and statesmen have found treasures. In Italy, immediately after his death, professors were appointed in the universities to explain his work, and numbers of both lay and clerical savants, among them even princes, bishops, and archbishops, took delight in its study and exposition. With the spread of the Italian language, on which Dante has stamped for ever the impress of his genius, and with the progress of Italian culture, all Europe became acquainted with the Commedia, and learned to admire its beauty and its grandeur. It was translated into other tongues; learned foreigners undertook to fathom its depths; and even the spirit of religious unity in the sixteenth century did not check its influence over the Roman-Germanic nations. Protestant translators and expositors contended with the Catholic writers who made of the work of Dante a special study. The Germans especially have {269} not been backward in this respect, and to prove it we need only name Kannegieser, Strecksufs, Kofisch, Witte, Wegele, and Philalethes (the present king of Saxony).

When we wish to assign Dante his proper place in Christian art and poetry, by comparison with antiquity, we are reminded at once of Homer and the veneration in which he was held by the Greeks. But how has the Florentine poet merited such high consideration? Is it by the might of his genius and the peculiarity of his chosen theme? By the perfection and the poetic charm of his expression and language? By his deep knowledge of life and of human nature? By the philosophic and moral truths which he has woven into his poem? By his religious and political views? Or by his judgment of historical personages and facts?

No doubt all these have been helping causes to establish Dante's fame and give him the position which he holds. But the true reason of all the singular prerogatives of the poet and of the poem, the reason which gives us the key to the right understanding of the "Divine Comedy," and of the various and discrepant explanations of it, must be sought deeper. There is a principal cause of Dante's greatness, from which the secondary causes, just named, diverge, as rays of light from a common centre, and to the knowledge of which only a philosophical comprehension of history, and especially of poetry, can lead us. We shall endeavor in this essay to discover this cause, after having given a brief sketch of the contents and the scope of the great poem.

I.

The Commedia, which, in the form of a vision, paints the condition of the soul after death, is divided into three parts, Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. Each part consists of thirty-three cantos, which, with the introductory canto, make the round number one hundred. Surrounded by trials and troubles of various kinds, Dante is guided into the regions of the invisible by his favorite poet Virgil, who comes to his assistance. Virgil here represents poetry and the idea of the poem. It was through him that Dante was first led to the serious study of truth, and to direct his mind to the philosophical consideration of the condition of mankind.

Our poet now proceeds into the realm of the damned souls, into the regions of night and hell, which he represents in the form of a funnel having nine gradually narrowing eddies, in which the souls of the damned are revolving to the throne of Satan, who sits at the top of the cone. The narrower grow the circles, the more intense become the punishments inflicted, in proportion to the increasing guilt of the culprits. The lowest place among the lost souls is occupied by the traitors, Brutus, Cassius, and Judas.

The power of the devil over men, and the inexorable character of the Christian idea of retributive justice, is grandly portrayed in this part of the work, by interweaving the most moving and striking episodes, in which well-known characters are described as receiving punishment equal to their crimes. Even paganism is made to lend its graces to increase the sublimity of the picture, and clothe the thoughts of the writer in poetic garments.

Both poets then leave the darkness and horror of hell behind them, and approach the regions of purification or purgatory, over which perpetual twilight reigns. This realm of temporary suffering is supposed by the poet to be on the opposite side of the earth, where the antipodes dwell. This abode of those souls who are being purified and doing penance for minor offences, and whose pains are lessened by the hope of future happiness, is represented in the form of a mountain, to whose summit one ascends by nine successive degrees, as the descent through the {270} funnel of hell was by nine lessening circles. At the top of the mountain is placed that earthly paradise which was lost by the sins of our first parents, and from which the way to heaven leads. Having arrived in the terrestrial paradise, Dante suddenly finds himself deserted by Virgil, who from the beginning had promised to guide him only so far. But Beatrice meets our poet here, Beatrice the beloved of his youth. She teaches him the science of God, and, aided by the light of faith and revelation, which Virgil had not, she shows him the higher knowledge given to human reason under the influence of Christianity. At her voice and teaching, Dante is moved to repentance for his transgressions, and she becomes his future guide.

Dante paints in the most lively colors, and describes with the greatest beauty, in episodes and conversations, the intimate relation of the souls in purgatory with each other, and with those they left behind them on earth, and with the blessed in heaven. This latter point is illustrated by the frequent appearance of angels, who descend from time to time into the dusky realms of purgatory.

Led by his beloved Beatrice, our poet now mounts to heaven, and traverses its various spheres, which are represented according to the system of Ptolemy. Beginning by the moon, the poet travels through Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, the glory and happiness of the beatified increasing as he advances, in proportion with their virtues and holiness, till he arrives at the so-called Empyrean, at the very throne of God. In the highest sphere Dante beholds the mystical rose, that is, the glory of the Blessed Virgin, who is surrounded by the highest saints and angels in the form of a rose; and among these glorified spirits he sees with delight his Beatrice near the Mother of God, who gives an honorable place to those who had been her fervent followers during life. The Vision of Heaven ends by a glance at the mysteries of the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation, which mortal eye, though supernaturally strengthened, is unable to dwell upon for excess of light.

Dante in this part of his work treats the most difficult questions, not only of philosophy, which he had also done in the preceding cantos, but also of theology, with the greatest clearness, depth, and poetic grace. He treats in it of the fundamental ideas of Christianity, of faith, hope, and charity. The spirits that he represents to the reader in hell, purgatory, and paradise are by no means the mere wilful creations of his fancy, but for the most part are historical characters, some of them but little removed from his own time, others contemporary; and even those which he borrows from Judaism or paganism to embellish his poem are symbolical, and have an intimate connection with some reality. On this very account we should not judge the Vision as an allegory, although in many respects it has the peculiarities of an allegorical poem. It is, rather, a mystic poem, in which the deepest religious and philosophical truths are represented under the shadow of visionary forms and ethereal similitudes; and realities are raised to an ideal sphere, where the mind's eye can penetrate through their misty covering and contemplate them to satiety. But what is the cause of the great influence which this poem has exerted on mankind? This is the question which we have undertaken to answer, and which we shall now endeavor to solve.

II.

As in the history of nations and of mankind there are certain epochs in which the elements that had formed the groundwork of society, and of national life, in their gradual development, culminate in a certain point, where the mental powers of the people put forth all their strength in the production of facts, or works of various kinds that give expression to the spirit {271} of the age; so in the history of poetry there are poets and poems in which the ruling ideas of their time and nation appear in all their truth and power.

In the works of great poets we have, as it were, a copy of God's creative power. He seems to lend it to the poet. Of all the productions of the human mind, the poem has the greatest similarity with the works of Almighty power, and both offer to human contemplation beauties ever varying and ever new. But between the works of divine and of human skill there is an essential difference. The works of God express the thoughts of the Creator, whose glory and invisibility, according to the Psalmist, the heavens declare, and whose eternal might and divinity creatures proclaim; but with the effects of human genius it is entirely different.

Every individual is but a member of the great whole, which we call the human family; he can do nothing alone, but depends on others both for his material and spiritual support; and the degree of culture which he attains, the aim which he proposes to himself in life, and the germ of his future progress, are as much the result of the influences exercised on him from the cradle to the grave, by the family circle, by the school, and by the associations of society, as they are the effects of his own independent strength and originality. Hence the work of the poet, no matter how great he may be, is not to be considered the exclusive product of the individual, for it must bear on it the stamp of his education, and of the people among whom he dwells, and of the age in which he lives. As the waters of a lake do not merely reflect their own color, but also the green shore of the surrounding woods and hills, the passing clouds, the deep blue of the heavens above, and of the stars that glitter in it; so in the poem we see not only the soul of its creator, but every great emotion that swelled in the breast of the men of his age and nation. In a word, we see the whole circle of contemporary ideas more or less vividly expressed in it. Nor are the productions of human genius lessened by this fact; they are, on the contrary, enhanced in value. For it is no longer one person, with his subjective views of his own world and life, who speaks to us in them, but it is the spirit of a portion of mankind, expressing to us the ideas of a certain stage in the progress of civilization.

Now, if such a work of genius be at the same time the foundation of a further development in the future, and of such a character that it represents the condition not only of one nation, but of several; and if the ideas which it contains and which sway men be such as by their truth and universality overleap the limits of time and space; then such a power will maintain its hold upon the admiration and esteem of men, not only in a certain epoch and among a certain people, but for ever and among all nations where the same order of civilization reigns. Poets who are distinguished above others by the creative power and superiority of their genius in the production of such a work, are not merely the poets of one age, or of one nation, but they belong to all times and to all nations. They will not be merely read once, and then thrown aside; but they will be reperused and studied with ever increasing pleasure.

The age of Dante was an epoch of this character among the Christian nations. He has hardly his superior as a poet, either among the ancients or the moderns. Hence, if we contemplate the Commedia from this point of view, we shall be able not only to understand the general scope of the work, but even to comprehend with ease all its details and peculiarities.

But in order to show that the period at which Dante appeared (the second half of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth century) was one like that which we have described, we must briefly recall to mind the condition of the Church, of the state of science and art, and give {272} expression to the spirit of the age in a scientific formula.

If we then look at the Church, we find her displaying such fecundity and power as we shall hardly find at any other period in her history. She is not only busy in the work of converting the still pagan nations of Europe, especially in the north, and strengthening the faith among believers by missions, voyages, and diplomacy; by the foundation of new congregations and bishoprics; by councils; by stringency of external discipline, and greater solemnity in the public worship; but also by the internal reformation effected by such men as popes Alexander III., Innocent III., and Innocent IV., who continued the good work begun by Gregory VII., of freeing the Church from the oppressions of secular power. They succeeded at length in propagating and realizing among the Christian nations of the West the idea of one vast spiritual community, under the headship of one spiritual ruler, who, instead of destroying national diversity and independence, protected and favored them. This idea prevailed through the agency of the supreme pontiffs over the pagan idea so cherished by the emperors of a universal monarchy. The crusades, too, fostered and led by the Church, and which are the clearest expression of the thoroughly Christian spirit of those centuries, bring the West into closer intimacy with the East, and enrich the former with all the material and spiritual treasures of the latter. Then arise those great orders which—half religious and half secular, as the Knights Hospitallers and the Templars, or entirely religious, like the Dominicans and Franciscans—defended the Church, cared for the sick and the poor, sacrificed themselves in spreading Christian faith and morality, and gave birth to countless institutions of charity.

If we now glance at the political condition of the people, a spectacle equally grand as that just described offers itself to our view. On the imperial throne of Germany appear those powerful princes of the house of Hohenstaufen, who contended so heroically with the papacy for the success of the Ghibelline idea of a universal monarchy, but who in the end were worsted in the fight; while in France a St. Louis IX., and in England a Richard the Lion-hearted, excite the admiration of the world. In Italy, even in the midst of the struggle between the secular and the spiritual powers, and between the Guelphs and Ghibellines, mighty republics spring up under the protection of the Church; and in the other nations also we see a powerful effort for national independence and freedom appearing in the many guilds, corporations, free cities, states, and parliaments which were everywhere rising into a dignified existence. But above all, the order of chivalry in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries—an order which even yet throws such a halo of poetry and romance around the middle ages in which it nourished, walking hand in hand with religion, which had consecrated it—helped much to civilize the barbarian character of the age, and improve the moral condition of society.

As to science in the epoch of which we write, it was mostly occupied in the investigation of those subjects which lay next the Christian heart of the people; namely, in theology, philosophy, and ethics. And how great has been its success! What great results has not mediaeval science effected! I need only mention the immortal names of Anselem of Canterbury, of St. Bernard, Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, Roger Bacon, and Vincent of Beauvais; men whose works in theology, philosophy, history, and in the natural sciences, remain to the present time as monuments of genius, hardly equalled by ancient or modern productions.

At this period, too, sprang up the universities, which realize in their conception the universal idea of catholicity. They were founded in every land, and all the sciences were taught in {273} them. The Church herself, in the Council of Vienne, in 1311, decreed that, beside the chairs of theology, philosophy, medicine, and jurisprudence, there should be in the four principal universities, and wherever the papal court should be held, professors of Hebrew, Chaldaic, Arabic, and Greek. But what especially shows the intellectual bent of this age is the zeal and youthful ardor manifested in every rank for all the different branches of science. Popes, emperors, kings, and nobles emulated each other in this respect, and consecrated their energies to the furtherance of learning.

If we now turn to the state of art and poetry, on every side the old cathedrals and monuments erected in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries meet our eyes, and in their various styles of Gothic and Roman architecture excite our admiration, fill us with holy awe, and, as they lift their spires to heaven, speak more eloquently of the greatness of the spirit and aesthetic feeling of the people than any words of ours could do. In the suite of architecture the other arts followed and were elevated to its height; and even before Dante, and contemporaneously with him, lived the founders of the Italian schools of painting and sculpture, which so soon after attained to such perfection. As for poetry, we need only remember that at this time most of the modern languages began to be developed and become the mediums of literature. "It was the gay time of the troubadours and incense-singers," says Vilmar, in his History of German National Literature, "in which the melody of song rang out from hamlet to hamlet, from city to city, from castle to castle, and court to court, and a thousand harmonious echoes, near and far, from hill and valley, answered out of the people's heart." It was the first classic period of German literature, in which the national and artistic epic appear well developed in such works as the Nibelungen, Gudrun, Parceval, and others.

No doubt there are shadows on the picture of the age just described, as there are in our own. But still, whoever considers the facts we have alleged, cannot fail to admit the age as a real epoch in the history of the Christian world, unless he is blind or wilfully shuts his eyes to the light. In view of these facts, also, he must perceive that the civilization of the various western nations was most intimately connected; that it rested on the same common foundation; and that the ideas which ruled them and constituted their vital principle were eternally and universally true, and became the platform of succeeding intellectual evolution. Hence, those nations, though differing in origin and political independence, made but one grand spiritual community, bound together by a common faith and a common church. But if we would now express the spirit of this epoch in a philosophical formula, we should say that it was the period in which the Roman and Germanic races were converted to Christianity after the decease of the old world and of pagan civilization; and after these races had become a spiritual community under the hierarchy of the popes, and become bound together under the government of one worldly empire, after various combats with outward enemies and triumphs over internal elements of discord; when these races had appropriated to themselves Christianity as their vital element, and recognized it as the power which moved and governed the world, and sought to produce, realize, and use Christian ideas in every direction, in the sciences, in arts, in society, in the state, and in the Church. The Protestant, Vilmar, whom we have already cited, agrees with this assertion, when he writes: "It was the spirit of Christianity which had become the spirit of the western nations, and which inspired, in the highest degree, the higher ranks of society, the nobility, and the clergy; and which penetrated into the masses, not so much as a theory, but as a fact—not as a science, but as an element of their life; it was Christianity, not as a simple doctrine or idea, but as a practical {274} boon and benefit; it was a joy to the Christian Church and to its internal and external glory, and a blessing with its gifts, more general than it has been since, and so strong that even the struggle between the popes and the emperors, for over two centuries, could not affect the great happiness of men whose social and individual existence was actuated by the spirit of Christianity."

III.

Taking, therefore, this comprehensive view of the state of society; considering the triumph of the Christian idea in history, the consciousness of Christianity as the principle of life in the newly-organized world, and the struggle of this element to mould and fashion everything according to its nature, we may easily answer the question as to the character of a poem which should thoroughly express the spirit of the age. It would not be hard to show that the Divine Comedy of Dante derived its matter, its form, its name, and its sentiment from the peculiar condition of the epoch. In fact, any poem that represents, the conquest of the Christian idea in all conditions of private and public life must ever exercise great influence over men. But in order to give a poetical representation of this thought, the poet should choose a framework sufficiently large to contain the vast picture in which God and man, heaven and earth, nature and grace, creation and redemption, past, present, and future, science and life, church and state, appear; and such a framework was offered to him in the Christian idea of the judgment, of God, and of the existence of the other world, in its three divisions of hell, purgatory, and paradise.

Now, only by carrying up ordinary facts to this higher, ideal sphere was it possible to overleap the limits of time and space, and give greater unity to the picture, and make it a masterpiece. But he who lives here below is ignorant of the future, and of the condition of the departed souls. Only by a supernatural revelation can we know their lot. Consequently, the form of a wonderful vision, in which the poet enters into communion with the spirits of the dead, and wanders through their regions, is the most natural manner of representing his idea in the poem; consequently, it should be called by right a "divine drama," a Divina Commedia, as the most appropriate title.

The true scope of the poem, therefore, must not be sought for either in a purely religious, or a purely political, or a purely scientific or personal point of view; but in the prosecution of a far more general, comprehensive, higher, philosophic, theological, and particularly moral or ethical object, to which all the details of the work are subordinated. Hence, he who examines these details from this or that stand-point may give them the most different explanations, as in fact many commentators of the poem do—not having fathomed its depths and perceived the general object of the sacred epic.

Dante himself leaves us no reason to doubt on this point. In his dedicatory epistle to Cardinal Grande della Scala, he speaks thus: "The meaning of this poem is not simple, but multiple. The first sense is in the words, the second in the things expressed: the one is called literal, the other moral or allegorical. Taken literally, the whole work is simple, and expresses the condition of souls after death, for this is expressed by the whole tenor of the poem. But taken in the higher sense, its object is man, either deserving rewards or chastisements through the exercise of his free will. And if we wish to name the kind of philosophy contained in the work, we must call it moral, or ethics. For the whole tends to practice and action, and is not content with simple contemplation and speculation."

Giacomo di Dante, the son of the poet, develops more clearly the scope of the work, in the preface to his {275} commentary. "The whole work," says he, "is divided into three parts; the first of which treats of hell, the second of purgatory, and the third of paradise. In order to understand the general allegorical bearing, I say that the object of the poet is to represent to us in figurative language the three several divisions of mankind. The first part considers vice in man, and is called hell, to show us that mortal sin by its depth of iniquity is directly opposed to the sublimity of virtue. The second contemplates those who detach themselves from vice and strive after virtue. His place for such persons he calls purgatory, or place of purification, to show the condition of the soul, which cleanses itself from its sins in time, for time is the medium in which all changes happen. The third considers perfect man, and is called paradise, in order to express the greatness of its bliss, and the elevation of mind connected with it; two things without which a knowledge of the supreme good cannot be attained. And thus the poet pursues his object through the three several parts of his poem by means of the figures and representations with which he surrounds himself."

But the poet, in order to realize his grand idea, should be gifted not only with the highest poetical genius in order to represent the philosophical principles of Christianity in the peculiar characters and types of Christian art, and give them a new, independent, and majestic appearance; but he should be also possessed, on the one hand, of a clear and perfect knowledge of Christian doctrine and ethics, and a deep and extensive knowledge of philosophy and theology; and, on the other, of a profound and extensive acquaintance with men and human life, as well as with the history of the human race. Both these requisites are found in Dante in the highest degree. Christian faith and morality is as well and correctly explained by him as by the best approved theologians. But this fact will not excite our surprise if we consider that, in his Vision, without however sacrificing his individuality, he adheres strictly to the great doctors of the age, Saints Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure, as King John of Saxony clearly proves in his commentary on the Divine Comedy.

Hence, at an early period Dante's work became a favorite theme of scholastic study, and under the portal of the cathedral at Florence there is seen an old statue of the poet near that of the patron saint of the city, with this inscription: Theologus Dante, nullius dogmatis expers—"Dante the theologian, to whom no dogma was unknown." In the Raphael chamber in the Vatican, he is represented crowned with laurel on the famous painting of the disputa, among the popes, bishops, and doctors assembled round the holy sacrament of the altar.

An occasional writer has suspected the faith of Dante, because in his poem he deplores several abuses in the Church, such as the corruption of some of the clergy and monks, and lashes some of the popes and the relation of the papacy to the secular power in his time. But such a suspicion is unwarranted when we consider that many Catholic reformers, even saints like Peter Damien, Saint Thomas of Canterbury, Saint Bernard, Saint Hildegard, Jacopone, and others, have spoken even more strongly than Dante against abuses; and that he never confounds the use with the abuse, excrescences of an institution with the institution itself, or persons with principles.

Dante's thorough knowledge of human life and of history is fully shown in his surprising explanations, and by the manner in which with one trait he paints the famous characters and facts in the Commedia, as well as by the examples and narrations which he takes from all times, regions, and nations of the earth. But in his judgment of persons and facts in the past and present, Dante is not always impartial or just, for, being {276} subject to human frailties and prejudices, he is often guilty of great injustice to those against whom he had motives of hatred. Consequently, in order to appreciate Dante's poem on this point, we must consider the character of his life and fortunes, as well as the history of his native city and country.

Dante Alighieri was born at Florence in the year 1265, and received in baptism the name of Durante, which was shortened to that of Dante. Early in his youth an event happened which determined his life, and to which posterity is indebted for his great work. In the year 1274, in the ninth year of his age, Dante saw, at a church festival, the daughter of Falco Portinari, Beatrice, a child eight years old, whom he says, in one of his poems, no one could see without crying out, "This is not a woman, but one of the most beautiful of the heavenly angels!" He conceived for her, on the spot, the most violent passion, but, at the same time, one so pure and holy that Beatrice, even on earth and wedded to another, became for him and his muse a perfect ideal that inspired all his first and tenderest poems, and moved him to high and holy thoughts. But after Beatrice's untimely death, she became, in the imagination of the poet, a holy spirit, whose glory he undertook to exalt after a wonderful vision which he had, and who became, in all the sorrows of his life, a star of hope and anchor of safety to him. A few years after the decease of his beloved, Dante espoused Gemma di Donati, a lady of a noble family in Florence, and through this marriage, as well as by his profound theological and philosophical studies, he was drawn into the vortex of the politics of his native city, in which, after many struggles, the Guelph party gained the ascendency, toward the end of the thirteenth century.

Sprung from a Guelph family and surrounded by Guelph influences, and prominent by his genius in the party, although keeping clear of its excesses, Dante, from 1293 to 1299, filled many posts of honor, especially many places of ambassador, and was elected, with five others, in the year 1300, to the priorate, the highest office in the republic. But soon after his prosperous career was changed to one of misfortune. In 1292 a division was made in the Guelph party, when, under the tribune Giano della Bella, the constitution of the state was changed, the nobles driven from the magistracy, and the government of the city given entirely into the hands of the plebeians; and this division led gradually to an open rupture between the parties called the Blacks and the Whites "Neri" and "Bianchi." The latter were by far the more moderate, and the Ghibellines, both nobles and plebeians, joined them. Dante belonged to the Whites, who stood at the head of affairs. But by the interference of Charles of Valois, whom the Blacks called to Florence in order to seize the government with his aid, the Whites lost their power, and Dante, who was then on an embassy to Rome, together with the other chiefs of the party, was exiled by a decree, which was repealed in the year 1302.

This trial was important in two ways to our poet. It excited his hatred against one party of the Guelphs, and then against them all; and evoked his inclination for the Ghibellines and his dislike toward the popes, who gave assistance to the Guelph party, and finally made him a strong partisan of the Ghibellines and their operations against Florence, and of the empire against the papacy. On the other hand, he became, by his misfortunes, more devoted to virtue, his studies, and his poem, from the prosecution of which he had been distracted by political cares; so that the whole history of his exile is nothing else than the history of his scientific life and the execution of the Divine Comedy. After having wandered from city to city, from country to country, to Verona, Bologna, Padua, Paris, and England, and dwelt for a time in Pisa, and in {277} Lucca at the monastery of Fonteavelluna and in Udine, and after having finished his great works—"The Banquet," "De Vulgari Eloquio," "De Monarchia"—and the three parts of his great poem, he rested at last in Ravenna, where, in the year 1321, he fell sick and died, in the 56th year of his age, after having received, as Boccacio tells us, the last sacraments with humility and piety, and become reconciled to God by true repentance for all he had done contrary to his holy will. The poet was buried in the Franciscan church, where his ashes still repose.

This sketch of his life and fortunes gives us the key to the solution of many peculiarities of the Divine Comedy. We can now understand why politics play so conspicuous a rôle in the great poem, in spite of its higher philosophico-theological and ethical scope; and why some should have considered the work as of a purely political character. This sketch of his life also shows the partial truth contained in the assertion of Wegele, a German commentator on Dante. This writer says the leading thought of the poet was to work out his own salvation by considering the state of the world at his time; and in fact Dante found consolation and strength against earthly misfortune, found the way of virtue and eternal salvation, in the execution of his poem. For similar reasons, others considered the poem as purely didactic, and this view has a foundation in the confession of the poet himself.

But above all, the life of Dante explains his ideas about the relations between the papacy and the empire, expressed not only in his book on monarchy, but also in the Divine Comedy; and his strange judgments about persons and circumstances, especially of his own age. It is true Dante never for a moment disputes the primacy and divine appointment of the popes in the Church; and even in hell he describes those pontiffs whom he condemns to it as having certain distinctions. He maintains in the clearest manner the freedom and independence of the divine power in regard to the secular, and acknowledges a certain superiority in the former, for he requires that Caesar should have that reverence for Peter which the first-born son should have to his father, so that Caesar, illuminated by the light of paternal grace, might shine more brilliantly over the earth. But as Dante was possessed with the Ghibelline idea, and as he saw in the temporal power of the popes, who were the head of the Guelph party, the greatest obstacle to the success of his principles, we must not be surprised to find him the enemy of the pope's temporal power, and, in his judgment of men and things, to see him frequently led away by party rage and revenge for injuries received.

Dante, however, was noble and Christian enough to keep his eyes open even to the faults of his own party, and he spared not even the heads of the Ghibellines, as Frederic II. and other noble and popular persons, if they seemed to him deserving of blame. Nor must we imagine that Dante really thought all those were in hell whom he places there, any more than he thought the real pains of hell were such as he described them: only the vulgar could believe this. Those persons were only such as in his eyes were guilty of mortal sins; and the punishments inflicted were such as his fancy conceived to be adequate to the guilt. But we must bear in mind that his judgments must always be received with caution when there is question of facts, persons, and circumstances connected with the opposite party; and we have the right to examine and correct the criticisms of Dante by the light of history. Dante, for instance, goes so far as to put in hell even Pope Celestine, who, after governing the Church for six months, tired of the tiara, went into solitude; because, in the opinion of the poet, Celestine renounced the pontificate through timidity and weakness, and made way {278} for the hated Boniface, VIII. The Church, on the contrary, puts Celestine among the saints on account of his extraordinary virtues.

But let us now turn from the dark side of the picture, and from the weakness of the great man, to take a view of the fortunes of the Commedia in the course of six centuries. We have already in the beginning of this essay spoken of the great number of editions, translations, and commentaries on the great work, and in this respect no other work can compare with it except the Holy Scripture and the Following of Christ. But these proofs of admiration and study of the Divine Comedy are not equally divided among the centuries, and the recent and renowned writer of Dante's life, Count Caesar Balbo, justly remarks that, at those periods in which an earnest religious and truly patriotic feeling pervaded the fatherland of the poet and Christian Europe in general, those proofs are to be found in greater number than when the knowledge and study of supreme truth had grown less, love of religion and country had died or gone astray, and the minds of men sunk in the earthly and the sensible. Thus, in the fifteenth century, after the invention of the art of printing, nineteen or twenty editions of Dante appeared; in the sixteenth century, forty; in the seventeenth, only three; in the eighteenth, thirty-four; in the nineteenth, up to 1839, over seventy, and perhaps up to the present year one hundred. This is a striking proof of the increasing love of the spiritual in our century, in spite of the great influence of materialism.

But in this age of surprises and contradictions, a new glory of which he had never dreamt has been added to Dante's name. For some time in Italy that political party which aims at the subversion of the existing order of things, and the establishment of a single republic or monarchy, and which finds in the papacy or States of the Church the principal obstacle to the carrying out of its plans, has made use of commentaries on the Divine Comedy, among other means, to spread its principles among the people. Hence, two Italian refugees, Ugo Foscolo and Rosetti, during their sojourn in England, undertook the dreary task of explaining Dante's poem in a purely political point of view, and with learning and wit they have attempted to prove that the poet was opposed to the temporal power of the pope, and the head, or at least a member, of a secret society.

In Italy, however, and in Germany, especially by the great critic, Schlegel, this theory has been refuted. It falls to the ground by the simple consideration of the fact, that if the Divine Comedy was as clear in every point as where he speaks against the popes of his time and their earthly possessions, no commentary on the poem would be necessary. Yet, no sooner was war against Rome proclaimed at Paris and Turin, than recourse was had to Dante, and an attempt made to conjure up his spirit as a partisan in the fight. Rosetti already occupies a chair in the Sardinian capital, from which he expounds Dante in the interest of Italian unity, and in Germany the secret societies applaud his course; so that, if in 1865 there be in Italy a celebration of Dante's six hundredth birthday, as in Germany there is of Schiller, we may expect to find the politicians make use of it to further their ends.

So then we have lived to see the day when Dante, the Ghibelline and fanatical adherent of the German empire; who was opposed to the temporal power of the pope only because it stood in the way of a universal secular monarchy; who invoked the wrath of heaven on the German Albert because he delayed coming to subjugate Italy; and who wrote the famous letter to the Emperor Henry VII., inviting him to come and chastise his native city; when that Dante, I say, has become the herald and standard-bearer of a party which calls itself the old national Guelph party, whose {279} watch-word is "Death to the Germans and foreign rulers," and which, like the ancient Guelphs, is aided by French soldiers in its struggle against the German emperors.

In spite of his Ghibelline proclivities, Dante was filled with lively faith, and he had so great a veneration for the power of the keys entrusted by Christ to Peter and his successors that even in hell he bowed with respect before one of those who had borne them, and even in his narration of the arrest and ill-treatment of Boniface VIII., whom he hated and placed in hell, he breaks out into the following strains:

      "Lo! the flower de luce
  Enters Alagna; in his Vicar Christ?
  Himself a captive, and his mockery
  Acted again. Lo! to his holy lip
  The vinegar and gall once more applied;
  And he 'twixt living robbers doomed to bleed.
  Lo! the new Pilate, of whose cruelty
  Such violence cannot fill the measure up,
  With no decree to sanction, pushes on
  Into the temple his yet eager sails.
  O sovereign Master! when shall I rejoice
  To see the vengeance, which thy wrath, well pleased,
  In secret silence broods?"

        (Purg. xx. 85-97. Carey's translation.)

So we have lived to see the day when the author of the above lines is represented as the herald of a party which has treated so shamefully the gentle successor of Boniface VIII., Pius IX., whose only fault was to have opened the prison doors to his enemies, and recalled them from exile with too great indulgence. They have made him drink the chalice of humiliation to the dregs, and, leagued with a French despot, they renew in the Vicar of Christ all the insults heaped of old on the Saviour by the Roman soldiers, when, putting on him the mantle of purple and the crown of thorns, they mocked him, saying, "Hail, King of the Jews!" Dante was no such Christ-killer.

And what folly is it not to imagine Dante, the haughty aristocrat, whose pride of birth shows itself everywhere in his poem, a partisan of a faction which, like that which governed Florence during the middle ages, is made up of the rabble and of levelers, haters of all nobility.

In another age, when it was not the principle of public life to have no principle at all, such contradictions as those of which we write would have been incomprehensible; but in our own century, in which truth wages an unequal conflict with falsehood, not so much because men do not know how to separate truth from falsehood, as because men find truth less useful for their purposes than falsehood, the conduct of the so-called national party in Italy is easily explained. But if Dante were to rise up from the grave, how strongly he would rebuke those who are making such an unwarrantable use of his name! He would quote for them, perhaps, as he does in many parts of his great work, an apt text of the Holy Scriptures; and none, probably, would come sooner to his mind than the following:

"Why have the Gentiles raged, and the people devised vain things?

"The kings of the earth stood up, and the princes met together, against the Lord and against his Christ.

"Let us break their bonds asunder: and let us cast away their yoke from us.

"He that dwelleth in heaven shall laugh at them; and the Lord shall deride them. Then shall he speak to them in his anger, and trouble them in his rage."

{280}

MISCELLANY.

SCIENCE.

Important Geological Discovery.—Sir Charles Lyell, in his address to the British Association a few months ago, mentioned the discovery of a fossil animal much more ancient than any previously supposed to exist. Heretofore, as is well known, an immense series of rocks below the silurians have been termed azoic, as exhibiting no remains of animal life; but this term must now be dismissed.

It is well known that a staff of competent geologists, under the direction of Sir William E. Logan, have been engaged for some years in a geological survey of Canada. The oldest rocks in that country are granite, described as upper and lower Laurentian, their thickness being 40,000 feet, with bands of limestone intervening. In one of these bands in the lower series of rocks, which are the most ancient, there were discovered, in 1858, certain flattish rounded masses, which seemed to be of organic origin. These were examined under the microscope by Dr. Dawson of Montreal, who, from their structure, declared them to be foraminifera, similar in character, but by no means in size, to the foraminifera living at the present day in vast multitudes at the bottom of the sea; and to this newly-discovered and wonder-exciting creature he gave the significant name Eozoon Canadense, or the Dawn-animal of Canada.

The foraminifer of the present day is a microscopic creature; the eozoon was enormous in comparison, about twelve inches diameter, and from four to six inches in thickness, presenting the general form of a much flattened globe. Its growth was by the process technically known as gemmation, or the continued development of cells upon the surface; hence, these cells form successive layers of chambers, separated by exceedingly thin walls or laminae of calcareous matter. They are now all filled with solid matter, mineral silicates, serpentine, and others; but sections or slices cut from the mass, and examined, show the form of the cells still perfect, and what is more remarkable, the very minute tubes (tubuli) by which communication was maintained from one to the other throughout the entire animal. Mr. Sterry Hunt, the chemist employed on the Canadian survey, is of opinion that the silicates and solid matters were directly deposited in waters in the midst of which the eozoon was still growing, or had only recently perished, and that these solid matters penetrated, enclosed, and preserved the structure of the animals precisely as carbonate of lime might have done. Here, then, we have an example of fossilization, accomplished by reactions going on at the earth's surface, not by slow metamorphism in deeply-buried sediments.

Papers on this subject and one by Sir W. Logan himself—have been read before the Geological Society, and will shortly be published; and at a recent meeting of the Royal Society, a highly, interesting communication in further elucidation of the matter was made by Dr. Carpenter, who has devoted himself for some years to the study of foraminifera. He confirms Dr. Dawson's general conclusions, and identifies among living foraminifera the species which has most affinity with this very ancient dawn-animal. He makes out the identification in an ingenious way, resting his proof on the peculiar structure of the cell-walls, and of the minute tubuli by which, as before observed, communication between the cells was maintained. Henceforth, we shall have to regard the silurian fossils as modern.

Since this discovery was made public, it has been ascertained that there are fossil remains of the eozoon in the serpentine rocks of Great Britain. The importance of this of course depends on the age of serpentine, and that is a question which geologists have not yet settled; but some of them are of opinion that the British serpentines are of the same age as the Laurentian rocks in which the Canadian eozoon was found. Pending their decision of the question, keen explorers are on the search for other specimens.

Curious and Delicate Experiments.—Dr. Bence Jones recently communicated to the Royal Society of Great Britain the result of a series of experiments by {281} which he had attempted to ascertain the time required for certain crystallized substances to reach the textures of the body after being taken into the stomach. In other words, he proposed to solve these problems: If a dose of medicine be given, what becomes of it, and does it arrive quickly or slowly at the parts for which it is intended? It is obvious, that if these questions could be accurately determined, medical men would have a better knowledge than at present of the action and progress, so to speak, of medicine within the body. Substances, when taken into the stomach, pass into the blood, which may be supposed to distribute them to all parts of the body. If, in ordinary circumstances, no trace of a particular substance can be found in a body, but is found after doses of the substance have been administered, it is clear that the doses are the source from which that trace is derived.

Lithium is a substance sometimes given as medicine. Dr. Jones gave half a grain of chloride of lithium to a guinea-pig, on three successive days; and, by means of the spectrum analysis, he found lithium in every tissue of the animal's body, even in the cartilages, the cornea, and the crystalline lens of the eye. In another experiment, the lithium was found in the eye eight hours after the dose had been administered; and in another, four hours after. In another, the lithium was found after thirty-two minutes, in the cartilage of the hip, and in the outer part of the eye. These cases show that chemical substances do find their way very quickly into the tissues of the body; and a similar result appears from experiments on the human subject. A patient, dying of diseased heart, took fifteen grains of nitrate of lithia thirty-six hours before death, and a similar quantity six hours before death. Lithium was afterward found distinctly in the cartilage of one of the joints, and faintly in the eye and the blood. A like result was obtained with a patient who had taken ten grains of carbonate of lithia five and a half hours before death. And to this Dr. Bence Jones adds, that he expects to find lithium in the lens of the eye after operation for cataract.

Giant Trees of California.—Some time ago, much regret was expressed that the giant trees (Wellingtonia) of California had been recklessly cut down. Their fall was a loss to the world. But Sir William Hooker has received a letter in which Professor Brewer, of the California State Geological Survey, reports that "an interesting discovery has been made this year of the existence of the big trees in great abundance on the western flanks of the Sierra Nevada. They abound along a belt at 5,000-7,000 feet of altitude for a distance of more than twenty-five miles, sometimes in groves, at others scattered through the forest in great numbers. You can have no idea of the grandeur they impart to the scenery, where at times a hundred trees are in sight at once, over fifteen feet in diameter, their rich foliage contrasting so finely with their bright cinnamon-colored bark. The largest I saw was 106 feet in circumference at four feet from the ground, and 276 feet high.

"There seems no danger of the speedy extinction of the species, as it is now known in quite a number of localities; and, contrary to the popular notion, there are immense numbers of younger trees of all sizes, from the seedling up to the largest. There has been much nonsense and error published regarding them."

Photographing the Interior of the Great Pyramid.—Our readers may remember that some time last winter a distinguished English savant, Professor Piazzi Smyth, went out to Egypt for the purpose of taking photographic views of the interior chambers of the great pyramid. The impossibility of lighting these vast halls had hitherto proved an insuperable bar to the undertaking; ordinary methods of illumination seemed, if we may so speak, to make no impression upon the thick darkness. But with the discovery of the wonderful powers of the magnesium wire light, this difficulty was removed. Professor Smyth writes as follows to the London Chemical News; his letter is dated East Tomb, Great Pyramid, February 2d:

"We are settled down at last to the measuring; the chief part of the time hitherto (about three weeks) having been occupied in concert with a party of laborers, furnished by the Egyptian government, in clearing away rubbish from important parts of the interior, {282} and in cleansing and preparing it for nice observation. The magnesium wire light is something astounding in its power of illuminating difficult places. With any number of wax candles which we have yet taken into either the king's chamber or the grand gallery, the impression left on the mind is merely seeing the candles and whatever is very close to them, so that you have small idea whether you are in a palace or a cottage; but burn a triple strand of magnesium wire, and in a moment you see the whole apartment and appreciate the grandeur of its size and the beauty of its proportions. This effect, so admirably complete, too, as it is, and perfect in its way, probably results from the extraordinary intensity of the light, apart from its useful photographic property; for side by side with the magnesium light the wax candle flame looked not much brighter than the red granite of the walls of the room. …Whatever can be reached by hand is chipped, and hammered, and fractured to a frightful degree; and this maltreatment by modern men, combined with the natural wear and tear of some of the softer stones under so huge a pressure as they are exposed to, and for so long duration, has made the measuring of what is excessively tedious and difficult, and the concluding what was, in some cases, rather ambiguous."

ART.

Domestic.—The National Academy exhibition will probably be open before our readers receive these pages; and from those cognizant of the internal arrangements of the new building, and of the preparations making by our resident artists, we learn that the collection will exceed in the number, and probably in the merit of the pictures, any of its predecessors. The make-shift character and unsuitableness of the rooms in which the Academy has of late years held its annual exhibitions, have deterred many of its most prominent members from sending in contributions, which they were satisfied could not be seen to advantage; and this sin of omission was so evident in the last two or three exhibitions, that one of the leading objects of the Academy—the improvement of public taste by the display of the annual productions of our best artists—seemed in danger of being defeated. The new galleries, it is said, can exhibit to advantage more than fifteen hundred pictures, and a capacity so ample, in conjunction with the prestige attending the opening of the new building, ought to cover the walls to their fullest extent. The public will not be surprised then to learn that an unusual number of artists have been, and are still, busily applying the final touches to their works, in anticipation of "opening day" (to borrow a phrase from the milliners); and it is to be hoped that the Academy, having now "ample room and verge enough" to satisfy fastidious members, may soon become the fostering abode of art which its projectors intended to make it. A slight foretaste of what the exhibition is likely to contain was afforded at the recent reception of the Brooklyn Art Association, where an elaborate and effective work by Grignoux, entitled "Among the Alps," and several by Leutze, Gifford, Huntington, Stone, White, Hart, Beard, and others, were on view. A number of pictures destined for the Academy were also exhibited at the monthly social gatherings of the Century and Athenaeum clubs of this city in the beginning of April. We propose to give an extended notice of the new building and its art collections in our next number.

The inaugural ceremonies of the New York association for "The Advancement of Science and Art" took place at the Cooper Institute on the evening of March 31st. One of the objects of the association is the collection and preservation of works of art, and one of the fifteen sections into which it is divided is devoted to the fine arts. Amid the multiplicity of special branches, which the association proposes to investigate and promote, from jurisprudence and the prevention of pauperism down to chronology, the fine arts must necessarily receive but a limited share of attention; but even this, if guided by taste and intelligence, is better than the indifference to aesthetic matters which is too often characteristic of a commercial metropolis; and the association will find plenty of well-wishers, and, we trust, some who will add substantial aid to their sympathy.

Among the attractions of the Central Park will be a hall of statuary, now in the course of preparation in the old {283} arsenal building near the Fifth Avenue, which is not yet open to public inspection. It will contain, what ought to prove a boon to all students of form, a collection of casts from Crawford's principal works. The Park Commissioners have, in this instance, shown an enlightened enterprise which might be imitated by wealthy private individuals. A few bronze statues of American statesmen, soldiers, or authors, placed on appropriate sites in the park, would add greatly to its attractions. And if it should be thought desirable to illustrate a national era, what one more worthy than the memorable epoch through which we are now passing, the termination of which will be coeval with the completion of the park?

A new group by Rogers, entitled "The Home Guard—Midnight on the Border," attracts throngs of gazers before the windows of Williams and Stevens's art emporium in Broadway. The story is naturally and effectively told. A mother and her daughter, the only inmates, probably, of some lonely farm-house, have been aroused from their slumbers by marauding bushwhackers, and tremblingly prepare to repel the assailants, or sell their lives dearly. The elder of the two females, with her body slightly poised on one foot, stands in attitude of rapt attention, while mechanically cocking a revolver, her sole weapon of defence. The daughter, less resolute in expression and action, cowers at her side. As a work of art, it is perhaps inferior to the "Wounded Scout" or "One Shot More," which exhibit the artist's highest efforts in characteristic expression and the management of details; but it presents a vivid idea of a scene we fear only too frequently enacted along the border, and will speak to aftertimes of the horrors of civil war. The steady improvement which Mr. Rogers has shown in his groups, illustrating the episodes of our great struggle, can be readily seen by an inspection of his collected works, the earliest of which were scarcely better than clever caricatures; and it is not surprising to learn that there is a demand for them in Europe, whither the artist himself proposes going during the present season. Foreign critics may now obtain a correct notion of the outward aspects of the participators in the war, if they cannot appreciate its motives or character. Mr. Rogers is at present engaged upon a group entitled "The Bushwhacker," which he will finish before his departure. According to one of the daily newspapers it "represents a wife in the act of drawing away from her husband—an old, grizzled, and care-worn fighter—his gun, and at the same time appealing to him to leave his perilous vocation. The Bushwhacker clasps in his arms his little child, who is toying with his shaggy beard. If we may judge from the half-relenting expression of his countenance, we can safely conclude that the wife will not sue in vain, although he still resistingly grasps his musket with one hand. The pose and execution of the figures are carefully attended to, and the work is one of the most spirited and successful of Mr. Rogers' productions."

Among other American artists who intend to visit Europe the present season, are Ives, the sculptor, and Haseltine and Dix, painters of coast and marine scenery. The last named gentleman four years ago forsook his profession, in which he had begun to attain some skill, to accept a place on the military staff of his father, Major General Dix, and now, with renewed ardor, resumes his pencil. He will study principally along the Mediterranean coasts.

A very miscellaneous collection of pictures, containing a vast deal of rubbish, and a few good specimens of foreign artists, was disposed of at auction by Messrs. Leeds & Miner, in the latter part of March, at tolerably fair prices. The following will serve as examples: "Snow Scene" by Gignoux, $900 (quite as much as it was worth); "Lady with Flowers," by Plassan, $750; "A Reverie," by Chavet, $850; "Evening Prayer," by E. Frère, $1,000; "The Alchemyst," by Webb, $380. A curious essay of Col. Trumbull in the perilous regions of "high art," entitled "The Knighting of De Wilton," fetched the moderate sum of $150. As an example of the style of composition and treatment affected by the painters who illustrated Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery, it was both amusing and instructive. Fortunately for his reputation, the painter of "Bunker Hill" and the "Sortie from Gibraltar" did not often recur to Walter Scott for subjects.

Quite recently there has been on exhibition at Goupil's gallery a remarkable picture by the French artist Jean Léon Gérôme, entitled L'Almée, which {284} may be thus briefly described: Scene, a dilapidated Egyptian Khan or coffee shop; in the foreground and centre of the picture a Ghawazee, or dancing girl, performing a striking but immodest dance, which consists wholly of movements of the body from the hips, the legs remaining stationary; a group of fierce looking and fantastically bedizened Bashi-Bazouks, sitting cross-legged on a divan, spectators of the performance; and in the background some musicians and an attendant or two. It would be almost impossible to over-praise the marvellous finish of this work, the skilful blending of the colors, the subdued yet appropriate tone, or the dramatic force of the composition. If these qualities were all that are demanded in a work of art, we might stop here; but when the subject is repulsive, they prove a source of aggravation rather than of pleasure, and few, we think, will deny that the scene depicted by Gérôme, though illustrating a peculiar and perhaps important phase of Oriental life, is one of too gross a character to subserve the purposes of true art. A vast deal of sentiment has been wasted upon the "moral significance" of pictures of this type. The less said upon that score, the better. We do not instruct children to abstain from vice by putting immoral books into their hands, trusting that some innate sense of propriety may prompt them thereby to see virtue in a clearer light. If disposed to criticise the technical part of this work, we should say that the finish is too elaborate. Everything, to the smallest minutiae, is polished almost to the degree of hardness, and one instinctively longs for an occasional roughness or evidence of the brush—something of that manual movement which indicates the passing thought of the painter. Where all is of so regular and level a merit, the contrasts which should give strength and spirit to a painting are sure to be wanting. In this respect Gérôme compares unfavorably with Meissonier. Both finish with scrupulous exactness; but the latter never makes finish paramount to the proper expression of his subject. Hence the life and action, so to speak, of his most nicely elaborated figures. In the Almée, on the other hand, the group of soldiers, though wearing an admirable expression of stoical sensuality, are too rigid and immovable, too much like well painted copies of the lay figures which served as models for them. So, too, of many of the details, excepting always the draperies, which could not be improved. A little more attention to the ars celare artem would render Gérôme almost unapproachable in his peculiar style.

Before leaving Goupil's, we cannot avoid drawing attention to some studies of trees and foliage, by Richards, of Philadelphia, now exhibited there. One of them, representing the interior of a wood in early autumn, is the best delineation of that phase of nature we have recently seen. Generally, the pictures of this artist are wanting in relief; his foliage lies flat upon the canvas; the trunks of his trees have no rounded outline, nor can the eye penetrate through the recesses of the wood; there is, in fact, no atmosphere to speak of. These defects have been happily overcome in the present instance, and, with no lack of Pre-Raphaelite power in delineating the outward aspect of nature, there is a pervading tone of melancholy appropriate to the scene and the season. Less remarkable than this, but of considerable merit, is a mountain landscape, in which the season depicted is also the autumn.

Foreign.—Abroad there seems to be a perfect fever to buy and sell works of art. "Everybody," says the London Athenaeum, "who has a collection, seems determined to dispose of it, and accident has thrown a large number of works on the art-market; but as those who have taste and means seem just as eager to buy as the collectors are to sell, the activity of the art-marts is but a natural consequence of the law of supply and demand, the natural limit having been extended in several instances by the accidental re-appearance of many works twice or three times during the season." This has been the case especially with respect to the pictures of Delacroix. It is always dangerous to assume the prophetic character; but it appears very improbable that, on the average, works of art will fetch higher sums than they have during the present season.'' In Paris the Pourtalès sale continues, and is daily crowded by eager virtuosi, whose competition runs up prices to an extent bordering on the extravagant. The proceeds of the third portion of the sale, which occupied three days, and included the engraved {285} gems, antique jewelry and glass, were 45,743 francs; those of the fourth section, the coins and medals, 18,430 francs; and of the fifth, which comprised the sculpture in ivory and wood, the renaissance bronzes, arms, faiences, glass, and some miscellaneous articles, 505,640 francs. The following are some of the prices obtained for the sculptures in ivory, of which there was a magnificent collection of 70 pieces: A statuette of Hercules resting on his club, one foot on the head of the Hydra, purchased for England, $3,280.—Venus with Cupid at her side, left by Fiamingo as security in the house at Leghorn wherein he died, $1,180.—A renaissance bronze bust of Charles IX., of France, life size, artist unknown, formerly the property of the Duc de Berri, brought $9,000.—"Henry II. ware," the well-known biberon, with cover bearing the arms of France, surmounted by a coronet, and bearing the arms and initials of Diane de Poitiers, uninjured, just over ten inches in height, $5,500.—The celebrated Marie Stuart cup, presented to her when affianced to the Dauphin, was disposed of for $5,420. It is but a few inches in height, but is covered, inside and out, with designs illustrating classical mythology and allegory, and with profuse ornamentation, all in exquisite taste and of perfect workmanship. It was executed by Jean Court dit Vigier, about 1556.—A round basin, in grisaille, by Pierre Raymond (1558), representing the history of Adam and Eve, in enamel on a black ground, brought $4,040; a large oval salver, by Jean Courtois, enamelled in the richest manner, representing the passage of the Red Sea, with borders decorated with figures, medallions, etc., $6,000. These prices, it may be observed, were considered by competent judges to be rather low! The vases and goblets of rock crystal were also well contested. A magnificent head, of Apollo, in marble, formerly in the Justiniani gallery, was bought, it is said, for the British Museum, for $9,000; and the celebrated Pallas vase, the most perfect specimen of Greek work in porphyry extant, fetched $3,400.

The new chapel of the Palais de l'Elysée has just been completed, and is said to be a perfect gem of artistic decoration. The style is Byzantine, the mosaic work of the altar being executed in marbles of the rarest kinds; but the pillars and vaulted roof are in stucco, imitating porphyry, vert antique, and gold, in such perfection that it is difficult to believe that the mines of Sweden and Russia had not been ransacked to produce the rich coloring and massive effect which strikes the eye of the visitor. The twelve patron saints of France are represented—including Charlemagne and St. Louis.

The Aguado pictures were announced for sale, in Paris, on the 10th of April. They include the famous "Death of Sainte Claire," by Murillo, brought from the convent of Saint François d'Asrise in Seville, by Mathieu Fabirer, Commissary-General of Napoleon's army—a very large canvas, including no less than twenty-eight figures.

The collection of ancient and modern pictures and water-color drawings formed by Mr. Thomas Blackburn, of Liverpool, was recently disposed of at auction in London for £8,763. Some of the water-color drawings by Copley Fielding, Louis Haghe, John Gilbert, Prout, Birket Foster, and others, realized very large sums.

Theed's colossal statue of the Prince Consort, which has been cast in bronze at Nuremberg, has recently arrived in London. The model of this figure was originally executed by command of her majesty, and sent as a present to Coburg, where it at present remains, a bronze cast having been taken from it. The town of Sydney being desirous of erecting a statue of the prince, this second cast was executed by command of the Duke of Newcastle, on the ground that of all the numerous likenesses now extant this was the best. The figure is ten feet high, and represents the prince in a commanding attitude, dressed in the robes of the garter.

The alterations in progress in the Wolsey Chapel, at Windsor Castle, have brought to light three full-length portraits of knights of the garter, attired in the military costume of the order, capped with helmets, and wearing cloaks with the insignia. These were hidden by stone slabs, and as there are upwards of twenty similar slabs, it is probable that other similar paintings may be discovered.

Mr. G. T. Doo's large line-engraving from Sebastiano del Piombo's "Resurrection of Lazarus," in the National Gallery, by far the most important of its kind produced for many years past, is {286} now finished. The figure of Christ is 13 inches high, that of Lazarus is still larger, and, being naked, invoked the utmost care and knowledge of the engraver to deal with its superbly drawn forms and perfect surface. The execution, if not the whole design, of this figure has been, on good grounds, attributed to Michael Angelo. Mr. Doo has rendered these with great success, even to giving the somewhat hard and positive tone of the original; and with one or two exceptions, the drawing is described as admirable throughout. In view of the few really good line-engravings now produced, and of the prospect of the art perhaps becoming extinct within the present century, the production of such a work possesses a genuine though somewhat melancholy interest.

Kaulbach, it is said, will finish his paintings in the Berlin Museum this spring. The price he has received for them is given at $187,000, with an addition of $18,700 for the cost of materials. One of the smaller pictures for the series represents Germany absorbed in reading Humboldt's "Cosmos," and letting the imperial crown fall off her head in the abstraction caused by her studies. Underneath, the various small states that compose the confederation are poking out their heads as far as possible to escape from under a hat which is coming down upon them—an illusion to the popular phrase of uniting the whole of Germany "under one hat."

The Pontifical Academy of Roman Archaeology has decreed that the collossal statue of Hercules in gilt bronze, recently discovered among the ruins of Pompey's theatre, and sent to the Vatican, shall bear the name of "The Hercules Mastai," in honor of Pius IX.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

THE BOYNE WATER: A TALE. By John Banim. Post 8vo., pp. 578, Boston: Patrick Donahoe. [For sale in New York by P. O'Shea, Bleecker street]. This story is reprinted from The Boston Pilot, of whose columns it has formed for some months past a principal attraction. It is one of the earliest of Banim's works, and the favorable judgment which it received on its first appearance has now a success of forty years to confirm it. It is a novel of the historical school which Scott made so popular in the last generation, the incidents upon which it is founded belonging to the revolution of 1688, which established William of Orange on the throne of Great Britain. It gives a graphic picture of the siege and capitulation of Limerick, and brings upon the scene James and William, Sarsfield, Tyrconnel, Ginkell, and other familiar characters of that stirring epoch. Banim delights, also, in descriptions of natural scenery. In these he is spirited, and, we believe, accurate. He spared no pains to make himself thoroughly familiar with the localities of which he wrote. While he was engaged upon his novels he used to journey, in company with his brother, through the theatre of action, and study each historical spot with the care of an antiquary. The perfect acquaintance thus obtained with the places of which he wrote had, of course, no little effect upon the vivacity of his narrative.

His pictures of Irish life are vivid and truthful, though he is happier in narrative or description than in dialogue. His heroes and heroines are too much addicted to stilted conversation and to sentimental remarks, which look very well in print, but are never heard in ordinary life. The minor characters, especially those of the peasant class, such as Rory na Choppell, the "whisperer," or horse-tamer, have the gift of speech in a much more natural and agreeable manner. The subordinate parts of the book, in fact, are its best parts. The Gaelic chieftain, reduced to poverty by the English conquerors, but retaining all his pride of spirit and {287} authority over his people, in a sequestered hut among the mountains; the blind harper; the old priest; the mad woman of the cavern; the fanatical soldier of Cromwell; and the lawless Rapparees, are depicted with great skill. The heroes of the story—for there are two—are the one a Catholic, the other a Protestant. They fight on opposite sides, and in the delineation of their characters, and the division of fine sentiments between them, Banim holds an even hand. He wrote for an English public, and fearful of offending by too warm an avowal of his religious convictions, he seems to us to have gone occasionally to the opposite extreme, and penned several passages which Catholics cannot read without displeasure. But, despite these faults, which are neither very many nor very serious, "The Boyne Water" ranks among the best of Irish novels, and Banim as a worthy companion of Carleton and Gerald Griffin.

SERMONS ON MORAL SUBJECTS. By his Eminence Cardinal Wiseman. 8vo., pp.434. New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co.

The discourses contained in this volume form an appropriate supplement to the "Sermons on our Lord and on His Blessed Mother" which we noticed last month. They were delivered under the same circumstances as the previous collection—that is, for the most part, at the English College in Rome—and ought not, therefore, to be considered as a regular course. But if they do not pretend to be a complete series of moral instructions, they will, nevertheless, be found to touch upon nearly all the fashionable sins, and to afford ample food for reflection to all classes of persons. They have the same characteristics of thought and expression which mark the cardinal's other writings—the same kind tone of remonstrance with sinners and encouragement for the penitent, the same earnest love of God and man, and the same, rich, sometimes exuberant, diction. Cardinal Wiseman ranged through a great variety of subjects, and touched nothing that he did not adorn, but his style never varied much; from one of his books you can easily judge of all. There is little difference between the style of the "Sermons on Moral Subjects" and that, for instance, of "Fabiola," or the "Lectures on Science and Revealed Religion." It is an ornate mode of writing which accommodates itself to a diversity of subjects, and never, in the cardinal's pages, seems out of place.

The sermons now before us are eminently practical; and, although a large proportion of them are addressed directly to irreligious persons, and treat of such subjects as "The Love of the World," "Scandal," "Detraction," "Unworthy Communion," "Unprepared Death," and the "Hatefulness of Sin," they display, in a very marked manner, that affectionateness to which we have elsewhere alluded as a characteristic of the cardinal's discourses. He seems to love rather to expostulate than to upbraid; rather to remind us of the happiness we have lost by sin than to threaten us with the punishment of impenitence; and even when his subject calls for stern language, the kindly spirit continually breaks out.

The last sermon in the volume is entitled "Conclusion of a Course." It contains the following passage, explanatory of the purpose of the whole collection:

"These instructions, my dear brethren, have obviously one tendency; they are all directed to expound what the law of God commands us to believe and to practice, in order to reach those rewards which he has prepared for his faithful servants. They are directed to suggest such motives as may induce us to fulfil these commands; to encourage those who are already on the path to persevere in it; to bring back those who have wandered; to impart strength to the weak and resolution to the wavering and undecided."

AT ANCHOR; A STORY OF OUR CIVIL WAR. By an American. 12mo., pp. 311. New York: D. Appleton & Company.

The writer of this novel is evidently a Catholic, but the story is political, not religious. It purports to be the autobiography of a loyal Massachusetts woman. She marries a Carolinian whom she does not love, and accompanies him to his plantation-home. At the breaking out of the war, the husband accepts a commission in the Confederate service. He is reported killed, and the wife, having learned during his absence to love him, devotes herself to the sick and wounded in Richmond. After a time she makes her way back to Massachusetts, and there, at the end of the book, the missing lord turns up; not only safe and sound, but converted from the political errors of his ways, and eager to fight under the Federal {288} flag. He enlists as a private, and has risen to be sergeant when a wound disables him for further service, and husband and wife are at last united and happy in each other. This plot, if it is a plot, is interwoven—we cannot say complicated—with several interesting incidents. The heroine has another lover, toward whom she leans a willing ear, both in maiden life and during her supposed widowhood; and he, on his part, has another mistress, who turns out to be our heroine's half-sister. Of course he marries this lady; and so both couples, after much tossing about, are peacefully "at anchor."

This is something far better than the common sort of sensational war-stories. It contains neither a guerrilla nor a spy; narrates no thrilling deed of blood or hair's-breadth escape; describes no battle; and admits that both parties embrace many noble and honorable men. The writer (it needs little penetration to see that she is a woman) expresses herself fearlessly, but without undue bitterness, on political matters, and scatters over her pages many excellent reflections.

THE MYSTICAL ROSE; OR, MARY OF NAZARETH, THE LILY OF THE HOUSE OF DAVID. By Marie Josephine. 12mo., pp. viii., 290. New York: D. Appleton & Company.

The authoress of this work is a Vermont lady of some literary experience. Her book gives ample evidence of a cultivated and well-stored mind. It is an attempt to present, in irregular verse, a legendary narrative of the life of the Blessed Virgin; and if the poetry is not all of the first order, it is at least devotional, or perhaps we should, say consistent with devotional ideas—for the writer deals more with the poetical than the religious aspect of her subject. She has drawn the rough materials for her poem from a great variety of sources, to which she gives reference in copious notes. She claims to have "appropriated every coveted relic or tradition handed down by historian, Christian or pagan, from the archives of Latin Church, Hebrew, or Greek, coming within scope of her original plan." She has certainly succeeded in bringing together a great number of beautiful legends, which she handles in the most affectionate manner.

THE CORRELATION AND CONSERVATION OF FORCES: A series of Expositions, by Prof. Grove, Prof. Helmholtz, Dr. Mayer, Dr. Faraday, Prof. Liebig, and Dr. Carpenter. With an Introduction and brief Biographical Notices of the Chief Promoters of the New Views. By Edward L. Youmans, M. D. 12mo., pp. xlii., 438. New York: D. Appleton & Company.

This excellent work reached us too late for an extended notice in the present number. We shall speak of it at greater length next month. In the meantime we warmly recommend our readers to buy it.

We have received the April number of The New Path: a Monthly Art Journal, the publication of which, after an interval of several months, is resumed under the auspices of James Miller, 522 Broadway. This little periodical represents radical and peculiar views or art, Being allied in opinions to the Pre-Raphaelite school; but its independent and out-spoken, and often valuable, criticisms must have struck the limited circle of readers to whom it formerly appealed. We hope under its new management it will exercise a healthful influence on American art. The present number contains articles on Miss Hosmer's Statue of Zenobia, "Our Furniture," notices of recent exhibitions, etc., etc.

Murphy & Co., Baltimore, send us The Mysteries of the Living Rosary, printed in sheets, and accompanied by appropriate instructions, prayers, and meditations.

{289}

THE CATHOLIC WORLD,

VOL. I., NO. 3. JUNE, 1865.

THE WORKINGS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

A LETTER TO THE REV. E. B. PUSEY, D.D. BY HENRY EDWARD MANNING, D.D.

MY DEAR FRIEND,—I do not know why twelve years of silence should forbid my calling you still by the name we used both to give and to accept of old. Aristotle says indeed— but he did not know the basis and the affections of a Christian friendship such as that to which—though I acknowledge in myself no claim to it—you were so kind as to admit me. Silence and suspension of communications cannot prevail against the kindliness and confidence which springs from such years and such events as once united us. Contentions and variances might indeed more seriously try and strain such a friendship. But, though we have been both parted and opposed, there has been between us neither variance nor contention. We have both been in the field indeed where a warfare has been waging, but, happily, we have not met in contest. Sometimes we have been very near to each other, and have even felt the opposition of each other's will and hand; but I believe on neither side has there ever been a word or an act which has left a needless wound. That I should have grieved and displeased you is inevitable. The simple fact of my submitting to the Catholic Church must have done so, much more the duties which bind me as a pastor. If, in the discharge of that office, I have given you or any one either pain or wound by personal faults in the manner of its discharge, I should be open to just censure. If the displeasure arise only from the substance of my duties, "necessity is laid upon me," and you would be the last to blame me.

You will perhaps be surprised at my beginning thus to write to you. I will at once tell you why I do so. Yesterday I saw, for the first time, your pamphlet on the legal force of the Judgment of the Privy Council, and I found my name often in its pages. I have nothing to complain of in the way you use it. And I trust that in this reply you will feel that I have not forgotten your example. But your mention of me, and of old days, kindled in me a strong desire to pour out many things which have been for years rising in my mind. I have long wished for the occasion to do so, but I {290} have always felt that it is more fitting to take than to make such an occasion: and as your kindness has made it, I will take it.

But before I enter upon the subject of this letter I wish to say a few words of yourself, and of some others whom I am wont to class with you.

Among the many challenges to controversy and public disputation which it has been my fortune to receive, and, I may add, my happiness to refuse, in the last twelve or thirteen years, one was sent me last autumn at Bath. It was the only one to which, for a moment, I was tempted to write a reply. The challenger paid me compliments on my honesty in leaving the Church of England, denouncing those who, holding my principles, still eat its bread. I was almost induced to write a few words to say that my old friends and I are parted because we hold principles which are irreconcileable; that I once held what they hold now, and was then united with them; that they have never held what I hold now, and therefore we are separated; that they are as honest in the Church of England now as I was once; and that our separation was my own act in abandoning as untenable the Anglican Church and its rule of faith, Scripture and antiquity, which you and they hold still, and in submitting to the voice of the Catholic and Roman Church at this hour, which I believe to be the sole authoritative interpreter of Scripture and of antiquity. This principle no friend known to me in the Church of England has ever accepted. In all these years, both in England and in foreign countries, and on occasions both private and public, and with persons of every condition, I have borne this witness for you and for others.

I felt no little indignation at what seemed to me the insincerity of my correspondent, but on reflection I felt that silence was the best answer.

I will now turn to your pamphlet, and to the subject of this letter.

You speak at the outset of "the jubilee of triumph among half-believers" on the occasion of the late Judgment of the Crown in Council; and you add, "A class of believers joined in the triumph. And while I know that a very earnest body of Roman Catholics rejoice in all the workings of God the Holy Ghost in the Church of England (whatever they think of her), and are saddened in what weakens her who is, in God's hands, the great bulwark against infidelity in this land, others seemed to be in an ecstasy of triumph at this victory of Satan." [Footnote 55] Now, I will not ask where you intended to class me. But as an anonymous critic of a pamphlet lately published by me accused me of rejoicing in your troubles, and another more recently—with a want of candor visible in every line of the attack— accused me of being "merry" over these miseries of the Church of England, I think the time is made for me to declare how I regard the Church of England, and events like these; and I know no one to whom I would rather address what I Have to say than to yourself.

[Footnote 55: "Legal Force of the Judgment of the Privy Council," by the Rev. E. B. Pusey, D.D., pp. 3, 4.]

I will, then, say at once:

1. That I rejoice with all my heart in all the workings of the Holy Ghost in the Church of England.

2. That I lament whensoever what remains of truth in it gives way before unbelief.

3. That I rejoice whensoever what is imperfect in it is unfolded into a more perfect truth.

4. But that I cannot regard the Church of England as "the great bulwark against infidelity in this land," for reasons which I will give in their place.

1. First, then, I will say what I believe of the Church of England, and why I rejoice in every working of the Holy Spirit in it. And I do this the more gladly because I have been sometimes grieved at hearing, and once at even seeing in a handwriting which I reverence with affection, the {291} statement that Catholics—or at least the worst of Catholics called converts—deny the validity of Anglican baptism, regard our own past spiritual life as a mockery, look upon our departed parents as heathen, and deny the operations of the Holy Spirit in those who are out of the Church. I do not believe that those who say such things have ever read the Condemned Propositions, or are aware that a Catholic who so spoke would come under the weight of at least two pontifical censures, and the decrees of at least two general councils.

I need not, however, do more than remind you that, according to the faith and theology of the Catholic Church, the operations of the Holy Spirit of God have been from the beginning of the world co-extensive with the whole human race. [Footnote 56]

[Footnote 56: Suarez, De Divina Gratia. Pars Secunda, lib. iv., c. viii. xi. xii. Ripalda, De Ente Supenaturali, lib. i., disp. xx., s. xii. and s. xxii. Viva, Cursus Theol., pars iii., disp. i., quaest. v. iii.]

Believing, then, in the operations of the Holy Spirit, even among the nations of the world who have neither the revelation of the faith nor the sacraments, how much more must we believe his presence and grace in those who are regenerate by water and the Holy Ghost? It would be impertinent for me to say to you—whose name first became celebrated for a tract on baptism, which, notwithstanding certain imperfections inseparable from a work written when and where you wrote it, is in substance deep, true, and elevating—that baptism, if rightly administered with the due form and matter, is always 'valid by whatsoever hand it may be given. [Footnote 57]

[Footnote 57: Concil. Florent. Decretum Eugenii IV. Mansi Concil., tom, xviii. 547. "In casu autem necessitatis non solum sacerdos vel diaconus sed etiam laicus vel mulier, immo etiam paganus et haereticus baptizare potest, dummodo formam servet Ecclesiae, et facere intendat quod facit Ecclesia." The Council of Trent repeats this under anathema, Sess. vii., can. iv.: "Si quis dixerit Baptismum qui etiam datur ab haereticis in Nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, cum intentione esse verum Baptismum, anathema sit." See also Bellarm. Controversial, De Baptismo, lib. i., c.]

Let me, then, say at once

1. That in denying the Church of England to be the Catholic Church, or any part of it, or in any divine and true sense a church at all, and in denying the validity of its absolutions and its orders, no Catholic ever denies the workings of the Spirit of God or the operations of grace in it.

2. That in affirming the workings of grace in the Church of England, no Catholic ever thereby affirms that it possesses the character of a church.

They who most inflexibly deny to it the character of a church affirm most explicitly the presence and the operations of grace among its people, and that for the following reasons:

In the judgment of the Catholic Church, a baptized people is no longer in the state of nature, but is admitted to a state of supernatural grace. And though I believe the number of those who have never been baptized to be very great in England, and to be increasing every year, nevertheless I believe the English people, as a mass, to be a Baptized people. I say the number of the unbaptized is great, because there are many causes which contribute to produce this result. First, the imperfect, and therefore invalid, administration of baptism through the carelessness of the administrators. You, perhaps, think that this is exaggerated, through an erroneous belief of Catholics as to the extent of such carelessness among the Protestant ministers, both in and out of the Church of England. It is, however, undeniable, as I know from the evidence of eye-witnesses, that such carelessness has, in times past, been great and frequent. This I consider the least, but a sufficient, reason for believing that many have never been baptized. Add to this, negligence caused by the formal disbelief of baptismal regeneration in a large number of Protestant ministers. There are, however, two other reasons far more direct. The one is the studied rejection, as a point of religious profession, of the practice of infant baptism. Many therefore grow up without baptism who in adult life, for various causes, never seek it. {292} The other, the sinful unbelief and neglect of parents in every class of the English people, who often leave whole families of children to grow up without baptism. Of the fact that many have never been baptized, I, or any Catholic priest actively employed in England, can bear witness. There are few among us who have not had to baptize grown people of every condition, poor and rich; and, of children, often whole families together. There has indeed been, in the last thirty years, a revival of care in the administration of baptism on the part of the Anglican ministers, and of attention on the part of parents in bringing their children to be baptized; but this reaction is by no means proportionate to the neglect, which on the other side has been extending. My fear is that, after all, the number of persons unbaptized in England is greater at this moment than at any previous time.

Still the English people as a body are baptized, and therefore elevated to the order of supernatural grace. Every infant, and also every adult baptized, having the necessary dispositions, is thereby placed in a state of justification; and, if they die without committing any mortal sin, would certainly be saved. They are also, in the sight of the Church, Catholics. St. Augustine says, "Ecclesia etiam inter eos qui foris sunt per baptismum generat suos." A mortal sin of any kind, including prava voluntatis electio, the perverse election of the will, by which in riper years such persons chose for themselves, notwithstanding sufficient light, heresy instead of the true faith, and schism instead of the unity of the Church, would indeed deprive them of their state of grace. But before such act of self-privation all such people are regarded by the Catholic Church as in the way of eternal life. With perfect confidence of faith, we extend the shelter of this truth over the millions of infants and young children who every year pass to their Heavenly Father. We extend it also in hope to many more who grow up in their baptismal grace. Catholic missionaries in this country have often assured me of a fact, attested also by my own experience, that they have received into the Church persons grown to adult life, in whom their baptismal grace was still preserved. Now how can we then be supposed to regard such persons as no better than heathens? To ascribe the good lives of such persons to the power of nature would be Pelagianism. To deny their goodness, would be Jansenism. And, with such a consciousness, how could any one regard his past spiritual life in the Church of England as a mockery? I have no deeper conviction than that the grace of the Holy Spirit was with me from my earliest consciousness. Though at the time, perhaps, I knew it not as I know it now, yet I can clearly perceive the order and chain of grace by which God mercifully led me onward from childhood to the age of twenty years. From that time the interior workings of his light and grace, which continued through all my life, till the hour in which that light and grace had its perfect work, to which all its operations had been converging, in submission to the fulness of truth of the Spirit of the Church of God, is a reality as profoundly certain, intimate, and sensible to me now as that I live. Never have I by the lightest word breathed a doubt of this fact in the divine order of grace. Never have I allowed any one who has come to me for guidance or instruction to harbor a doubt of the past workings of grace in them. It would be not only a sin of ingratitude, but a sin against truth. The working of the Holy Spirit in individual souls is, as I have said, as old as the fall of man, and as wide as the human race. It is not we who ever breathe or harbor a doubt of this. It is rather they who accuse us of it. Because, to believe such an error possible in others shows how little consciousness there must be of the true doctrine of grace in themselves. And such, I am forced {293} to add, is my belief, because I know by experience how inadequately I understood the doctrine of grace until I learned it of the Catholic Church. And I trace the same inadequate conception of the workings of grace in almost every Anglican writer I know, not excepting even those who are nearest to the truth.

But, further, our theologians teach, not only that the state of baptismal innocence exists, and may be preserved out of the Church, but that they who in good faith are out of it, if they shall correspond with the grace they have already received, will receive an increase or augmentation of grace. [Footnote 58] I do not for a moment doubt that there are to be found among the English people individuals who practise in a high degree the four cardinal virtues, and in no small degree, though with the limits and blemishes inseparable from their state, the three theological virtues of faith, [Footnote 59] hope, and charity, infused into them in their baptism. I do not think, my dear friend, in all that I have said or written in the last fourteen years, that you can find a word implying so much as a doubt of the workings of the Holy Spirit among all the baptized who are separated from the Catholic Church.

[Footnote 58: Suarez, De Div. Gratia, lib. iv., c. xi. Ripalda, De Ente Supernaturali, lib. i., disp. xx., sect. xii. et seq. S. Alphonsi Theol. Moral., lib. i., tract, 1. 5, 6. ]

[Footnote 59: De Lugo, De Virtute divinae Fidei, disp. xvii., sect. iv, v. Viva, Cursus Theol., p. iv., disp. iv., quaest. iii. 7.]

I will go further still. The doctrine, "Extra ecclesiam nulla salus" is to be interpreted both by dogmatic and by moral theology. As a dogma, theologians teach that many belong to the Church who are out of its visible unity; [Footnote 60] as a moral truth, that to be out of the Church is no personal sin, except to those who sin in being out of it. That is, they will be lost, not because they are geographically out of it, but because they are culpably out of it. And they who are culpably out of it are those who know—or might, and therefore ought to, know—that it is their duty to submit to it. The Church teaches that men may be inculpably out of its pale. Now they are inculpably out of it who are and have always been either physically or morally unable to see their obligation to submit to it. And they only are culpably out of it who are both physically and morally able to know that it is God's will they should submit to the Church; and either knowing it will not obey that knowledge, or, not knowing it, are culpable for that ignorance. I will say then at once, that we apply this benign law of our Divine Master as far as possible to the English people. First, it is applicable in the letter to the whole multitude of those baptized persons who are under the age of reason. Secondly, to all who are in good faith, of whatsoever age they be: such as a great many of the poor and unlettered, to whom it is often physically, and very often morally, impossible to judge which is the true revelation or Church of God. I say physically, because in these three hundred years the Catholic Church has been so swept off the face of England that nine or ten generations of men have lived and died without the faith being so much as proposed to them, or the Church ever visible to them; and I say morally, because the great majority of the poor, from lifelong prejudice, are often incapable of judging in a question so far removed from the primary truths of conscience and Christianity. Of such simple persons it may be said that, infantibus aequiparantur, they are to be classed morally with infants. Again, to these may be added the unlearned in all classes, among whom many have no contact with the Catholic Church, or with Catholic books. Under this head will come a great number of wives and daughters, whose freedom of religious inquiry and religious thought is unjustly {294} limited or suspended by the authority of parents and husbands. Add, lastly, the large class who have been studiously brought up, with all the dominant authority of the English tradition of three hundred years, to believe sincerely, and without a doubt, that the Catholic Church is corrupt, has changed the doctrines of the faith, and that the author of the Reformation is the Spirit of holiness and truth. It may seem incredible to some that such an illusion exists. But it is credible to me, because for nearly forty years of my life I was fully possessed by this erroneous belief. To all such persons it is morally difficult in no small degree to discover the falsehood of this illusion. All the better parts of their nature are engaged in its support: dutifulness, self-mistrust, submission, respect for others older, better, more learned than themselves, all combine to form a false conscience of the duty to refuse to hear anything against "the religion of their fathers," "the church of their baptism," or to read anything which could unsettle them. Such people are told that it is their duty to extinguish a doubt against the Church of England, as they would extinguish a temptation against their virtue. A conscience so subdued and held in subjection exercises true virtues upon a false object, and renders to a human authority the submissive trust which is due only to the divine voice of the Church of God.

[Footnote 60: See Perrone Praelect. Theolog., pars i., c. ii. 1, 2:

"Omnes et soli justi pertinent ad Ecclesiae animam."

"Ad Christi Ecclesiae corpus spectant fideles omnes tam justi quam peccatores."

St. Augustine expresses these two propositions in six words, "Multae oves foris, multi lupi intus." St. Aug., tom, iii., p. ii. 600.]

One last point I will add. I believe that the people of England were not all guilty of the first acts of heresy and schism by which they were separated from the Catholic unity and faith. They were robbed of it. In many places they rose in arms for it. The children, the poor, the unlearned at that time, were certainly innocent: much more the next generation. They were born into a state of privation. They knew no better. No choice was before them. They made no perverse act of the will in remaining where they were born. Every successive generation was still less culpable, in proportion as they were born into a greater privation, and under the dominion of a tradition of error already grown strong. For three centuries they have been born further and further out of the truth, and their culpability is perpetually diminishing; and as they were passively borne onward in the course of the English separation, the moral responsibility for the past is proportionately less.

The divine law is peremptory—"to him who knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin." [Footnote 61] Every divine truth, as it shines in upon us, lays its obligation on our conscience to believe and to obey it. When the divine authority of the Church manifests itself to our intellect, it lays its jurisdiction upon our conscience to submit to it. To refuse is an act of infidelity, and the least act of infidelity in its measure expels faith; one mortal act of it will expel the habit of faith altogether. [Footnote 62] Every such act of infidelity grieves the Holy Ghost by a direct opposition to his divine voice speaking through the Church; the habit of such opposition is one of the six sins against the Holy Ghost defined as "impugning the known truth." All that I have said above in no way modifies the absolute and vital necessity of submitting to the Catholic Church as the only way of salvation to those who know it, by the revelation of God, to be such. But I must not attempt now to treat of this point.

[Footnote 61: St. James iv. 17.]

[Footnote 62: De Lugo, De Virtute Fidel Divinae, disp. xvii., sect. iv. 53 et seq.]

Nevertheless for the reasons above given we make the largest allowance for all who are in invincible ignorance; always supposing that there is a preparation of heart to embrace the truth when they see it, at any cost, a desire to know it, and a faithful use of the means of knowing it, such as study, docility, prayer, and the like. But I do not now enter into the case of the educated or the learned, or of those who have liberty of mind and means of inquiry. I cannot class them under {295} the above enumeration of those who are inculpably out of the truth. I leave them, therefore, to the only Judge of all men.

Lastly, I will not here attempt to estimate how far all I have said is being modified by the liberation and expansion of the Catholic Church in England during the last thirty years. It is certain that the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy, with the universal tumult which published it to the whole world, still more by its steady, wide-spread, and penetrating action throughout England, is taking away every year the plea of invincible ignorance.

It is certain, however, that to those who, being in invincible ignorance, faithfully co-operate with the grace they have received, an augmentation of grace is given; and this at once places the English people, so far as they come within the limits of these conditions, in a state of supernatural grace, even though they be out of the visible unity of the Church. I do not now enter into the question of the state of those who fall from baptismal grace by mortal sin, or of the great difficulty and uncertainty of their restoration. This would lead me too far; and it lies beyond the limits of this letter.

It must not, however, be forgotten, for a moment, that this applies to the whole English people, of all forms of Christianity, or, as it is called, of all denominations. What I have said does not recognize the grace of the Church of England as such. The working of grace in the Church of England is a truth we joyfully hold and always teach. But we as joyfully recognize the working of the Holy Spirit among Dissenters of every kind. Indeed, I must say that I am far more able to assure myself of the invincible ignorance of Dissenters as a mass than of Anglicans as a mass. They are far more deprived of what survived of Catholic truth; far more distant from the idea of a Church; far more traditionally opposed to it by the prejudice of education; I must add, for the most part, far more simple in their belief in the person and passion of our Divine Lord. Their piety is more like the personal service of disciples to a personal Master than the Anglican piety, which has always been more dim and distant from this central light of souls. Witness Jeremy Taylor's works, much as I have loved them, compared with Baxter's, or even those of Andrews compared with Leighton's, who was formed by the Kirk of Scotland.

I do not here forget all you have done to provide ascetical and devotional books for the use of the Church of England, both by your own writings, and, may I not say it, from your neighbor's vineyard?

With truth, then, I can say that I rejoice in all the operations of the Holy Spirit out of the Catholic Church, whether in the Anglican or other Protestant bodies; not that those communions are thereby invested with any supernatural character, but because more souls, I trust, are saved. If I have a greater joy over these workings of grace in the Church of England, it is only because more that are dear to me are in it, for whom every day I never fail to pray. These graces to individuals were given before the Church was founded, and are given still out of its unity. They are no more tokens of an ecclesiastical character, or a sacramental power in the Church of England, than in the Kirk of Scotland, or in the Wesleyan connexion; they prove only the manifold grace of God, which, after all the sins of men, and in the midst of all the ruins he has made, still works in the souls for whom Christ died. Such, then, is our estimate of the Church of England in regard to the grace that works not by it, nor through it, but in it and among those who, without faults of their own, are detained by it from the true Church of their baptism.

And here it is necessary to guard against a possible misuse of what I have said. Let no one imagine that he may still continue in the Church of England because God has hitherto mercifully bestowed his grace upon {296} him. As I have shown, this is no evidence that salvation is to be had by the Church of England. It is an axiom that to those who do all they can God never refuses his grace. He bestows it that he may lead them on from grace to grace, and from truth to truth, until they enter the full and perfect light of faith in his only true fold. The grace they have received, therefore, was given, not to detain them in the Church of England, but to call them out of it. The grace of their past life lays on them the obligation of seeking and submitting to the perfect truth. God would "have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth." [Footnote 63] But his Church is an eminent doctrine, and member of that truth; and all grace given out of the Church is given in order to bring men into the Church, wheresoever the Church is present to them. If they refuse to submit to the Church they resist the divine intention of the graces they have hitherto received, and are thereby in grave danger of losing them, as we see too often in men who once were on the threshold of the Church, and now are in rationalism, or in states of which I desire to say no more.

[Footnote 63: 1 Tim. ii. 4.]

2. Let me next speak of the truths which the Church of England still retains. I have no pleasure in its present trials; and the anonymous writer who describes me as being "positively merry" over its disasters little knows me. If I am to speak plainly, he seems to me to be guilty of one of the greatest offences—a rash accusation against one whom he evidently does not know. I will further say that I lament with all my heart whensoever what remains of truth in the Anglican system gives way before unbelief.

I do not, indeed, regard the Church of England as a teacher of truth, for that would imply that it teaches the truth in all its circumference, and in all its divine certainty. Now this is precisely what the Church of England does not, and, as I will show presently, has destroyed in itself the power of doing. I am willing to call it a teacher of truths, because many fragmentary truths, shattered, disjointed from the perfect unity of the Christian revelation, still survive the Reformation, and, with much variation and in the midst of much contradiction, are still taught in it. I have been wont always to say, and to say with joy, that the Reformation, which has done its work with such a terrible completeness in Germany, was arrested in England; that here much of the Christian belief and Christian order has survived. Until lately I have been in the habit of saying that there are three things which missionaries may take for granted in England: first, the existence of a supernatural world; secondly, the revelation of Christianity; and thirdly, the inspiration of Scripture. The Church of England has also preserved other doctrines with more or less of exactness, such as the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, the incarnation, baptism, and the like. I will not now enter into the question as to what other doctrines are retained by it, because a few more or a few less would make little difference in the final estimate a Catholic must make of it. A teacher of Christian truths I gladly admit it to be. A teacher of Christian truth—no, because it rejects much of that truth, and also the divine principle of its perpetuity in the world. Nevertheless, I rejoice in every fragment of doctrine which remains in it; and I should lament the enfeebling or diminution of any particle of that truth. I have ever regarded with regret the so-called Low-Church and Latitudinarian schools in the Anglican Church, because I believe their action and effect is to diminish what remains of truth in it. I have always regarded with joy, and I have never ceased to regard with sympathy, notwithstanding much which I cannot either like or respect, the labors of the High-Church or Anglo-Catholic party, because I believe that their action and effect are "to strengthen the things which remain, which were ready {297} to die." For myself, I am conscious how little I have ever done in my life; but as it is now drawing toward its end, I have at least this consolation, that I cannot remember at any time, by word or act, to have undermined a revealed truth; but that, according to my power, little enough as I know, I have endeavored to build up what truth I knew, truth upon truth, if only as one grain of sand upon another, and to bind it together by the only bond and principle of cohesion which holds in unity the perfect revelation of God. A very dear friend, whose friendship has been to me one of the most instructive, and the loss of which was to me one of the hardest sacrifices I had to make, has often objected to me, with the subtlety which marks his mind, that my act in leaving the Church of England has helped forward the unbelief which is now invading it. No doubt he meant to say that the tendency of such an act helped to shake the confidence of others in the Church of England as a teacher of truth. This objection was, like his mind, ingenious and refined. But a moment's thought unravelled it, and I answered it much in these words:

I do not believe that by submitting to the Catholic Church any one can weaken the witness of the Church of England for the truth which it retains. So far as it holds the truth, it is in conformity to the Catholic Church. In submitting to the Catholic Church, I all the more strongly give testimony to the same truths which the Church of England still retains. If I give testimony against the Church of England, it is in those points in which, being at variance with the truth, the Church of England is itself undermining the faith of Christianity.

It was for this reason I always lamented the legalizing of the sacramentarian errors of the Low-Church party by the Gorham Judgment; and that I lament now the legalizing of the heresies of the "Essays and Reviews," and the spreading unbelief of Dr. Colenso. I believe that anything which undermines the Christianity of England is drawing it further and further from us. In proportion as men believe more of Christianity, they are nearer to the perfect truth. The mission of the Church in the world is to fill up the truth. Our Divine Lord said, "I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil;" and St. Paul did not overthrow the altar of the Unknown God, but gave to it an object of divine worship and a true adoration. For this cause I regard the present downward course of the Church of England and the Christianity of England with great sorrow and fear. And I am all the more alarmed because of those who are involved in it so many not only refuse to acknowledge the fact, but treat us who give warning of the danger as enemies and accusers.

One of my critics has imagined, that I propose to myself and others the alternative of Catholicism or atheism. I have never attempted to bring any one to the perfect truth by destroying or by threatening the imperfect faith they might still possess. I do not believe that the alternative before us is Catholicism or atheism. There are lights of the natural order, divine witnesses of himself inscribed by the Creator on his works, characters engraven upon the conscience, and testimonies of mankind in all the ages of the world, which prove the existence and perfections of God, the moral nature and responsibility of man anterior to Catholicism, and independently of revelation. If a man, through any intellectual or moral aberration, should reject Christianity, that is Catholicism, the belief of God and of his perfections stands immutably upon the foundations of nature. Catholicism, or deism, is indeed the only ultimately logical and consistent alternative, though, happily, few men in rejecting Catholicism are logically consistent enough to reject Christianity. Atheism is an aberration which implies not only an intellectual blindness, but a moral insensibility. The theism {298} of the world has its foundation on the face of the natural world, and on the intellect and the heart of the human race. The old paganism and modern pantheism are reverent, filial, and elevating compared with the atheism of Comte and of our modern secularists. It would be both intellectually and morally impossible to propose to any one the alternative of Catholicism or atheism. Not only then do I lament to see any truth in the Church of England give way before unbelief, but I should regard with sorrow and impatience any attempt to promote the belief of the whole revelation of Christianity by a mode of logic which undermines even the truths of the natural order. The Holy See has authoritatively declared that the existence of God may be proved by reason and the light of nature, [Footnote 64] and Alexander VIII. declared that men who do not know of the existence of God are without excuse. [Footnote 65] Atheism is not the condition of man without revelation. As Viva truly says in his comment on this declaration, atheists are anomalies and exceptions in the intellectual tradition of mankind.

[Footnote 64: "Ratiocinatio Dei existentiam, animae spiritualitatem, hominis libertatem, cum certitudine probare potest." Theses a SS. D. N. Pio IX. approbatae, 11 Junii 1855. Denzinger's Enchiridion, p. MS. Ed. 1856. ]

[Footnote 65: Viva, Propos. damnatae, p. 372. Ripalda, De Ente Supernaturali. disp. xx., s. 12, 59. ]

Nay, I will go further. I can conceive a person to reject Catholicism without logically rejecting Christianity. He would indeed reject the divine certainty which guarantees and proposes to us the whole revelation of the day of Pentecost. But, as Catholic theologians teach, the infallible authority of the Church does not of necessity enter into the essence of an act of faith. [Footnote 66] It is, indeed, the divine provision for the perfection and perpetuity of the faith, and in hac providentia, the ordinary means whereby men are illuminated in the revelation of God; but the known and historical evidence of Christianity is enough to convince any prudent man that Christianity is a divine revelation. It is quite true that by this process he cannot attain an explicit faith in all the doctrines of revelation, and that in rejecting Catholicism he reduces himself to human and historical evidence as the maximum of extrinsic certainty for his religion, and that this almost inevitably resolves itself in the long run into rationalism. It is an inclined plane on which, if individuals may stand, generations cannot. Nevertheless, though the alternative in the last analysis of speculation be Catholicism or deism, the practical alternative may be Catholicism and fragmentary Christianity.

[Footnote 66: De Lugo,—De Virtute Fidei Divinae, disp. i., sect. xii. 250-53. Viva, Cursus Theol., p. iv., disp. i., quaest. iv., art. iii. Ripalda, De Ente Supern., disp. xx., seet. xxii. 117.]

I have said this to show how far I am from sympathizing with those, if any there be, and I can truly say I know none such, who regard the giving way of any lingering truth in the Church of England under the action of unbelief with any feeling but that of sorrow. The Psalmist lamented over the dying out of truths. "Diminutae sunt veritates a filiis hominum," and I believe that every one who loves God, and souls, and truth must lament when a single truth, speculative or moral, even of the natural order, is obscured; much more when any revealed truth of the elder or of the Christian revelation is rejected or even doubted. Allow me also to answer, not only for myself, which is of no great moment, but for an eminent personage to whom you have referred in your pamphlet. I can say, with a personal and perfect knowledge, that no other feeling has ever arisen in His Eminence's mind, in contemplating the troubles of the Anglican Church, than a sincere desire that God may use these things to open the eyes of men to see the untenableness of their positions; coupled with a very sincere sorrow at the havoc which the advance of unbelief is making among the truths which yet linger in the Church of England.

3. It is, however, but reason that I {299} should rejoice when whatsoever remains in it of imperfect truth is unfolded into a more perfect faith: and that therefore I desire to see not only the conversion of England, but the conversion of every soul to whom the more perfect truth can be made known. You would not respect me if I did not. Your own zeal for truth and for souls here speaks in my behalf. There are two kinds of proselytism. There are the Jews whom our Lord condemned. There are also the Apostles whom he sent into all the world. If by proselytizing be meant the employing of unlawful and unworthy means, motives, or influences to change a person's religion, I should consider the man who used such means to commit lèse-majesté against truth, and against our Lord who is the truth. But if by proselytizing be meant the using all the means of conviction and persuasion which our divine Master has committed to us to bring any soul who will listen to us into the only faith and fold, then of this I plead guilty with all my heart. I do heartily desire to see the Church of England dissolve and pass away, as the glow of lingering embers in the rise and steady light of a reviving flame. If the Church of England were to perish to-morrow under the action of a higher and more perfect truth, there would be no void left in England. All the truths hitherto taught in fragments and piecemeal would be still more vividly and firmly impressed upon the minds of the English people. All of Christianity which survives in Anglicanism would be perfected by the restoration of the truths which have been lost, and the whole would be fixed and perpetuated by the evidence of divine certainty and the voice of a divine Teacher. No Catholic desires to see the Church of England swept away by an infidel revolution, such as that of 1789 in France. But every Catholic must wish to see it give way year by year, and day by day, under the intellectual and spiritual action of the Catholic Church: and must watch with satisfaction every change, social and political, which weakens its hold on the country, and would faithfully use all his power and influence for its complete removal as speedily as possible.

4. But lastly, I am afraid we have reached a point of divergence. Hitherto I hope we may have been able to agree together; but now I fear every step of advance will carry us more wide of each other. I am unable to consider the Church of England to be "in God's hands the great bulwark against infidelity in this land." And my reasons are these:

1.) First, I must regard the Anglican Reformation, and therefore the Anglican Church, as the true and original source of the present spiritual anarchy of England. Three centuries ago the English people were in faith unius labii: they were in perfect unity. Now they are divided and subdivided by a numberless multiplication of errors. What has generated them? From what source do they descend? Is it not self-evident that the Reformation is responsible for the production of every sect and every error which has sprung up in England in these three hundred years, and of all which cover the face of the land at this day? It is usual to hear Anglicans lament the multiplication of religious error. But what is the productive cause of all? Is it not Anglicanism itself which, by appealing from the voice of the Church throughout the world, has set the example to its own people of appealing from the voice of a local and provincial authority?

I am afraid, then, that the Church of England, so far from, a barrier against infidelity, must be recognized as the mother of all the intellectual and spiritual aberrations which now cover the face of England.

2.) It is true, indeed, that the Church of England retains many truths in it. But it has in two ways weakened the evidence of these very truths which it retains. It has detached them from {300} other truths which by contact gave solidity to all by rendering them coherent and intelligible. It has detached them from the divine voice of the Church, which guarantees to us the truth incorruptible and changeless. The Anglican Reformation destroyed the principle of cohesion, by which all truths are bound together into one. The whole idea of theology, as the science of God and of his revelation, has been broken up. Thirty-nine Articles, heterogeneous, disjointed, and mixed with error, is all that remains instead of the unity and harmony of Catholic truth. Surely this has been among the most prolific causes of error, doubt, and unbelief. So far from the bulwark against it, Anglicanism appears to me to be the cause and spring of its existence. As I have already said, the Reformation placed the English people upon an inclined plane, and they have steadily obeyed the law of their position, by descending gradually from age to age, sometimes with a more rapid, sometimes with a slower motion, but always tending downward. Surely it would be unreasonable to say of a body always descending, that it is the great barrier against reaching the bottom.

I do not, indeed, forget that the Church of England has produced writers who have vindicated many Christian truths. I am not unmindful of the service rendered by Anglican writers to Christianity in general, nor, in particular, of the works of Bull and Waterland in behalf of the Holy Trinity; of Hammond and Pearson in behalf of Episcopacy; of Butler and Warburton in behalf of Revelation, and the like. But whence came the errors and unbeliefs against which they wrote? Were they not generated by the Reformation abroad and in England? This is like the spear which healed the wounds it had made. But it is not the divine office of the Church to make wounds in the faith that it may use its skill in healing. They were quelling the mutiny which Protestantism had raised, and arresting the progress of the Reformation which, like Saturn, devours its own children.

Moreover, to be just I must say that if the Church of England be a barrier against infidelity, the Dissenters must also be admitted to a share in this office and commendation. And in truth I do not know among the Dissenters any works like the Essays and Reviews, or any Biblical criticism like that of Dr. Colenso. They may not be very dogmatic in their teaching, but they bear their witness for Christianity as a divine revelation, for the Scriptures as an inspired book, and, I must add further, for the personal Christianity of conversion and repentance, with an explicitness and consistency which is not less effectual against infidelity than the testimony of the Church of England. I do not think the Wesleyan Conference or the authorities of the three denominations would accept readily this assumed superiority of the Anglican Church as a witness against unbelief. They would not unjustly point to the doctrinal confusions of the Church of England as causes of scepticism, from which they are comparatively free. And I am bound to say that I think they would have an advantage. I well remember that while I was in the Church of England I used to regard Dissenters from it with a certain, I will not say aversion, but distance and recoil. I never remember to have borne animosity against them, or to have attacked or pursued them with unkindness. I always believed many of them to be very earnest and devoted men. I did not like their theology, and I believed them to be in disobedience to the Church of England; but I respected them, and lived at peace with them. Indeed, I may say that some of the best people I have ever known out of the Church were Dissenters or children of Dissenters. Nevertheless, I had a dislike of their system, and of their meeting-houses. They seemed to me to be rivals of the Church of England, and my loyalty to it made me look somewhat impatiently upon them. But I remember, from {301} the hour I submitted to the Catholic Church, all this underwent a sensible change. I saw that the whole revelation was perpetuated in the Church alone, and that all forms of Christianity lying round about it were but fragments more or less mutilated. But with this a sensible increase of kindly feeling grew upon me. The Church of England and the dissenting communions all alike appeared to me to be upon the same level. I rejoiced in all the truth that remains in them, in all the good I could see or hope in them, and all the workings of the Holy Spirit in them. I had no temptation to animosity toward them; for neither they nor the Church of England could be rivals of the imperishable and immutable Church of God. The only sense, then, in which I could regard the Church of England as a barrier against infidelity, I must extend also to the dissenting bodies; and I cannot put this high, for reasons I will give.

3.) If the Church of England be a barrier to infidelity by the truths which yet remain in it, I must submit that it is a source of unbelief by all the denials of other truths which it has rejected. If it sustains a belief in two sacraments, it formally propagates unbelief in five; if it recognizes an undefined presence of Christ in the sacrament, it formally imposes on its people a disbelief in transubstantiation and the sacrifice of the altar; if it teaches that there is a church upon earth, it formally denies its indissoluble unity, its visible head, and its perpetual divine voice.

It is not easy to see how a system can be a barrier against unbelief when by its Thirty-nine Articles it rejects, and binds its teachers to propagate the rejection, of so many revealed truths.

4.) But this is not all. It is not only by the rejection of particular doctrines that the Church of England propagates unbelief. It does so by principle, and in the essence of its whole system. What is the ultimate guarantee of the divine revelation but the divine authority of the Church? Deny this, and we descend at once to human teachers. But it is this that the Church of England formally and expressly denies. The perpetual and ever-present assistance of the Holy Spirit, whereby the Church in every age is not only preserved from error, but enabled at all times to declare the truth, that is the infallibility of the living Church at this hour—this it is that the Anglican Church in terms denies. But this is the formal antagonist of infidelity, because it is the evidence on which God wills that we should believe that which his veracity reveals. Do not be displeased with me. It appears to me that the Anglican system, by this one fact alone, perpetually undoes what it strives to do in behalf of particular doctrines. What are they, one by one, when the divine certainty of all is destroyed? Now, for three hundred years the Anglican clergy have been trained, ordained, and bound by subscriptions to deny not only many Christian truths, but the divine authority of the the living Church of every age. The barrier against infidelity is the divine voice which generates faith. But this the Anglican clergy are bound to deny. And this denial opens a flood-gate in the bulwark, through which the whole stream of unbelief at once finds way. Seventeen or eighteen thousand men, educated with all the advantages of the English schools and universities, endowed with large corporate revenues, and distributed all over England, maintain a perpetual protest, not only against the Catholic Church, but against the belief that there is any divine voice immutably and infallibly guiding the Church at this hour in its declaration of the Christian revelation to mankind. How can this be regarded as "the great bulwark in God's hand against infidelity?"

It seems to me that the Church of England, so far from being a bulwark against the flood, has floated before it. Every age has exhibited an advance to a more indefinite and heterogeneous state of religious opinion within its {302} pale. I will not go again over ground I have already traversed. Even in our memory the onward progress of the Church of England is manifest. That I may not seem to draw an unfavorable picture from my own view, I will quote a very unsuspected witness. Dr. Irons, in a recent pamphlet, says: "The religion of the Church has sunk far deeper into conscience now than the surviving men of 1833-1843 are aware of. And all that Churchmen want of their separated brethren is that they accept nothing, and profess nothing, and submit to nothing which has 'no root' in their conscience." [Footnote 67] If this means anything, it means that objective truth has given place to subjective sincerity as the Anglican rule of faith. You will know better than I whether this be the state of men's minds among you. To me it is as strange as it is incoherent, and a sign how far men have drifted. This certainly was not the faith or religion that we held together in the years when I had the happiness of being united in friendship with you. Latitudinarian sincerity was not our basis, and if the men of 1833 and 1843 have arrived at this, it is very unlike the definite, earnest, consistent belief which animated us at that time. You say in your note (page 21) kindly, but a little upbraidingly, that my comment on your letter to the "Record" was not like me in those days: forasmuch as I used then to join with those with whom even then you could not. It was this that made me note your doing so now. It was this which seemed to me to be a drifting backward from old moorings. For myself, it is true, indeed, that I have moved likewise. I have been carried onward to what you then were, and beyond it. What I might have done then, I could not do now. What you do now seems to me what you would not have done then. I did not note this unkindly, but with regret, because, as I rejoice in every truth, and in every true principle retained in the Church of England, it would have given me great joy to see you maintaining with all firmness, not only all the particular truths you held, but also the impossibility of uniting with those who deny both those truths and the principles on which you have rested through your laborious life of the last thirty years.

[Footnote 67: "Apologia pro vita Ecclesias Anglicanae," p. 22.]

And now I will add only a few more words of a personal sort, and then make an end. It was not my fate in the Church of England to be regarded as a contentious or controversial spirit, nor as a man of extreme opinions, or of a bitter temper. I remember indeed that I was regarded, and even censured, as slow to advance, somewhat tame, cautious to excess, morbidly moderate, as some one said. I remember that the Catholics used to hold me somewhat cheap, and to think me behindhand, uncatholic, over-English, and the like. But now, is there anything in the extreme opposite of all this which I am not? Ultramontane, violent, unreasoning, bitter, rejoicing in the miseries of my neighbors, destructive, a very Apollyon, and the like. Some who so describe me now are the same who were wont then to describe me as the reverse of all this. They are yet catholicizing the Church of England, without doubt more catholic still than I am. Well, what shall I say? If I should say that I am not conscious of these changes, you would only think me self-deceived. I will therefore only tell you where I believe I am unchanged, and then where I am conscious of a change, which, perhaps, will account for all you have to say of me.

I am unconscious, then, of any change in my love to England in all that relates to the natural order. I am no politician, and I do not set up for a patriot; but I believe, as St. Thomas teaches, that love of country is a part of charity, and assuredly I have ever loved England with a very filial love. My love for England {303} begins with the England of St. Bede. Saxon England, with all its tumults, seems to me saintly and beautiful. Norman England I have always loved less, because, though more majestic, it became continually less Catholic, until the evil spirit of the world broke off the light yoke of faith at the so-called Reformation. Still, I loved the Christian England which survived, and all the lingering outlines of dioceses and parishes, cathedrals and churches, with the names of saints upon them. It is this vision of the past which still hovers over England and makes, it beautiful, and full of memories of the kingdom of God. Nay, I loved the parish church of my childhood, and the college chapel of my youth, and the little church under a green hillside, where the morning and evening prayers, and the music of the English Bible, for seventeen years, became a part of my soul. Nothing is more beautiful in the natural order, and if there were no eternal world I could have made it my home. But these things are not England, they are only its features, and I may say that my love was and is to the England which lives and breathes about me, to my countrymen whether in or out of the Church of England. With all our faults as a race, I recognize in them noble Christian virtues, exalted characters, beautiful examples of domestic life, and of every personal excellence which can be found, where the fulness of grace and truth is not, and much, too, which puts to shame those who are where the fulness of grace and truth abounds. So long as I believed the Church of England to be a part of the Church of God I loved it, how well you know, and honored it with a filial reverence, and labored to serve it, with what fidelity I can affirm, with what, or if with any utility, it is not for me to say. And I love still those who are in it, and I would rather suffer anything than wrong them in word or deed, or pain them without a cause. To all this I must add, lastly, and in a way above all, the love I bear to many personal friends, so dear to me, whose letters I kept by me till two years ago, though more than fifty of them are gone into the world unseen, all these things are sweet to me still beyond all words that I can find to express it.

You will ask me then, perhaps, why I have never manifested this before? It is because when I left you, in the full, calm, deliberate, and undoubting belief that the light of the only truth led me from a fragmentary Christianity into the perfect revelation of the day of Pentecost, I believed it to be my duty to walk alone in the path in which it led me, leaving you all unmolested by any advance on my part. If any old friend has ever written to me, or signified to me his wish to renew our friendship, I believe he will bear witness to the happiness with which I have accepted the kindness offered to me. But I felt that it was my act which had changed our relations, and that I had no warrant to assume that a friendship, founded upon agreement in our old convictions, would be continued when that foundation had been destroyed by myself, or restored upon a foundation altogether new. And I felt, too, a jealousy for truth. It was no human pride which made me feel that I ought not to expose the Catholic Church to be rejected in my person. Therefore I held on my own course, seeking no one, but welcoming every old friend—and they have been many—who came to me. This has caused a suspension of nearly fourteen years in which I have never so much as met or exchanged a line with many who till then were among my nearest friends. This, too, has given room for many misapprehensions. It would hardly surprise me if I heard that my old friends believed me to have become a cannibal.

But perhaps you will say, This does not account for your hard words against us and the Church of England. When I read your late pamphlet I said to myself, Have I ever written such hard words as these? I will not quote them, but truly I do not think {304} that, in anything I have ever written, I have handled at least any person as you, my dear friend, in your zeal, which I respect and honor, have treated certain very exalted personages who are opposed to you. But let this pass. It would not excuse me even if I were to find you in the same condemnation.

One of my anonymous censors writes that "as in times past I had written violently against the Church of Rome, so now I must do the same against the Church of England." Now I wish he would find, in the books I published when out of the Church, the hard sayings he speaks of. It has been my happiness to know that such do not exist. I feel sure that my accuser had nothing before his mind when he risked this controversial trick. I argued, indeed, against the Catholic and Roman Church, but I do not know of any railing accusations. How I was preserved from it I cannot tell, except by the same divine goodness which afterward led me into the perfect light of faith.

But I have written, some say, hard things of the Church of England. Are they hard truths or hard epithets? If they are hard epithets, show them to me, and I will erase them with a prompt and public expression of regret; but if they be hard facts, I cannot change them. It is true, indeed, that I have for the last fourteen years incessantly and unchangingly, by word and by writing, borne my witness to the truths by which God has delivered me from the bondage of a human authority in matters of faith. I have borne my witness to the presence and voice of a divine, and therefore infallible, teacher, guiding the Church with his perpetual assistance, and speaking through it as his organ. I have also borne witness that the Church through which he teaches is that which St. Augustine describes by the two incommunicable notes—that it is "spread throughout the word" and "united to the Chair of Peter." [Footnote 68] I know that the corollaries of these truths are severe, peremptory, and inevitable. If the Catholic faith be the perfect revelation of Christianity, the Anglican Reformation is a cloud of heresies; if the Catholic Church be the organ of the Holy Ghost, the Anglican Church is not only no part of the Church, but no church of divine foundation. It is a human institution, sustained as it was founded by a human authority, without priesthood, without sacraments, without absolution, without the real presence of Jesus upon its altars. I know these truths are hard. It seems heartless, cruel, unfilial, unbrotherly, ungrateful so to speak of all the beautiful fragments of Christianity which mark the face of England, from its thousand towns to its green villages, so dear even to us who believe it to be both in heresy and in schism. You must feel it so. You must turn from me and turn against me for saying it; but if I believe it, must I not say it? And if I say it, can I find words more weighed, measured, and deliberate than those I have used? If you can, show them to me, and so that they are adequate, I will use them always hereafter. God knows I have never written a syllable with the intent to leave a wound. I have erased, I have refrained from writing and speaking, many, lest I should give more pain than duty commanded me to give. I cannot hope that you will allow of all I say. But it is the truth. I have refrained from it, not only because it is a duty, but because I wish to disarm those who divert men from the real point at issue by accusations of bitterness and the like. It has been my lot, more than of most, to be in these late years on the frontier which divides us. And—why I know not—people have come to me with their anxieties and their doubts. What would you have done in my place? That which you have done in your own; which, mutato nomine, has been my duty and my burden.

[Footnote 68: S. Aug. Op., tom, ii., pp. 119, 120; torn, x., p. 93]

And now I have done. I have a hope that the day is coming when all {305} in England who believe in the supernatural order, in the revelation of Christianity, in the inspiration of Holy Scripture, in the divine certainty of dogmatic tradition, in the divine obligation of holding no communion with heresy and with schism, will be driven in upon the lines of the only stronghold which God has constituted as "the pillar and ground of the truth." This may not be, perhaps, as yet; but already it is time for those who love the faith of Christianity, and look with sorrow and fear on the havoc which is laying it waste among us, to draw together in mutual kindness and mutual equity of judgment. That I have so ever treated you I can truly say; that I may claim it at your hands I am calmly conscious; but whether you and others accord it to me or not, I must leave it to the Disposer of hearts alone to determine. Though we are parted now, it may not be for ever; and morning by morning, in the holy Sacrifice, I pray that the same light of faith which so profusely fell upon myself, notwithstanding all I am, may in like manner abundantly descend upon you who are in all things so far above me, save only in that one gift which is not mine, but his alone who is the Sovereign Giver of all grace.

Believe me, my dear friend,
Always affectionately yours,
HENRY EDWARD MANNING.

ST. MARY'S, BAYSWATER,
Sept. 27, 1864.

P.S.—My attention has just been called to the concluding pages of the last number of the Quarterly Review, in which I am again described by a writer who evidently has abilities to know better, to be in "ecstasies." The writer represents, as the sum or chief argument of my "Second Letter to an Anglican Friend," the passing reference I there made to the Lord Chancellor's speech. I quoted this to prove that the late judgment is a part of the law, both of the land and of the Church of England. But the whole of the letter, excepting this single point, is an argument to show that the vote of the Convocation carries with it no divine certainty, and resolves itself into the private judgment of the majority who passed it. For all this argument the writer has not a word. I cannot be surprised that he fills out his periods with my "ecstasies," "shouts of joy," "wild paeans," a quotation from "Shylock," and other things less fitting. This is not to reason, but to rail. Is it worthy? Is it love of truth? Is it good faith? Is it not simply the fallacy of evasion? I can assure him that this kind of controversy is work that will not stand. We are in days when personalities and flimsy rhetoric will not last long. Neither will it bear to be tried by "the fire," nor will it satisfy, I was about to say, nor will it mislead, men who are in earnest for truth or for salvation. I had hoped that this style of controversy had been cured or suppressed by a greater sincerity and reality of religious thought in these days of anxiety and unbelief. There either is, or is not, a divine Person teaching perpetually through the Church in every age, and therefore now as always, generating faith with divine certainty in the minds of men. This question must be answered; and, as men answer it, we know where to class them, and how to deal with them. All the evasions and half-arguments of such writers are becoming daily more and more intolerable to those of the English people—and they are a multitude—who would give all that they count dear, and life itself, to know and to die in the full and certain light of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ.

H. E. M.

{306}

Translated from Le Correspondant.

A RUSSIAN RELIGIOUS.

BY PRINCE AUGUSTIN GALITZIN.

On the 6th of May, 1840, in a little hut upon the slope of that chain of mountains which separates the northern from the southern states of the American Union, died an old man who had spent his life in spreading the faith through those distant regions. A crowd of persons surrounded his bed in tears; for during half a century he had been the depositary of public misfortunes, domestic troubles, and spiritual distress. Though known by the humble name of Father Smith, this priest was not a native of the land which received his last breath: he was a Russian by birth, and his name was Galitzin.

On the 1st of September in the same year eight women landed at New York, clad all in black, and wearing no ornament but a cross on the breast. They came to educate new generations in the New World. The eldest of them was not, like her sisters, a Frenchwoman; the same blood ran in her veins as in those of the missionary just dead, and her heart beat with the same love. She too was a Russian, and her name was Madame Elizabeth Galitzin.

Born at St. Petersburg in 1795, the Princess Elizabeth was the daughter of a woman of whom it is praise enough to say that she was the worthiest and most intimate friend of Madame Swetchine, who called her "her second conscience." [Footnote 69] On the day when Elizabeth reached her fifteenth year, her mother confided to her the secret that she had become a Catholic, and told the reasons which had induced her not, as is still supposed in Russia, to abandon the faith of her fathers, but to return to it in all its integrity. Elizabeth thus describes the emotion which she felt in listening to this disclosure, and the influence which it had upon her own future. [Footnote 70]

[Footnote 69: Lettres de Mme. Swetchine, I. 321. ]

[Footnote 70: This extract and the details that follow are taken from or confirmed by the Rev. A. Guidée's Vie du P. Rozaven and the Rev. J. Gagarin's notice of Madame Galitzin in his Etudes de théologie, de philosophie et d'histoire, vol. ii.]

"The secret which my mother confided to me filled me with despair; I burst into tears, without uttering a word. For several days I wept bitterly whenever I was alone, and during the night. I believed that my mother had committed a great sin, because the government punished so severely those who forsook the religion of the country. The reasons which she gave made no impression on me; I did not even understand them: the moment of the fiat lux was not yet come. From that day I felt an implacable hatred of the Catholic religion and its ministers, especially of the Jesuits, who, as I supposed, had effected my mother's conversion. One night, as I was lamenting my isolated condition, separated from my mother by this division of sentiments, I was struck by the sudden thought, 'If the Jesuits have gained over so excellent a woman as mamma,—a woman so reasonable, so well-informed, and of so much experience, what will they not do with an ignorant, unsophisticated girl like me? I must protect myself against their persecutions. I firmly believe that the Greek Church is the true church; I am resolved to be faithful to it unto death. To withdraw myself effectually from the seductions of the Jesuits, I will write down a vow that I will never change my religion.' No sooner said than {307} done. I rose at once, and despite the darkness wrote out my vow in due form, invoking the wrath of God if I ever broke it. Then I went back to bed, feeling much more composed, and believing that I had gained a great victory over the devil. Alas! it was he that guided my pen. For four years I repeated that vow every day when I said my prayers; I never omitted it. I gloried in my obstinacy, and took every opportunity to show my aversion to the Catholic religion, and above all to the Jesuits. In this I was encouraged by my confessor. He asked me one day if I had any leaning toward Catholicism.

"'I, father! I detest the Catholic religion and the Jesuits!'

"'Good, good!' said he; 'that is as it should be.'

"I let slip no occasion of defaming these holy men. I delighted in repeating all the absurd stories that I heard against them, and believed them as much as if they were articles of faith. But about the middle of the fourth year an excellent Italian priest, who had given me lessons, died. My mother sometimes requested me to go to the Catholic church on days of great ceremony, and I durst not refuse, though I used to go with rage in my heart. When she invited me, however, to go with her to the funeral of the poor priest, I consented willingly, out of gratitude, and respect for the memory of the deceased. As soon as I entered the church a voice within me seemed to say, 'You hate this church, but you will one day belong to it yourself.' The words sank into my heart. I was deeply moved, and shed abundance of tears all the while I remained in the church—I could not tell why. A thought all at once occurred to me: 'You hate the Jesuits,' said I to myself; 'is not hatred a sin? When did you learn to consider this feeling a virtue? If it is a sin, I must not commit it again: I will not hate the Jesuits then; I will pray for them.' And so, in fact, I did, every day from that moment. I struggled against my dislike for them.

"In the meanwhile we went to pass the summer away from home. In this retirement our good Lord vouchsafed to speak to my heart and inspire me with such a lively sorrow for my sins that I often passed part of the night in weeping. I watered my couch with tears, and judging myself unworthy to sleep on a bed, I cast myself on the ground, and used to lie there until fatigue obliged me to return to my pillow. At the end of three months we went back to St. Petersburg, and I there learned that a cousin of mine [Footnote 71] had become a convert. I was deeply pained. I accused the Jesuits of being the cause of the step, and had hard work not to yield to my old hatred of them. I avoided speaking with my cousin alone, because I did not want to receive the confidence which I knew she was anxious to give me. But at last, to my great regret, I had to listen to her. When she had told me what I was so unwilling to know, I burst into tears, and replied:

[Footnote 71: The lady here mentioned was the mother of Monseigneur de Ségur. ]

"'If you believe that the Catholic religion is the true one, you were right to embrace it; but I do not understand how you could believe it.'

"'Oh,' said she, 'if you would only read something that my mother [Footnote 72] has written on the Greek schism and the truth of the Catholic Church, you would be persuaded as I was.'

[Footnote 72: The Countess Rostopchine, whom Madame de Staël mentions with so much praise in her Dix années d'exil. ]

"'You may send me whatever you wish,' I answered, 'but you may be certain that it will not affect me. I am too firmly convinced that truth lives in the Greek Church.'

"I went home in great distress of mind. For the first time in four years I omitted to repeat my vow before going to bed; it seemed to me rash. I retired, but God would not let me sleep; he filled my mind with salutary thoughts. 'I must examine this matter,' said I, 'it is certainly worth the {308} trouble; it is something of too much consequence to be deceived about.' I thought over all that I knew about the Catholic faith, and at that moment God opened my eyes. I saw as clear as day that hitherto I had been in the wrong, and the truth was to be found only in the Catholic Church. 'It is our pride,' I exclaimed, 'which prevents our acknowledging the supremacy of the Pope: to-morrow I will embrace the truth. Yet how can I? And my vow? Ah, but the vow is null; it can be no obstacle to the fulfilment of my resolution. If I had taken an oath to commit a murder, the oath would have been a sin, and to fulfil it would be another. I will not commit the second sin. I will not put off being a Catholic beyond to-morrow.'

"I waited impatiently for day that I might read my aunt's little treatise,—not because I needed arguments to convince me, but I wanted to have it to say that I had read something. At day-break I wrote to my cousin these words: 'Send me the manuscript, pray for me, and hope.' I read it quickly; it consisted of not more than thirty pages. I found in it all that I had said to myself during the night. I hesitated no longer, but hastened to my mother, declared myself a Catholic, and begged her to send for Father Rozaven. He came the same morning. He was not a little surprised at the unexpected intelligence, and asked me if I was ready to suffer persecution, even death itself, if need were, for the love of the religion which I was going to embrace. My blood froze in my veins, but I answered: 'I hope everything from the grace of God.' The good father doubted no longer the sincerity of my conversion, and promised to hear my confession the next day but one, that is, the 18th of October. It was during the night of the 15th and 16th of October, 1815, that God spoke for me the words fiat lux."

After she had been received into the Church, Father Rozaven said to her: "I wish to establish in your heart a great love of God which shall manifest itself not by fine sentiments but by practical results, and shall lead you to fulfil with zeal and courage all your duties without exception. I want you to strive ardently to acquire the solid virtues of humility, love of your neighbor, patience and conformity to the will of God. I want to see in you a grandeur, an elevation, and a firmness of soul, and to teach you to seek and find your consolation in God."

The princess became all that her wise director wished her to be; and the constant practice of the fundamental Christian virtues soon led her to aim at a still more perfect life. Even her mother for a long time opposed her design. Her friends ridiculed her for wanting to lead what they called a "useless" life. Sensitive to this reproach, so constantly made by people who themselves do nothing at all, she begged the learned Jesuit to furnish her with weapons to repel it. Her request called forth the following excellent reply, which may be read with especial profit just now, when so much is said about the uselessness of nuns:

"Tell me, my child, have you read the catechism? One of the first questions is, Why has God created us and placed us in this world? To know him, love him, and serve him, and by this means to obtain everlasting life. It does not say, to be 'useful.' Even when a nun is of no use to others, she is useful to herself, and to be so is her first duty; she labors to sanctify herself and to save her soul. Is not this the motive which led St. Paul, St. Anthony, and so many thousands of anchorets into the desert? These saints were certainly not fools. Beside, is it true that nuns are useless? Was it not the story of the virtues of St. Anthony which determined the conversion of St. Augustine? and certainly this conversion was something far greater than all that St. Anthony could have done by remaining in the world. But to say nothing of the example of the saints, are not nuns useful to each {309} other? Do you see no advantage in the union of twenty or thirty persons, more or less, who incite each other to the acquisition of virtue, and take each other by the hand in their journey to the same goal, the salvation of their souls? And then again, many religious communities devote themselves to the education of youth; and surely there are few occupations more useful than bringing up in the knowledge and practice of religion young girls who are destined to become mothers of families, and to fulfil all the duties of society that belong to their sex."

A devotion of this sort commended itself especially to our young convert. She made choice of the new order of the Sacred Heart, and after eleven years' delay finally entered it at Metz in 1826. She made her vows in 1828 at Rome, and remained there until she was ordered to France in 1834 and made general secretary of the congregation. In 1839 she was chosen assistant mother, and appointed to visit the houses of the Sacred Heart in America, and to found some new ones. Her correspondence during this period with her mother is now before me, and will show, far better than any words of mine, not only her piety, but the serenity of her soul and that love of country and kindred, which religion, far from extinguishing, can alone purify by carrying it beyond the narrow boundaries of this life. Like those austere Christians whose lives Count de Montalembert has written, she kept a large place in her heart for love and friendship, and clung ardently to those natural ties which she did not feel called upon to break when she gave herself to God.

I shall then leave Madame Elizabeth to speak in her own words; and in so doing, it seems to me that I am fulfilling the wish of Madame Swetchine, who wrote thus to Father Gagarin (ii. 360): "There are many details respecting her life which might be found and authenticated, and I am convinced that many interesting particulars might be obtained from her correspondence during her two journeys in America."

NEW YORK, Sept. 1, 1840.

MY DEAREST MAMMA,—I arrived at New York a few hours ago, after a voyage of forty-five days. Our voyage, thank God, was a good one, despite thirty-two days of contrary winds. We had neither storms nor rough weather; the trip was a long one, that is all. Having two priests with us, we had mass often; you may imagine what a consolation it was to us. I was sea-sick only one week; after that, so well that I passed a great part of my time in drawing.

"I am here for only four days; at least I trust that the business which I have to transact with the bishop will not keep me longer. Then I shall go with my seven companions and a worthy priest who has us in charge, to St. Louis in the state of Missouri, 2,000 versts from New York. They say that we shall reach there in twelve days; by this reckoning we shall arrive at our first house about the 20th of September. I believe that I shall die of joy when I get there; for here in the midst of the world, though surrounded by excellent people, who show us a thousand attentions, I am like a fish out of water. I will write to you as soon as I reach St. Louis. I cannot remain with our family of the Sacred Heart there more than a fortnight, for I must then visit two other establishments not far distant. I shall return to St. Louis, and leave there about the middle of November for our house at St. Michael, near New Orleans, which is 1,500 versts from St. Louis. After a few days' rest I shall then go to our house at Grand Coteau, also in Louisiana; and after staying there three weeks I shall return to pass the winter at St. Michael. I hope to do well there, for the climate is warmer than that of Rome. In the spring I shall make another visitation of the houses in Missouri, and then go back to New York to begin the foundation {310} of a new establishment there. So you see I shall not be very long in any one place.

"What a consolation it will be for me if I find a letter from you at St. Louis! I am impatient for news of you and my brothers. How did they take the news of my departure for America? With indifference perhaps; but they are far from being indifferent to me. God knows what wishes I form for them, and how sweet it is to me to be able to offer up for them the fatigues and petty sufferings which divine Providence sends us. When you write to my brothers do not fail to remember me to them, for, they are dearer to me than ever in our Lord.

"I was in hopes of finding our relative in America; but he is dead. He died universally regretted. Everybody looked upon him as a saint. I will make it a point to obtain his works and send them to you."

"St. Louis, Nov. 9, 1840.

"I have had the consolation of receiving your letter dated the 15th of July. Write to me now at St. Louis, at the Academy of the Ladies of the Sacred Heart, for so they call here those religious houses which receive pupils as boarders. For my part, I am determined to send you this letter at once, because I am afraid that Paris will be turned topsy-turvy by the remains of Bonaparte, which are to be removed thither in the month of November.

"It is too true that our 'American uncle' is dead. You may suppose how deeply I regret it. He was not a bishop; only a simple missionary. He invariably refused all dignities, and devoted himself for more than forty years to the missions, in which he displayed a zeal worthy of an apostle. He died at the age of seventy-two, like a saint as he had lived, having given himself to God since his seventeenth year. The whole country in which he preached the gospel weeps for him as for a father. His memory is revered in America among Protestants as well as Catholics. I have been shown an article about him in the Gazette: it gives his whole history, and it would be impossible to write a more touching eulogy of him. I have some of his works; they are excellent.

"I expected that my departure for America would have but little effect upon my brothers. Our good Lord permits it to be so, and we must wish whatever he wishes. A day will come, I trust, when their hearts will be touched. Let us wait and pray, and suffer with more fervor than ever. Remember me to them and to my aunts. Beg for me the light of the Holy Ghost: I need it sorely, for my post is a very difficult one."

"ST. MICHAEL, Dec. 6, 1840.,

"Here I am, near New Orleans; but I shall soon start on another journey, and not be at rest again before the month of June. I am now in the land of the sugar-cane; it is very nice to eat, or rather to suck. As if I brought the cold with me in all my travels, I had scarcely arrived here when bitter cold weather set in, and the ice was as thick as a good fat finger. The weather has moderated since then—to my great satisfaction, for I have not enough of the spirit of mortification to bear cold very well. I begin to believe that there is not a single warm country under the sun, and that the reputation of those lands that are called so is not well-founded.

"I send you only these few words, that you may not be uneasy about me; for I have no leisure. Remember me to my brothers. Bless me, and believe, dear mamma, in my tender and respectful attachment."

"ST. MICHAEL, Feb. 28, 1841.

"I leave this place on the 15th of March, and shall be in St. Louis for the feast of the Annunciation. I shall remain three weeks at three of our houses in Missouri, and then go to Cincinnati and Philadelphia; so I hope to be in New York by the beginning of May. Do not fear on my {311} account the dangers of railroads and steamboats. Those who are sent on a mission are under the special protection of divine Providence. I have never met with the slightest accident; and this constant journeying about has moreover rid me of my fever. I am perfectly well. I rise every morning at twenty minutes after four; I fast and abstain; and nothing hurts me. So don't be uneasy about me. I think I shall stay in New York until November, if God opposes no obstacle to my doing so; I shall then make a last visit to our houses in Louisiana and Missouri, and sail for Europe probably during the summer of 1842. In fifteen months I shall be afloat again on the great ocean. I hope Alexander will not be off again before that, so that I may have the consolation of seeing him once more. He is the only one of my brothers whom I may never see again, and he was my Benjamin. Tell them I do not forget them in my prayers, and I wish they would also remember me before God: that will come some day, I hope. Pray have some masses said for me; I have great need of them. If you only knew what it was to hold such an office as mine! The responsibility is enough to make one tremble."

"LOUISIANA, March 29, 1841.

"Before starting on my journey I must send you a few lines. It is a little before my accustomed time for writing; but I shall be nearly two months on the route before reaching New York, and I am afraid I shall have no opportunity of writing except on my arrival in that city, and after my return here. So do not be anxious on account of my future silence: it will not be a sign of anything bad. I am better than ever. Make your mind at rest about my health. Our Lord gives me astonishing strength. Fatigue has no effect upon me."

"NEW YORK, May 15, 1841.

"I arrived here without accident, and take comfort in thinking that I shall be stationary now until October. Since I left Rome I have not been six weeks at a time in any one place. I am about founding an establishment here, and the task is no easy one, in any point of view. The expenses to be incurred are enormous, and our resources, to say the best of them, are very moderate. So I have begged our mother-general to allow the 200 francs which you were so good as to send us for postage, to be devoted to the first expenses of the chapel.

"You have no idea how deeply our 'relative' is regretted here. He was universally loved and respected. People look upon me with favor, because I bear the same name."

"NEW YORK, June 20, 1841.

"The climate of New York is very disagreeable. It was so cold yesterday that even with a woollen coverlid I had hard work to keep warm through the night. It is not cold two days in succession. The temperature varies even between morning and evening—that is, when it is not continually raining. I believe after all that the climate of St. Petersburg is the best. Oar summers at least are superb, and we have long days; but here it is hardly light, this time of year, at half after four in the morning, and by half after seven in the evening we need lamps. In fact, you must go to a cold climate if you want to keep warm and to see well!

"I have had an agreeable surprise here, and you would never guess what it is. It is to have klioukva [Footnote 73 ] to eat nearly every day; it is the first time I have seen them since I left Russia. This is absurd, I know, but I cannot tell you what pleasure it gave me.

[Footnote 73: Cranberries. ]

"New York is an immense city; it has nearly 400,000 inhabitants, and is as noisy as Paris. There are some 80,000 Catholics and only eight churches, but religion is making progress. The next time I write to you, it will be from our house of the Sacred {312} Heart. I am burning with impatience to be in it; for though we are extremely comfortable with the good Sisters of Charity, who are truly sisters to us, we nevertheless long to be at home, where we can live in conformity to our rule and customs.

"What news of my brothers? How happy I shall be when you can tell me that all is well with them! I would give a thousand lives for that. The day and hour of God will come; let us be patient and pray. Say a thousand affectionate things to them for me."

"NEW YORK, Aug. 2, 1841.

"I dare say you will be pleased to learn, dear mamma, that I have just opened a little mission among the Indian savages in Missouri, 300 miles beyond St. Louis. Four of our community have been established there. The population consists of 900 Indians, all converted by the Jesuits. Thanks be to God, his kingdom is extending itself, and what it loses on one side through the wiles of the enemy, it gains on another.

"I never let a month pass without writing to you, despite my many occupations, because I know your anxiety; but do not distress yourself. I am, if possible, but too well, in every respect. Our houses here are like those in Europe; while within doors we never could suspect that we had been transplanted into the new world (that used to be). Don't be afraid about crocodiles. The country abounds in them, as it does in snakes; but nobody thinks of them, and I have never even seen one. Several, however, have been pointed out to me; but as my eyes were cast down, I saw nothing."

"NEW YORK, Sept. 13, 1841.

"Our establishment is well under way; the house is finished, and we have already twelve pupils. I have no doubt their number will increase next month to twenty, and perhaps more, for there have been already at least forty applications. Beside this, I have just established a mission among the Potawatamie Indians in the Indian Territory. There is a population of 3,000 Indians in the place where our ladies are, 1,000 of whom are fervent Catholics; the others are pagans, but to some extent civilized. We have there already a school of fifty little girls, and a great many women come to learn from us how to work.

"I shall leave New York and pass the winter in Louisiana. I am quite well—better than in Europe; but I am over-burdened with work. You may readily believe it when I tell you that beside governing this house, and my province, which comprises seven houses, I have had to paint three large pictures for the chapel, and to finish them in six weeks. At last, thank God, they are done, and our chapel is really charming. What a pity that you cannot come and hear mass in it!"

"En route, between St. Michael and Grand Coteau, Dec. 4, 1841.

"From a tavern on the banks of the Mississippi I write to wish you and all the family a happy New Year! I pray devoutly that it may be fertile in graces and divine blessings; everything else is superfluous and valueless, and therefore unnecessary. I have travelled a good deal since I wrote you from Harrisburg, Penn. I am now going to our house at Grand Coteau, where I shall stay about five weeks; then I shall spend an equal time at St. Michael. This will bring me to the end of February; after which I shall start for St. Louis, and visit our other establishments in Missouri, including our new mission among the Potawatamie savages. Don't let the word 'savages' frighten you. They won't eat me; for they are more than civilized. One thousand of them are Catholics, in the place to which I have sent our sisters, who are only four in number, and have a school which succeeds admirably. Our good savages are so fervent that they come every day to church at half-past five in the morning. They say their prayers, meditate for half an hour, and then hear mass, {313} during which they sing canticles in their savage fashion. After mass one of the Indians teaches the catechism to about thirty little boys and a like number of girls; that over, they go off to their respective employments, and about six in the evening they come back to the church to say their prayers together. It was the Jesuits who converted this tribe, and they are still doing a vast amount of good out there. I shall probably go there in April; it will be a three-weeks' journey. After that I mean to return to New York, and probably about the 1st of June I shall sail for Havre. So there you have my route; you see that I lead the life of a regular courier more than ever. But fortunately, to one who has the happiness of being a religious, all things are indifferent, provided they are in accordance with holy obedience. I am very much afraid I shall miss some of your letters, for they must follow me at a gallopping pace or they will not overtake me.

"Assure yourself, my dear mamma, that Russia is not the coldest country in the world. The so-called burning Louisiana is colder. From the 25th to the 30th of November we had hard frosts which chilled us through and through. Perhaps I am mistaken, but I have a pleasant recollection that in November at St. Petersburg we have more rain than frost. In a word, now that I have tried, so to speak, all climates, I am firmly persuaded that there is not a warm country on the face of the earth, and I have resigned myself to look for pleasant and eternal warmth only in the next world.

"What news of my brothers and my sisters-in-law? Are they as great vagabonds as I? Ah, if their hearts and minds could only be composed and settled in God alone! It will come, some day or other; we must hope, even against all hope. Our Lord is the master of hearts, and he wills from all eternity that these hearts shall be wholly his. A touch of his grace will soften those of my brothers; the day of illusions will pass away, and we shall sing eternally with them that God is good and his mercies are unspeakable. A thousand kisses, dear mamma; bless your dutiful and grateful daughter
ELIZABETH."

In 1842 Madame Elizabeth went to Rome to give an account of her fruitful mission to her superiors. I have before me a last letter of hers, written to her mother, whom she had just lost at St. Petersburg almost at the same hour in which her eldest brother died in Paris in the bosom of the Catholic Church.

"I confess to you," she says, "that for several months past, I have continually felt impelled to make a sacrifice of my life for my brothers. Perhaps you will think this presumptuous on my part, so I will explain myself. When I am making my preparation for death, according to custom, the thought often comes into my mind to offer the sacrifice of my life in advance, and to beseech our Lord to accept it, as well as all the sufferings I may have to undergo, especially at that terrible moment when the soul is separated from the body, in order that I may obtain the conversion of my brothers. I have asked permission to transfer to them all the merit which, by God's grace, I may acquire through resignation or suffering—not only in my last sickness, but even during the period of life which yet remains to me—so that, accumulating no more merits by way of satisfaction for my own sins, I may have, for my part, purgatory without any alleviation; for in that place of propitiation and peace I can no longer be of any use to them. I hope our Lord will grant my request: all I know is that since that time my habitual gladness of heart is increased a hundred-fold, and that I think of death with unspeakable consolation."

This sacrifice, which reminds one of a similar incident in the life of St. Vincent de Paul, [Footnote 74] seems to have been {314} accepted by God. Returning to America in 1843, Madame Elizabeth had not time to enjoy the fruits of her labors. She was attacked at St. Michael by the yellow fever, and there fell asleep in the Lord on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, saying: "I do not fear death; I long for it, if it is God's will." [Footnote 75]

[Footnote 74: One day, moved with compassion at the state of an unfortunate priest, a doctor of theology, who had lost his faith, because he had ceased to study the science of divinity, St. Vincent de Paul besought God to restore to this man the liveliness of his faith, offering to take up himself, if necessary, the burden which this poor brother was unable to bear. His prayer was heard at once, and for four years this great saint remained as it were deprived of that faith which was nevertheless his life. "Do you know how he passed through this trial?" says an admirable master of the spiritual life. "He passed through it by becoming St. Vincent de Paul; that is to say, all that this name signifies."—GRATRY, Les Sources, p. 82.]

[Footnote 75: Writing from Lyons to Bishop Hughes in September, 1842, Madame Galitzm said: "I avail myself of this opportunity to write a few lines, although detained in my bed with the fever for upward of three weeks. My health is in a poor state, and if I go on as I did these two months, there is more prospect for me to go to heaven next year than to return to America." The letter is in English, which she wrote with apparent ease and considerable approach to purity. ED. CATH. WORLD. ]

"What more glorious title of nobility," says Monseigneur the Duke d'Aumale, "than to count saints and martyrs among one's ancestors?" My object is not so much to lay claim to this distinction, as to show, for the honor of my country, the part which some of her children have taken in the genesis of civilization and Catholicism in America. And this ambition will perhaps seem excusable to those who admit that every gift of God ought to be an object of our most religious care.

From The Month.

THE STOLEN SKETCH.

I was sitting in the National Gallery, copying one of Murillo's glorious little beggar-boys. A tube of color fell from my box and rolled out upon the floor. A gentleman passing picked it up, and restored it to me. I thanked him; and then he lingered some minutes by my chair, watching my work and giving me some useful hints with the air of a person who thoroughly understands the art. I was striving to be an artist, struggling through difficult uphill labor. I was not acquainted with any one of the profession. I had no one to give me counsel. Those few friendly words of advice from a stranger fell on my ear like so many pearls, and I gathered them gratefully and stored them fast in memory's richest jewel-casket.

After that he seemed to take an interest in my progress, gave me valuable lessons, and occasionally lent me colors or brushes. I wondered at myself for conversing with him fearlessly, for I was usually shy of strangers; but his manner was so quiet and easy, his tone so deferential, and he spoke so well on the subjects which interested me most, that I forgot to be nervous, and listened and answered with delight. He was copying a picture quite near to me, and I felt humbled when returning to my own effort after glancing at his masterly work. But he cheered me with kind words of encouragement, which had a different effect upon me from my mother's fond admiration and Hessie's eloquent praises. It was so new to be told to expect success by one whose words might be hailed as a prophecy. I grew to look forward with increased interest to my long day's work in the gallery, and to think the place lonely when the kind artist {315} was not there. Before my picture was finished I felt that I had gained a friend.

One afternoon on leaving the gallery I was dismayed to find that it rained heavily. Quite unprepared for the wet, I yet shrank from the expense of a cab. While standing irresolute upon the steps, I presently saw my artist friend at my side. He shot open his umbrella, and remarked on the unpleasant change in the weather. Perhaps he saw my distress in my face, for he asked me how far I had to go. He also was going to Kensington, he said, and begged permission to shelter me. I was obliged to accept his offer, for it was getting late. It was one of those evenings so dreaded by women who are forced to walk alone in London, when the light fades quickly out, and darkness drops suddenly upon the city.

Tying my thick veil over my face, and wondering at myself, I took his arm and walked by his side through the twilight streets. I thought of a time long ago when I used to get upon tiptoe to clasp my father's arm, he laughing at my childish pride, while we sauntered up and down the old garden at home, far away. Never, since that dear arm had been draped in the shroud, had my hand rested on a man's sleeve. Memory kept vexing me sorely; and I, who seldom cried, swallowed tears behind my veil and went along in silence. Still I liked the walk. As we passed on, sliding easily through those rough crowds which at other times I dreaded so much, I felt keenly how good it is to be taken care of. I seemed to be moving along in a dream. Even when it began to thunder, and lightning flashed across our eyes, the storm could not rouse me from my reverie. I felt no fear, stoutly protected as I was.

II.

When we reached my home, a violent gust of rain made my friend step inside the open doorway. I asked him to come into the parlor till the shower should lighten; and he did so. My mother sat by the fender in her armchair, the fire burned blithely, the tea-things were on the table. The room looked very cosy after the stormy streets.

My mother received the unexpected visitor cordially. She had heard of his kindness to me before. Hessie came in with the bread and butter, in her brown housefrock, with her bright curls a little tossed, and her blue eyes wondering wide at sight of a stranger. My mother asked him to stay for tea, and I went upstairs to take off my bonnet.

Never before had I felt so anxious to have my hair neat, and to find an immaculate collar and cuffs. My hands trembled as I tied my apron and drew on my slippers. This was always to me a pleasant hour, when my return made Hessie and my mother glad, when I got refreshingly purified from the stains and odor of paint, and when we all had tea together. To-night a certain excitement mingled with my usual quiet thankful satisfaction.

I hurried down to the parlor. Hessie was filling the cups, and Edward Vance (our new friend) was talking pleasantly to my mother. He looked up as I came in, and when I reached my seat a sensation of gladness was tingling from my heart's core to my finger-ends. My mother took my hand and fondled it in hers, and thanked him for his kindness to her "good child." I felt that he could not but sympathize with my dear, sick, uncomplaining mother, and I somehow felt it sweet that she should give me that little word of praise while speaking to him. After tea Hessie played us dreamy melodies from Mozart in the firelight, and I sat by mother's side tracing pictures in the burning coals.

After that first evening Edward Vance often came to our house. At these times our conversation was chiefly upon art-subjects. Hessie and my mother were deeply interested in them for my sake; I, for their own, and for {316} the hopes which were entwined about them.

I thought him an ambitious man, one whose whole soul was bent upon success. I liked him for it. I thought, "The noblest man is he who concentrates all his powers upon one worthy aim, and wins a laurel-crown from his fellow-men as the reward of his stead-fastness." Yet he seemed often troubled when we asked him about his own works.

A remark I overheard one day in the gallery puzzled me. Some one said, "Vance? Oh, yes! he's a clever copyist—a determined plodder; but he originates nothing." I don't know that I had any right to be indignant; but I was. That very evening I asked him to show us some of his designs. His face got a dark troubled look upon it, and he evaded the promise.

Meantime he took a keen interest in my work. He taught me how to finish my etchings more delicately, and his remarks on my compositions were always most useful. His suggestions were peculiarly happy. The drawing was ever enhanced in strength or beauty by his advice. His ideas were just and true; his taste daintily critical. This convinced me that the remark overheard in the gallery was made either in ignorance or ill-nature; or perhaps that there were more artists called Vance than one.

He came often now, very often. I ceased to feel angry at myself for starting when his knock came. Many small things, too trivial to be mentioned, filled my life with a delicious calm, and breathed a rose-colored atmosphere around me. Everything in my inner and outer world had undergone a change. I grew subject to idle fits at my work; but then the suspended energy came back with such a rush of power, almost like inspiration, that I accomplished far more than I ever had done in the former quiet days when there was little sunshine to be had, and I thought I had been born to live contentedly under a cloud all my life. Art seemed glorified a thousandfold in my eyes. The galleries had looked to me before like dim treasuries of phantom beauty, shadowy regions of romance and perfection, through the gates of which I might peer, though the key was not mine. Now they teemed with a ripe meaning; the meaning which many glorious souls that once breathed and wrought on this earth have woven into their creations;—a meaning which unlocked for me the world of love, and gave me long bright visions of its beautiful vistas.

My mother looked from Edward Vance to me, and from me to him; and I knew her thought. It sweetened yet more that food of happiness on which I lived. Something said to me, "You may meet his eye fearlessly, place your hand frankly in his clasp, follow his feet gladly."

One evening after he had gone my mother stroked my head lying on her knee.

"You are very happy, Grace?" she said.

"I am, mother," I whispered.

"Ah! your life is set to music, my love," she murmured; "the old tune."

III.

Never was one sister so proud of another as I of Hessie. She was only seventeen, three years younger than I, and I felt almost a motherly love for her. She was slight and fair, and childish both in face and disposition. I gloried in her beauty; her head reminded me of Raffaelle's angels. I thought that one day I should paint a picture with Hessie for my model—a picture which should win the love and admiration of all who gazed. One leisure time, in the midst of my happiness, I suddenly resolved to commence the work. I chose a scene from our favorite poem of Enid—the part where the mother goes to her daughter's chamber, bearing Geraint's message, and finds

{317}

  'Half disarrayed, as to her rest, the girl,
  Whom first she kissed on either cheek, and then
  On either shining shoulder laid a hand,
  And kept her off, and gazed into her face,
  And told her all their converse in the hall,
  Proving her heart. But never light and shade
  Coursed one another more on open ground,
  Beneath a troubled heaven, than red and pale
  Across the face of Enid, hearing her;
  While slowly falling, as a scale that falls
  When weight is added only grain by grain,
  Sank her sweet head upon her gentle breast.
  Nor did she lift an eye, nor speak a word,
  Rapt in the fear, and in the wonder of it."

I made a sketch. Never had I been so happy in any attempt. My own mother, worn, sad, dignified—I gave her face and form to the poet's conception of Enid's mother. And Hessie made a very lovely Enid, with the white drapery clinging to her round shoulders, and her golden head drooped. I wrought out all the accessories with scrupulous care—the shadowy old tower-chamber; the open window, and the dim drifts of cloud beyond; the stirring tapestry; the lamp upon the table, flinging its yellow light on the rich faded dress of the mother and on Enid's glistening hair.

I toiled at the sketch almost as if I had meant to make it a finished picture. It was large. I lavished labor upon it with a passionate energy. I never wearied of conjuring up ideas of beauty, to lay them in luxurious profusion under my brush. I gloried in the work of my hands; and yet I felt impatient when others praised it. I burned to show them what the finished picture should prove to be. This sketch, much as I prized it as an earnest of future success, I held only as the shadow of that which must one day live in perfection on the canvas. So I raved in my dreams.

I had resolved not to speak of it to Edward Vance till I had completed the sketch. I had Hessie's promise not to show it, not to tell him. I worked at it daily, not feeling that I worked, but only that I lived—only that my soul was accomplishing its appointed task of creation; that it breathed in its element, revelled in its God-given power; that it was uttering that which should stir many other souls with a myriad blessed inspirations, long after the worn body had refused to shelter it longer, and eternity had summoned it from the world of endeavor to that rest which, in the fever of its earnestness, it knew not yet how to appreciate.

And Hessie stood for me, patient day after day.

        "But never light and shade
  Coursed one another more on open ground,
  Beneath a troubled heaven, than red and pale
  Across the face of Enid, hearing her."

I read aloud the passage again and again, that Hessie might feel it as well as I. And truly, as I worked, the color on Hessie's cheek changed and changed under my eyes, till I forgot my purpose in wondering at her. One day, while I laid down my brush questioning her, she burst into tears, and sobbed in childish impetuous distress. She would not answer my anxious questions; she shunned my sympathy.

But that night, before I slept, I had my little sister's secret. She worshipped Edward Vance as simple childish natures worship heroes whom they exalt to the rank of gods.

IV.

I had no more joy, no more heart to work. I laid my sketch in my portfolio, and said that it was finished, and that I should not commence the picture at present. I could not work looking at Hessie's changed face.

What should I do? How should I restore happiness to my little sister? This was the question which haunted me. Night or day it would give me no peace. I could not rest at home. I undertook a work once more at the National Gallery, and stayed away all day. Often I sat for hours, and did nothing, thinking with painful pertinacity of that one question, "How should I restore happiness to my little sister?" Edward Vance had never asked me to be his wife. Perhaps Hessie did not guess that I had believed and hoped that he would. My mother—but then a mother's eye will see where others are blind.

I sat in my deserted corner of the gallery, dropping tears into my lap, {318} and pondering my question. If my mother were dead, if I were married, how lonely would not Hessie be in her misery! But if Hessie were a happy wife, why, I could support myself and live in peace and independence, blessed with congenial occupation, solaced by the love and joy of my art. "Edward Vance must never ask me to be his wife." I repeated the words again and again, till the resolve burnt itself into my heart.

"I believe that he has loved me, that he loves me now; but I can so wrap myself up in my work, so seem to forget him in my art, that I shall cease to be loveable; and then he must, he will, perceive Hessie's affection, and take her to his heart. He cannot help it, beautiful and fresh and simple as she is." So I looked at her face as she lay dreaming, sullen and grieved like a vexed child, even in sleep; and I vowed to carry out my strange resolve—to crush my love for Edward, to destroy his for me, to link the two dear ones together, and go on my life alone, with no comforter but God and my toil. It was but a short time since I had contemplated such a prospect with calm content; and why could I not forget all that had lately been, and return to my serene quiet? I said it should be so.

But in this I assumed a power over my own destiny and the destinies of others which none but God had a right to sway, and he had entered it against me in the great book of good and evil. He had planted in my heart a natural affection, and laid at my feet a treasure of happiness. I had stretched forth my hand to uproot that beautiful flower which should have borne me joy. I had turned aside from the rich gift, and thought to sweep it from my path. I had vowed to do evil, that good might come of it; and a mighty hand was already extended to punish my presumption.

V.

In pursuance of my resolve, I absented myself from home as much as possible, leaving Hessie to entertain Edward Vance when he came. I did not intend to quarrel with him—I could not have done that; but I wanted him to see more of Hessie and less of me. I had so much faith in her superior beauty and loveableness, that in the morbid frame of mind into which I had fretted myself, I believed my object would soon be accomplished.

I had succeeded in obtaining some tuitions; and between the time which they occupied and the hours spent in the galleries, I was very little at home. My mother looked at me uneasily; but I smiled and deceived her with pleasant words. On coming home late, I sometimes heard that Mr. Vance had been there; my mother always told me—Hessie never. I longed to lay my head on my mother's knee and say, "Did he ask for me?" but the voice never would come.

Sometimes he came, as of old, to spend the whole evening. I would not notice how he bore my altered ways. I sat all the time apart by the window, seemingly absorbed, puzzling out some difficult design, or working up some careful etching. I did not ask his advice; I did not claim his sympathy with my occupation. I sat wrapped up within myself, grave and ungenial, while he lingered by Hessie at the piano, and asked her to play her soft airs again. And all the time I sat staring from my paper into the little patch of garden under the window, twining my sorrow about the old solitary tree, building my unhealthy purpose into the dull wall of discolored brick, which shut us and our troubles from our neighbors. I sat listening to the plaintive tunes with which so many associations were inwoven, hearing Hessie's musical prattle—she was always gay while he stayed—and Edward's rich voice and pleasant laugh, contrasting with them as a deep wave breaks in among the echoes of a rippling creek. I sat and listened in silence, while all my life {319} rebelled in every vein and pulse at the false part I acted.

But it was too late now to retract. Though every day proved to me that the task I had undertaken was too difficult, the step had been made and could not be retraced. I had lifted my burden, and I must bear it even to the end. I had no doubt from Hessie's shy happy face that at least my object must be attained, whatever it might cost myself.

I had never shown Edward Vance the dear sketch for which I had once so keenly coveted his approval. So absorbed had I lately been in other thoughts, that it lay by forgotten. One evening my mother desired Hessie to bring it out and show it to him. I seldom looked at him, but for a moment I now glanced at his face. His eyelids flickered, and a strange expression passed over his countenance. It was admiration, surprise, and something else—I knew not what; something strange and unpleasant. The admiration, I jealously believed, was for Hessie's face in its downcast beauty. He gazed at it long, but put it aside with a few cold words of commendation. I felt, with an intolerable pang, that even so he had put me aside, and thought no more about me. But at different times afterward I saw him glance to where the sketch lay.

That night my mother kept me with her after Hessie had gone to bed. She questioned me anxiously; asked me if I had quarrelled with Edward Vance. I said, "No, mother, why should we quarrel?"

By-and-by she said, "Grace, can it be that he has not asked you to be his wife?"

I answered quickly, "Oh, no; it is Hessie whom he loves."

My mother looked puzzled and grieved, though I smiled in her face.

VI.

One evening I came home and found Hessie dull and out of humor. My mother told me that Mr. Vance had called and mentioned that he was about to leave town for some weeks. He had left his regards for me. I knew by Hessie's face that he had said nothing to make her happy during his absence.

Some evenings after, I found my mother sitting alone in the parlor, and on going upstairs Hessie curled up on our bed with her face in the pillows. I so loved this little sister, that I could not endure to see her grieve without sharing her vexation. So I sat down by her side and drew her head upon my shoulder. Sitting thus I coaxed her trouble from her. She had been out walking, and had met Edward Vance in Kensington. He had seen her. He had pretended not to see her. He had avoided her.

At first this seemed so very unlikely, I jested with her, laughed at her, said she must have been mistaken. He had been delayed in London, and had not recognized her. But Hessie declared vehemently that he had purposely avoided her, and cried as though her heart would break.

Then I said: "Hessie, if he be a person to behave so, we need neither of us trouble ourselves about him. We lived before we knew him, and I dare say we shall get on very well now that he has gone." But Hessie only stared and turned her face from me. She could not understand such a view of the case. She thought I did not feel for her.

After that the weeks passed drearily. We heard no news of Edward Vance; but he had not left London, for I saw him once in the street. I told Hessie, for I thought it right to rouse her a little rudely from the despondent state into which she had fallen. I tried, gently but decidedly, to make her understand that we had looked on as a steadfast friend one who for some reason had been tired of us, and made an excuse to drop our acquaintance; and that she would be doing serious injury to her self-respect did she give him one more thought.

For myself I mused much upon his {320} strange conduct. It remained an enigma to me. A dull listlessness hung upon me, which was more terrible than physical pain. I spent the days at home, because I could not leave Hessie to mope her life away, and damp my mother's spirits with her sad face. So I had not even the obligation of going out to daily work to stimulate me to healthful action. Now, indeed, was my life weary and burdensome for one dark space, which, thank God and his gift of strong energy, was not of vast compass. So long as we sacrifice ourselves for those we love, whether in reality or in imagination, something sublime in the idea of our purpose—whether that purpose be mistaken or not—is yet a rock to lean on in the weakest hour of anguish. But when our eyes are opened, and we see that we have only dragged others as well as ourselves deeper into misery, then indeed it is hard to "suffer and be strong."

VII.

I had done nothing of late—nothing, although I had toiled incessantly; for I did not dignify with the name of "work" the soulless mechanical drudgery which had kept me from home during the past months. My spirit had grovelled in a state of prostration, stripped of its wings and its wand of power. I now knelt and cried: "Give, oh, give me back my creative impulse!"

I had never since looked at the beloved sketch. I longed now to draw it forth, and commence the picture while I stayed at home. But Hessie shuddered when I spoke of it, and looked so terrified, pleading that she could not stand for me, that I gave up the idea for the time. I thought she had distressing memories connected with it, and I tried to rid her of them by speaking cheerfully of how successful I expected the picture to be, and what pleasure we should have in working at it. I regretted bitterly that I had not commenced it long before, just after I had made the sketch. I should then, perhaps, have had it finished in time for the Exhibition drawing near. But that was impossible now. I must wait in patience for another year. I did not at that time even look between the leaves of the portfolio. Though I thought it right to talk briskly and cheerily about it for both our sakes, I had sickening associations with that work of my short, brilliant day of happiness which Hessie, with all her childish grieving, could hardly have comprehended.

I allowed some time to pass, and at last I thought Hessie's whim had been indulged long enough. She must learn how to meet a shock and outlive it. I did not like the idea of having ghosts in the house— skeletons of unhealthy sentiment hidden away in unapproachable chambers. The shadow should be hunted from its corner into the light. The sketch must grow into a picture, which a new aspect of things must despoil of all stinging associations.

I went to seek the sketch; but the sketch was gone. I sought it in every part of the house; but to no purpose. It had quite disappeared. I mentioned the strange circumstance to my mother in Hessie's presence, and Hessie suddenly left the room. Then it struck me for the first time that my sister had either destroyed it (which I could hardly believe), or that some accident had happened to it in her hands. I observed that she never alluded to it, never inquired if I had found it. I did not question her about it. Indeed I felt too much vexed to speak of it. I grieved more for its loss than I had believed it remained in me to grieve at any fresh trial. I loved it as we do love the creation on which we have lavished the most precious riches of our mind, on which we have spent our toil, in which we have conquered difficulty, striven and achieved, struggled and triumphed. I should have loved it all my life, hanging in my own chamber, if no one might ever see it but myself; and borne my {321} sorrows with a better spirit, and tasted keener joys, while thanking God that I had been permitted to call it into existence. I gloried too much in the work of my own hands, and I was punished.

Never since have I tasted that vivid sense of delight in any achievement of my own. I have worked as zealously, and more successfully, but it has been with a humbler heart. And looking backward, I now believe that it was my inner happiness which haloed my creation with a beauty that was half in my own glad eyes.

VIII.

The succeeding few months were quiet, in the dullest sense of the word. Strive as I would, the sunshine had gone from our home. Hessie was no longer the bright Hessie of old days.

I tried to forget my dear sketch of "Enid," and made several attempts to paint some other picture; but the Exhibition drew near, and I had nothing done.

One bright May morning I read in the newspaper an account of the Academy Exhibition. The list of artists and their works stirred me with a strange trouble. Tears rose in my eyes and blotted out the words. I spread the paper on the table before me, pressed my temples with my fingers, and travelled slowly through the criticisms and praises which occupied some columns. Why was there no work of mine mentioned there? Why had I lost my time so miserably during the past months? And questioning myself thus, I was conscious of two sins upon my own head. The first was in glorying in and worshipping the creation of my own labor: the second, in exalting myself upon an imaginary pinnacle of heroism by a fancied self-sacrifice, and having brought deeper trouble upon the sister whose happiness I thought to compass. I wept the choking tears out of my throat and read on.

Something dazzled my eyes for a moment, and brought the blood to my forehead. A picture was mentioned with enthusiastic praise; a picture by E. Vance. It was called "Enid," and was interpreted by a quotation from the poem; my passage—the subject of my lost sketch! A strange idea glanced across my mind. I half smiled at it and put it away. But all day I was restless; and that evening I proposed to Hessie an expedition early next morning to see the pictures. My mother longed to go with us; but as she could not, I promised to bring home a catalogue, and describe each painting to the best of my memory.

With a feverish haste I sought out the picture of "Enid" by E. Vance. Was I dreaming? I passed my hand across my eyes as though some imaginary scene had come between me and the canvas. I did not feel Hessie's hand dropping from my arm. I stood transfixed, grasping the catalogue, and staring at the picture before me.

It was my "Enid." My own in form, attitude, tint, and expression. It was the "Enid" of my dreams realized; the "Enid" of my labor wrought to completion; the "Enid" of my lost sketch ennobled, perfected, glorified.

My work on which I had lavished my love and toil was there, and it was not mine.

Another, a more skilled, a subtler hand, had brought out its meaning with delicate appreciation, ripened its original purpose, enriched the subdued depths of its coloring, etherealized the whole by the purest finish. But that hand had robbed me, with cruel cowardly deliberation. It had stolen my mellow fruit; taken my sweetest rose and planted it in a strange garden. I felt the wrong heavy and sore upon me. I resented it fiercely. I could not endure to look at the admiring faces around me. I turned away sick and trembling, while the blood pulsed indignantly in my throat and beat painfully at my temples.

Why should he who had already so troubled my life enjoy success and gold which should have been mine? {322} "O mother, mother!" I inwardly cried, "how much would the price of this picture have done for you!" And I thought of her yearnings for the scent of sea spray, and the taste of sea breath, which the scanty purse forbade to be satisfied.

I sought Hessie, and found her sitting alone and very pale. I said, "Come home, Hessie;" and she followed me, obeying like a child.

When we reached our house, I was thankful that my mother slept upon the couch, for I needed a time to calm myself, and think and pray. I threw away my bonnet, and sat down by our bedside. Hessie came and crept to my feet.

"Grace," she sobbed, "can you ever forgive me? I gave him the sketch; but I declare on my knees that I did not know why he wanted it."

For a moment I felt very harsh and stern, but my woman's nature conquered. What were all the pictures in the world compared with my little sister's grief? I bent over her, and wiped away the tears from her face.

"Don't say any more about it, Hessie," I said; "I'd rather not hear any more. I know that you meant to do me no wrong. It is with him that the injustice lies. But, Hessie, I will only ask you one question: Can you—do you think you ought to waste a regret on such a person?"

Hessie dried up her tears with more resolution than I had ever seen her show before, and answered:

"No, no, Grace dear; I am cured now."

And then she put her arms about my neck, asking my pardon for all her past wilful conduct; and in one long embrace all the estrangement was swept away, and we two sisters were restored to one another. Hessie went off to get tea ready with a cheerful step, and I to make the room cosy and kiss my mother awake, when the fire glowed and the pleasant meal was on the table. We both sat by her with bright faces, and told her all about the pictures we could remember; all except one.

IX.

* * * * * *

I have outlived all that trouble about the picture of "Enid," and many troubles beside; I have kissed my mother's dear face in her coffin. I have won success, and I have won gold; and neither seem to me quite the boons some hold them to be.

Hessie's early grief passed away like a spring shower. She is now a happy wife; and I have at this moment by my side a little gold-haired fairy thing, her child. My dear sister's happiness is secured; her boat of life is safe at anchor. Edward Vance's shadow only crossed her path and passed away. She never met him since the old days; I but once. His career has strangely disappointed his friends.

For me, my life is calm and contented. I think the healthy-spirited always make for themselves happiness out of whatever materials may be around them; and I find rich un-wrought treasure on every side, whithersoever I turn my eyes. My sister's glad smile is a blessing on my life; and one rare joy is the bright-faced little lisper at my side, who peers over my shoulder with spiritual eyes, and asks mysterious questions about my work. And, standing always by my side like an angel, bearing the wand of power and the wings of peace, I have my friend, my beautiful art. She fills my days with purpose and my nights with sweet rest and dreams. She places in my hands the means of doing good to others. While illumining my upward path, she seems to beckon me higher and yet higher. Looking ever in her dear eyes, I bless God for the abundance of his gifts; and I muse serenely on the time when she, the interpreter of the ideal here on earth, will conduct me to the gates of eternal beauty.

{323}

From Once a Week.

IMPERIAL AND ROYAL AUTHORS.

BY S. BARING GOULD.

Is the present Emperor of the French aware that in publishing his Vie de César, he is treading a beaten path? that his predecessors on the French throne have, from a remote age, sought to unite the fame of authorship with the glory of regal position? and is he aware of the fact, that their efforts in this quarter have not unfrequently been accounted dead failures? Julius Caesar has already been handled by one of them, and with poor success, for Louis XIV., at the age of sixteen, produced a translation of the first book of the Commentaries of Caesar, under the title Guerre des Suisses, traduite dupremier livre des Commentaires de Jules César, par Louis XI V., Dieu-Donné, roi de France et de Navarre. This work, consisting of eighteen pages, was printed at the royal press in folio, 1651.

Louis XIV., however, was not the first French monarch to try his hand upon Julius Caesar; he had been preceded by Henry IV., who translated the whole work, and did not give it up after the first book. Will the present Vie de César reach a second volume? and, if it does, will it extend to a fourth? Those who know best the occupations of the imperial writer, say that it might be rash to feel sure beyond the first volume, or to calculate on more than a second. Let us see whether there is much novelty in the circumstance of a monarch becoming an author. We shall only look at the emperors of Rome and the kings of France. We know well enough that our own Alfred translated Boethius, Orosius, and Bede, and that Henry VIII. won the title of "Defender of the Faith" by his literary tilt with Luther; and that James I. wrote against tobacco; and we are not disposed to revive the dispute about the Eikon Basilike.

Let us then turn to the Roman emperors after Caesar, who was an author himself, or neither Henry IV., nor Louis XIV., nor Louis Napoleon, would have had much to say about him.

Augustus, we are told by Suetonius, composed several works, which he was wont to read to a circle of friends. Among these were, "Exhortations to the Study of Philosophy," which we have no doubt the select circle listened to with possible edification, and probable ennui. He wrote likewise his own memoirs in thirteen books, but he never finished them, or brought them beyond the Cantabrian war. His epigrams were written in his bath. He commenced a tragedy upon Ajax, but, little pleased with it, he destroyed it; and in answer to the select circle which asked, "What had become of Ajax?" "Ah! poor fellow!" replied the emperor, "he fell upon the sponge, and perished;" meaning that he had washed the composition off his papyrus.

Tiberius, says the same author, composed a lyric poem on the death of Julius Caesar, but his style was full of affectation and conceits.

Claudius suffered from the same passion for becoming an author, and composed several books of history, as well as memoirs of his own life, and these were read in public, for the friendly circle was too narrow for his ambition.

He also invented three letters, which he supposed were necessary for the perfection of the alphabet, and he wrote a pamphlet on the subject, before assuming the purple. {324} After having become emperor, he enforced their use. He wrote also, in Greek, twenty books of Tyrian, and eight of Carthaginian history, which were read publicly every year in Alexandria. Nero composed verses, Domitian a treatise on hair-dressing, Adrian his own life; Marcus Aurelius wrote his commentaries, which are lost, and his moral reflections, and letters to Fronto, which are still extant. Julian the Apostate was the author of a curious work, the "Misopogon, or Foe to the Beard," a clever and witty squib directed against the effeminate inhabitants of Antioch. A few passages from this work will not be out of place.

"I begin at my face, which is wanting in all that is agreeable, noble, and good; so I, morose and old, have tacked on to it this long beard, to punish it for its ugliness. In this dense beard perhaps little insects stroll, as do beasts in a forest; I leave them alone. This beard constrains me to eat and to drink with the utmost circumspection, or I should infallibly make a mess of it. As good luck will have it, I am not given to kissing, or to receiving kisses, for a beard like mine is inconvenient on that head, as it does not allow the contact of lips. …… You say that you could twine ropes out of my beard; try it, only take care that the roughness of the hair does not take the skin off your soft and delicate hands."

Valentinian I. is said to have emulated Ausonius in licentious poetry.

Of the later emperors some have obtained celebrity by their writings.

Leo VI., surnamed the Wise, was the author of a very interesting and precious treatise on the art of warfare. He also composed some prophecies, sufficiently obscure to make the Greeks in after ages find them apply to various events as they occurred. Constantine VI. was also an eminent contributor to literature. This prince had been early kept from public affairs by his uncle Alexander, and his mother Zoe, so that he had sought pleasure and employment in study. After having collected an enormous library, which he threw open to the public, he employed both himself and numerous scribes in making collections of extracts from the principal classic authors. The most important of these, and that to which he attached his own name, consisted of a mass of choice fragments, gathered into fifty-three books. This vast work is lost, together with many of the books cited, except only two parts: one treating of embassies, the other of virtues and vices. Constantine also wrote a curious geographical account of the provinces of the Greek empire, a treatise on the administration of government, and another on the ceremonies observed in the Byzantine Court; a life of the Emperor Basil, an account of the famous image of Edessa, and a few other trifles.

Let us now turn to the French monarchs, and we shall find that they began early to take the pen in hand; and, unfortunately, the very first royal literary work in France was a blunder. King Chilperic wrote a treatise on the Trinity, under the impression that he had a gift for theological definition, and he signalized his error by asserting that the word person should not be used in speaking of the three members of the Trinity. Having burned his fingers by touching theology, the semi-barbarian king attempted poetry with like success. But his pretensions did not end there. He added the Greek letter u to the Latin alphabet, and three characters of his own invention, so as to introduce into that language certain Teutonic sounds. "He sent orders," writes Gregory of Tours, "into every city of his kingdom, that all children should be taught in this manner, and that ancient written books should be effaced, and rewritten in the new style."

The great and wise Charlemagne, perceiving the glories of his native tongue, and the beauties of his national poetry, carefully collected the Teutonic national poems, and commenced a grammar of the language. Robert II. {325} was not only a scholar, but a musician; he composed some of the Latin hymns still in use in the Church, with their accompanying melodies. His queen, Constantia, seeing him engaged on his sacred poetry, one day, in joke, asked him to write something in memory of her. He at once composed the hymn, O constantia martyrum, which the queen, not understanding Latin, but hearing her name occurring in the first line, supposed to be a poem in her honor.

Louis XI. is supposed to have contributed to the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, which collection, however much credit it may do him in a literary point of view, is inexcusably wanting in decency.

A volume of poems by Francis I. exists in MS. in the Imperial Library. It contains, among other interesting matter, a prose letter, and another in verse, written from his prison to one of his mistresses. The king was bad in his orthography, as may be judged from the following portion of a letter written by him to his mother at the raising of the siege of Mézieres:—

"Madame, tout asetheure (à cette heure), yn sy (ainsi) que je me vouloys mettre o lyt (au lit), est arycé (arrivé) Laval, lequel m'a aporté la serteneté (certitude) deu lèvemant du syège de Mésyères."

I presume a schoolboy would be whipped if he wrote as bad a letter as this king.

Louis XIII. had, says his epitaph, "a hundred virtues of a valet, not one of a master;" but he could write sonnets, and compose the music for them. The best, perhaps, is that composed on, or for, Madame de Hautefort,—

      "Tu crois, bean soleil!
  Qu'à ton éclat rien n'est pareil;
      Mais quoi! tu pâlis
      Auprès d'Amaryllis,"

—set to music which is charming. But Louis XIII. was more of a barber, gardener, pastrycook, and farmer, than an author.

Louis XIV., beside his translation of Caesar's Commentaries, Book I., composed Memoires historiques, politiques, et militaires; but his writings were not remarkable, as his education had been so neglected by his mother and Mazarin, that, according to La Porte, his valet, he was not allowed to have the history of France read to him, even for the sake of sending him to sleep.

Louis XV. wrote a little treatise on the course of the rivers of Europe, and printed it with his own hands. It consisted of sixty-two pages, and contained nothing which was not perfectly well known before, as, for instance, that the Thames ran into the North Sea or German Ocean, and that the Rhone actually fell into the Mediterranean. In 1766 appeared a description of the forest of Compiègne, and guide to the forest, by Louis, afterward Louis XVI., composed by the unfortunate prince at the age of twelve.

Louis XVIII. wrote an account of a journey from Paris to Coblentz, which was published in 1823.

This work was full of inaccuracies and mistakes, so that it became the prey of critics.

Finally, Napoleon I. wrote much, but not in the way of bookmaking, though he began a history of Corsica, which remained in MS. His writings have been collected and published in five volumes, under the title, OEuvres de Napoléon Bonaparte. 8vo. 1821.

{326}

From The Lamp.

HISTORY OF A BLIND DEAF-MUTE.

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF M. CARTON,
HEAD OF THE INSTITUTE FOR THE DEAF AND DUMB AT BRUGES,
BY CECILIA CADDELL.

Anna, the deaf, dumb, and blind girl, whose story I am about to relate, was born at Ostend, of poor but honest parents, in the year 1818. She was blind from her birth, but during the first years of her infancy appeared to have some sense of hearing. This, unfortunately, soon vanished, leaving her blind, deaf, and dumb; one of the three persons thus trebly afflicted existing at this moment in the province of West Flanders. Losing both her parents while still an infant, she was brought up by her grandmother, who received aid for the purpose from the "Commission des Hospices" of the town. To the good offices of these gentlemen she is likewise indebted for the education she has since received; for when I first proposed taking her into my establishment, both her aunt and her grandmother were most unwilling to part with her, fearing, very naturally, that strangers would never give her the affectionate care which, in her helpless condition, she so abundantly required; they only yielded at last to the representations and entreaties of their charitable friends. Their love for this poor child, who could never have been anything but an anxiety and expense to them, was indeed most touching; and they wept bitterly when they parted from her; declaring, in their simple but expressive language, that I was taking away from them the blessing of their house. They were soon satisfied, however, that they had acted for the best; and having once convinced themselves of her improvement both in health and happiness, they never, to the day of their death, ceased to rejoice at the decision which they had come to in her regard. When Anna was first entrusted to my care, her relations, and every one else who knew her, supposed her to be an idiot, and this had been their principal reason for opposing me in my first efforts for her instruction. Poor themselves and ignorant, and earning their bread by the labor of their own hands, they had had neither time nor thought to bestow on the development of this intellect, closed as it was against all the more ordinary methods of instruction; and the child had been left, of necessity, to her own resources for occupation and amusement. Few, indeed, and trivial these resources were! Blind, and fearing even to move without assistance; deaf, and incapable of hearing a syllable of the conversation that was going on around her; dumb, and unable to communicate her most pressing wants save by that unearthly and unwilling cry which the deaf mutes are compelled to resort to, like animals in the moment of their utmost need,—the child had remained day after day seated in the same corner of the cottage. Knowing nothing of the bright sunshine, or the green field, or the sweet smell of flowers; nothing of the sports of childhood or its tasks; night the same as day in her estimation, excepting for its sleep; winter only distinguished from summer by the sharper air without, and the increased heat of the wood-piled fire within—no wonder that she seemed an idiot. Her only amusement—the only thing approaching to occupation which her friends had been able to procure her—consisted, at first, in a string of glass beads. These Anna amused herself by taking off and {327} putting on again at least twenty times a day; and this and the poor meals, which she seemed to take without appetite or pleasure, were the only breaks in the twelve long hours of her solitary days. Some charitable person at last made her a present of a doll; and with this doll she played, after her own fashion, until she was twenty years of age. She never, in fact, lost her taste for it until she had succeeded in learning to knit; then it was cast from her with disdain, and she never afterward recurred to it for amusement.

Notwithstanding her enforced inaction, she managed to tear her clothes continually. Perhaps, poor child, she found some relief from the tedium of her daily life in this semblance of an occupation, for she had an insuperable objection to changing her tattered garments; and it was a long time before we could induce her to do so with a good grace. Once, however, accustomed to the change, she seemed to take pleasure in it, delighted in new clothes, and used often to come of her own accord to beg that the old ones might be washed. There was nothing very prepossessing in her external appearance; at first it was almost repulsive. She was of the ordinary height of a girl of her age; but her hands were small and thin, from want of use, as those of a little child. When she first came to my establishment her head was bowed down on her neck from weakness; she had sore eyes; her face was covered with a cutaneous eruption; she walked with difficulty, and appeared to dislike the exertion excessively. Afterward, care and good feeding improved her very much. She acquired strength; and the skin disease which had been her chief disfigurement entirely disappeared. I have no intention of describing all that she did and said (by signs), or all the pains and trouble that she cost us in the early months of her residence among us. During that time, however, I kept a journal of her conduct; which, as a history of her mental development, is so curious, that I venture to lay some extracts from it before my readers, the remainder being reserved for future publication.

I must begin by explaining my ideas as to the proper method to be pursued in instructing these unfortunates. I try, in the first place, to put myself in the place of a person deaf, blind, and dumb; and then ask myself, "What do I know, what can I know, in such a state?" In my first course of instruction, therefore, I make it a rule never to give the word until certain that the thing which that word expresses has been clearly understood. In the case of Anna there was an additional difficulty. Not only had she no' preconceived idea of the use or nature of a word, but her blindness prevented her seeing the connection between it and the substance it was intended to represent. Nor would it be sufficient for her full instruction that she should learn by the touch to distinguish one word from another; she would also require to be taught the elements of which words were themselves composed. If I began by giving her words alone, she would never have learned to distinguish letters. If, on the other hand, I commenced with letters, without attaching any especial idea to them, she would have been disgusted, and have left off at the second lesson. A letter, in fact, would have been nothing but a letter to her; for there would be no means of making her comprehend that it was but the first step toward the knowledge I was desirous of imparting. I resolved, therefore, neither to try letters by themselves nor whole words in the first lesson which I gave her. It was in the Flemish language, of course; but the method I pursued would be equally applicable to any other.

In order to give, at one and the same moment, the double idea of a letter and a word, I chose a letter which had some resemblance to the form I intended it to express, and gave it the significance of an entire word. For {328} this purpose I fixed upon the letter O, and made her understand that this letter signified mouth, in fact it is one of the four letters which express the word in Flemish—mond, mouth. Afterward I took a double o(00), which are the first letters in the Flemish, oog, eye. One O, then, signified mouth; two meant eyes. The lesson was easy; she caught it in a moment; and thus, with two words and two ideas attached to them, her dictionary was commenced. It was quite possible, however, that as these letters represented, to a certain extent, the objects of which they were the expression, she might fall into the error of supposing that all letters did the same; and in order to prevent this mistake, I immediately added the letter R to her collection.

This not only became a new acquisition for her dictionary, but, by forming with the two previous letters the Flemish word oor (ear), it became an easy transition between the natural expression dependent on the form, which she had already acquired, and the arbitrary, dependent on the spelling, which it was my object she should acquire. Proceeding on this principle, and always taking care to commence the lesson from a point already known, we lessened the difficulties, and made rapid progress. A cap, an apron, a ribbon, or gown, always interest the sex; and, like any other girl, Anna valued them extremely. I took care likewise often to choose words expressive of anything she liked, especially to eat; and it was by the proper use of these words that she first convinced me how completely she had seized upon the meaning of my lessons. Whenever she was desirous of obtaining any little dainty, she used to point to the word in her collection; and of course it was given to her immediately. Poor child! her joy, when she found she could really make herself understood, was very touching; and her surprise was nearly equal to her joy.

A person born blind does not naturally make signs; for a sign addresses itself to the sight, and of the faculty of sight they have no conception. A sign in relief, however—a sign which they can distinguish by the touch, and by means of which they can communicate with their fellow-men—must come to these benighted intelligences like a message of mercy from God himself. We always gave Anna the object, in order to make her comprehend the word—the substance, to explain the substantive. One day, not long after her arrival, her instructress gave her the word egg, placing one at the same time before her; and Anna immediately made signs that she wished to eat it. She offered me at the same moment a small piece of money, which some one had given her, as if for the purpose of buying the food. The bargain was made at once; and she ate the egg, while I pocketed the money. I quite expected she would try this over again, for she had some money, and was fond of eggs. The very next day, in fact, she searched the word out in her vocabulary, and brought it to her instructress, with an air that quite explained her meaning. I placed an egg before her; she touched it—touched the word; coaxed and patted the egg; and at last burst into a fit of laughter, caused, no doubt, by pleasant astonishment at having so easily obtained her wish. I hoped and expected that she would propose to purchase, for I was anxious to find out if she had any real notion of the use of money. My hopes were fulfilled, for she offered at once her price of two centimes, with the evident intention of making a purchase. Much to her astonishment, however, this time I took both the money and the egg. At first she laughed, evidently thinking that I was only joking. I gave her time to comprehend that I was serious, and that, having taken both, I meant to keep them. She acquiesced at last with regard to the egg; it was mine, and I had a right to keep it if I liked; but she was indignant that I did not return the money. She asked for it in {329} every way she was capable of asking, and grew at last both red and angry at the delay. I had tried her sufficiently. It was high time to prove myself an honest man; so I gave her back her money, and she restored me to her good graces. I was happy indeed to find so clear a sense of justice, so complete a knowledge of the value of "mine" and "thine," in a creature so defective in her animal organization.

Once in possession of a little stock of words, Anna was never weary of augmenting it, and she soon found out a way of compelling us, almost, to satisfy her wish. She would take the hand of her mistress, and with it imitate the action of writing, by making points upon the paper with the finger. If her wishes were complied with, she was delighted; but if, to try her, the mistress pretended to hesitate, then Anna took the matter into her own hands, and positively refused to do anything else. Every other employment suggested to her would be indignantly rejected, and she would persist in asking over and over again for the word she wanted, never resting or letting any one else rest until she got it. The nuns, of course, always ended by complying with her desires; and it would be hard to say which felt most delight,—the blind girl, who had succeeded in adding to her small stock of knowledge, or the religious, who by the aid of Providence had enabled her to do so.

A mother who hears for the first time the low stammering of her child can alone form a conception of all one feels at such a moment, for God is very good; and when he imposed upon society the task of instructing the ignorant, he attached an ineffable delight to the accomplishment of that duty.

When Anna knew how to read and understand about forty substantives, I taught her the manual alphabet, and from that moment I could test her knowledge with unfailing exactitude. She first read the word with her fingers, and then repeated it by means of the dactology; it was a lesson in reading and writing both. She was soon sufficiently advanced to venture upon verbs. I began with the imperative mood; not only because it is the simplest form of the verb, but also because I myself would have to use it in giving her the lesson. She seized with wonderful facility upon the relative positions of the substantive and verb.

I always made her perform the action signified by the verb which she had learned, and thus the lesson became quite an amusement to her. However silly in appearance might be the association between the verb and substantive, she never failed to apprehend it; and when told to do anything ridiculous or out of the common way, she enjoyed the fun, and never failed to execute the commission to the best of her ability. If I told her to walk upon the table, she would take off her shoes, climb up, and walk cautiously upon it; if told to eat the chair, after a minute's hesitation as to the best manner of complying with the order, she would take it up and pretend to devour it. One day she was terribly embarrassed by some one writing the following phrase: "Throw your head on the floor." She read the sentence over and over again to make sure that she was not mistaken, laughed very much, and then suddenly growing serious, shook her head, as much as to say, the thing was absolutely impossible. At last, however, and as if to finish the business, she took her head in both her hands, and made a gesture, as if to fling it on the floor. Having done this, she evidently felt that nothing more could be expected from her, and showed herself both pleased and proud at having understood the phrase, and found so easy a method of getting out of the difficulty.

She distinguished very readily between the verbs "to lay down" and "to throw down," clearly comprehending that the one action was to be {330} done with vivacity, the other with caution; and it was curious to watch her perplexity when commanded to throw down anything liable to be broken. She knew well what would be the consequence of the command, and you could see the questioning that went on in her own mind as to how it could be accomplished with least damage to the article in question. She would begin by feeling all along the ground, and trying to form an exact idea of the distance it would have to fall; and then at last she would throw it down with a mixture of care and yet of caution, which showed she was perfectly aware of the mischief she was doing.

The moment she thoroughly understood the imperative, we had only to add her name or that of one of the sisters to produce the indicative; and then, by changing Anna into I, she passed easily to the pronouns, as thus: "Strike the table;" "Anna strikes the table;" "I strike the table." I had at first omitted the article; but I soon perceived my mistake. We have no means of teaching a deaf-mute the reason for preceding a substantive by an article; and still more impossible would it be to give any plausible explanation of the distinction between the genders. Habit does this for each of us when we learn our mother tongue; and habit and frequent repetition did it so well for Anna, that now she rarely, if ever, makes any mistake.

When she had advanced thus far, I made her observe that by adding the letters en, which constitute our Flemish plural, several of the same sort of substantives were intended to be expressed; and passing from this to numbers, I gave her a lesson in numeration. She readily seized upon both ideas; and constant practice soon made her perfect in their application.

Verbs such as jeter, to throw down, poser, to lay down, naturally introduced the use of prepositions to express the mode in which the verb acts upon the substantive. This enabled me to make various combinations with words known to her already; and I found it of great use to place the same word in such different positions in a phrase as to alter entirely, or at least modify, the meaning.

The last lesson which she received was to make use of and understand the meaning of the pronouns "my," "your," "our," and the conjunction "and." We have also made her comprehend the use and meaning of adjectives expressive of forms, as "square," "round," etc., as well as the physical and mental state of being implied in the words "good," "bad," "sick," "well," etc. She makes such phrases as the following, and reads them easily when they are given to her in writing: "Give me my knitting;" "My work is on the table;" "My apron is square."

One last observation I must make about the pronouns. The third person singular or plural would have been difficult to Anna, since, being blind, she could not have distinguished whether the action spoken of had been done by one person or by several; by "him," in fact, or by "they." The pronouns which she can most readily comprehend are the first and second; and to these I generally confine her. For "he" or "they" I have substituted "one:" "One strikes the table."

Anna might have been taught the others; but she would often probably have been mistaken in their application, and would perhaps have ended by supposing that there was no positive rule in their regard, and that they might be used as it were at random.

People only learn willingly what they can clearly comprehend; and if children dislike instruction, the fault is almost always with the master. If the latter would but bring his intelligence to the level of his pupils, he might be almost certain of their attention.

To sum up the whole, I will give the order in which I taught her the different parts of speech necessary for the knowledge of a language. The substantive, because, being itself an object, it falls more immediately beneath the {331} recognition of the senses; the verb, because by the verb alone we speak, and without it there could be no language; the preposition, because it indicates the nature of the action expressed by the verb; and finally, the adjective and the adverb. I had many reasons for keeping back these two last to the end. Neither of them is essential to a phrase which can be complete without them. Anna would have been much retarded in her progress if I had stopped to teach her the attributes of words, when words themselves were what she wanted. She could learn language only by use and habit; and it was of the highest importance that she should acquire that habit as speedily as possible. I threw aside, therefore, without hesitation, all that could embarrass her progress, and confined myself, in the first instance, to such things as it was absolutely essential she should know, in order to be able to converse at all. It may be asked why I taught her to make phrases by means of whole words, instead of giving her the letters of the alphabet and teaching her to make words themselves. The result of the mode I did adopt must be my answer. Anna has already a clear idea of language; all her acquisitions in the way of words are classed in her mind as in a dictionary, and ready to come forth at a moment's notice. The reason for this rapid progress is very plain. It is far less troublesome to take a whole word, and put it in the grammatical order it ought to occupy, than to be obliged to make the word itself by means of separate letters. She had need of all her attention to learn the elements of a phrase; and it would have been imprudent to weaken that attention by directing it also to learn the elements of words. I divided difficulties in order to overcome them: this was the secret of my method, and the cause of its success. My lessons were also almost or entirely an amusement to her; and sometimes I composed a phrase which she first read, and acted afterward. Sometimes it was I who performed the action, while she gave me an account of what I had done in writing.

It was a lesson at once in reading and in writing, in hearing and in speaking; and the moment we had got thus far, communication by means of language was established between us. I had given my lessons at first by words or phrases written in a book; but now, to test more perfectly the knowledge she had acquired, and to prevent her reading becoming a mere matter of form and guess-work, I cut all her phrases into words, gummed them upon cardboard, and threw them pell-mell into a box, from which she had to take out every separate word that she required for a phrase. This new exercise vexed her very much at first; but if it was tedious, it was also sure. By degrees she became accustomed to it, and at last seemed to prefer it to the book, probably because it admitted of greater facilities for varying her phrases. Nevertheless it was troublesome work; and I was curious to see if Anna would seek, of her own accord, to arrange her words in such a way as to avoid the trouble of hunting through the whole mass for every separate one she wanted. It seemed not unlikely, for she was very ingenious; and so, in fact, it happened.

From time to time I observed that she put aside certain words, and kept them separate from the others; and it was impossible to mistake her exultation when these selected words were called for in her lesson. Of course I saw them as she put them by; and, in order to encourage her, I managed to introduce them pretty often into our conversations. Acting also upon this hint, I had a drawer divided into small compartments placed in the table at which she took her lessons. Each compartment was intended for a separate class of words, but she was permitted to arrange them according to her own ideas; and the moment a word had been examined and understood, she placed it in the compartment to which she imagined it belonged. Nouns, pronouns, verbs, articles—each {332} had their separate partition; but I observed, with delight, that when I gave her the verb "to drink," instead of placing it with the other verbs, she put it at once into the compartment she had destined for liquids. Having remarked that it was always employed with these substantives, it naturally struck her that its proper place would be among them. To casual observers this may seem but a trifling thing to mention, but it was an act of reasoning; and in their half-mutilated natures the whole power of instruction hangs so entirely on the capacity for passing by an act of reason from one fact to another, from the known to that which is still unknown, that every indication which a pupil gives of possessing such capacity is hailed with delight by her teacher as an assurance of further progress. Without it he knows that instruction would be impossible.

When Anna was first introduced into my establishment, she evidently comprehended that she had fallen among strangers. She brought us her poor playthings, and insisted on our examining them attentively, for she was a baby still; a baby of twenty years of age indeed, but as anxious to be caressed and as requiring of notice as a child of two years old. When led in the evening to her bedside, she immediately began to undress herself, and the next morning rose gaily, showing herself much pleased with the good bed in which she had passed the night. She made a little inclination of the head to the sister who waited on her, as if to salute her. At breakfast we observed that she ate with more cleanliness and propriety than is usual among the blind.

Her first regular lesson was to knit; and we found it far less difficult to teach her the stitch itself than to habituate her to work steadily for a long time together. She had evidently no idea of making it the regular occupation of the day. She would begin by knitting a little; then she would undo or tear up all that was already done; and this would happen regularly over and over again at least twenty times a day. It was weary work at first; but after a time we managed to turn this dislike for continuous occupation into a means of teaching her more important things. The moment she threw aside her work, we took it up, and pretended to insist upon her continuing it; and then at last, when we saw that she was quite vexed and wearied out by our solicitations, we used to offer her her letters. She would take them, and, evidently to avoid further worry, begin to study them; but the letters, like the knitting, were soon flung aside, and then the work once more was put into her hands. In this way, and while she fancied she was only indulging in her own caprices, we were advancing steadily toward our object—training her to occupation, and giving her the means of future communication with her fellow-creatures. We also discovered that it was quite possible to pique her out of her idle habits; for one day in the earlier period of her education, when she happened to be more than usually idle and inattentive, her mistress led her toward a class of children busily employed in working, and said to her by signs, "These little children work; and you, who are twice their size, do you wish to sit there doing nothing?" From that time we had less trouble with her; and once she had learned to knit well and easily, this kind of work seemed to become a positive necessity to her. She delighted in feeling with her fingers the progress she was making, and the needles were scarcely ever out of her hands. When Sunday came, she asked as usual for her knitting, and was terribly disappointed when she found that it was withheld. I took the opportunity to give her an idea of time— avery important point in her future education; so I said to her, "You shall not knit to-day; but after having slept once more—to-morrow in fact—the needles shall be given to you again." I foresaw this to be an explanation that would need repeating; and {333} accordingly, the very next Sunday, she asked again for her knitting, and was again refused. She was vexed at first, but grew calm directly I had assured her she should have it "on the morrow."

Many weeks afterward, and when she seemed quite to understand that work on this day was forbidden, she came with a very serious countenance and demanded her knitting; then bursting into a fit of laughing, made signs that she knew she was not to knit on that day, but that to-morrow she should have her work again. She obtained a knowledge of the past and future much sooner than she did of the present, using the signs expressive of the two first long before she made an attempt even at the latter.

It was a matter of great importance that she should understand them all; therefore I not only introduced them over and over again in our conversations, in order to render her familiar with them, but I watched her carefully to see that she made a right use of them in her communications with her companions. A circumstance at last occurred which satisfied me that she was perfect in the lesson. On the feast of St. Aloysius Gonzaga she went with the other children to a church where the festival was being celebrated. On her return she expressed her gratitude for the pleasure she had received, and the next morning I observed that she told every one she met that "yesterday she had been to such a church;" while the day afterward I perceived that in telling the same story she made the sign of "yesterday" twice over—a proof how perfectly she comprehended the nature and division of time.

For a long time after she began to reside with us, she never mentioned either her grandmother or aunt, probably because she was so completely absorbed by the lessons of her new existence as to have no time to think of them. Gradually, however, they came back to her recollection, and then she spoke of them with gratitude and affection. She began also to compare her present state with her past, evidently considering the change for the better in her physical and mental being as due to the care that has been bestowed on her here. She has twenty little ways of expressing her gratitude. "My face was all over blotches," she says by signs; "I could neither write nor walk; now I can hold myself upright, and I can read, and know how to knit." This consciousness, however, does not at all interfere with her affection for her grandmother; and when the old woman died she grieved for some time bitterly. What idea does the word "death" bring to the mind of this child? I know not; but when we told her about her grandmother, her mistress made her lie down on the floor, and then reminded her of a child who had died in the establishment about a year before; after which we explained to her that the body would be laid in the ground, and be seen upon earth no more. She wept a great deal at first; but suddenly drying her tears knelt down, making signs to her mistress and companions that they should do the same; and, that there might be no mistake about her meaning, she held up her rosary, to show them they must pray. She did not forget her poor grandmother for a considerable time, and every morning made it a point to inquire from her companions if they also had remembered her that day. One of her aunts died about the same time, leaving to Anna as a legacy a portion of her wardrobe. Anna's attention instantly became concentrated upon this new acquisition, and gowns and handkerchiefs underwent a minute and searching examination. The gowns pleased her exceedingly; so also did some woollen pelerines, which she instantly observed must be intended for the winter. At that moment she was a complete woman, with all a woman's innate love of dress and desire for ornamentation. "Are there not also ear-rings?" she asked, anxiously; and being answered in the negative, she expressed clearly, by her gestures, that it was a pity: it was quite a pity.

{334}

Anna soon came to understand that I was her master, and she attached herself in consequence more strongly to me than to any one else, for she perfectly appreciated the service she has received. One day after a lesson, at which I had kept her until she thoroughly understood it, she showed herself more than usually grateful. She took my hand and kissed it repeatedly, gratitude and affection beaming in her face, and then, drawing her mistress toward her, she made her write, "I love M. Carton." I, on my part, was enchanted to find that she thus, of her own accord, asked for words to express the sentiments of the heart; and I felt not a little proud of being the object by whom this latent feeling had first been called into expression. But if Anna loves me, she also fears me. In the beginning of her education, I was the only person about her who had strength enough to prevent her scratching or kicking—exercises to which she was rather addicted when put in a passion. She likewise knew that it was I who imposed any penance on her, and that when she was compelled to remain without handkerchief or cap in the schoolroom, it was to M. Carton she was indebted for the humiliation. One day, in a fit of anger, she tore her cap; and her mistress, as soon as she was calm enough to understand her, remonstrated with her, telling her at the same time that I should be informed of her misdeeds. To escape the punishment which she knew must follow, she had recourse to the other children, acknowledged her fault to them, and begged them to kneel down and join their hands, in order to obtain her pardon. Not one of the children, whether among the blind or deaf mutes, misunderstood her signs, and this was one of the actions of Anna which astonished me the most. Some one was foolish enough once to tell her that I was going away for some days, and she took advantage of the chance to behave extremely bad. They made the sign by which she understands that they mean me, and by which they generally contrived to frighten her into submission; but it was all in vain. She laughed in the face of her mistress, and told her she was quite aware that I should not be back for three days. They have taken good care ever since not to let her know when I am absent, though it probably would make no difference now, for her character has completely changed since those early days, and it is six months at least since she has indulged in anything like a fit of passion. After me, her greatest affection is reserved for my friend, M. Cauwe. She is quite delighted when he comes, and feels his face all over to make sure that it is he. If she has a new dress, he must feel and remark it; if she learns a new phrase, or a new kind of work, it must be shown to him immediately, in order that she may receive his praise; and if by any chance his visit has been delayed, she is sure to perceive it, and to inquire into the cause of his absence.

Anna is also very fond of all the younger deaf and dumb children. She takes them on her knees, carries them in her arms, pets and punishes them, and adopts a general and motherly air of kindness and protection toward them. One of them the other day happened to be in an exceedingly troublesome and tormenting mood. Anna could not keep her quiet, or prevent her teasing; and at last, rather than lose her temper, and strike her, as she would formerly have done, she left her usual place, and went to sit at the opposite side of the room. In fact, she never now attempts to attack any of her companions, though she does not fail in some way or other to pay back any provocation she has received. She takes nothing belonging to others, but attaches herself strongly to her own possessions, and is particularly indignant if they attempt to meddle with her objects for instruction. One of the blind children happened to take a sheet of her writing in points, in order to try and read it; but Anna was no {335} sooner aware of the theft than she angrily reclaimed it. The next day the same child begged as a favor that she would lend her a sheet, in order to practise her reading; but Anna curtly refused, observing, that yesterday she had taken it without leave, and that to-day she certainly should not have it, even for the asking. Anna's chief pet and charge among the little children is a child, blind, and maimed of one arm, called Eugénie. When this little thing was coming first to the establishment Anna was told of it, and the expected day named for her arrival. She immediately set to work and made all sorts of arrangements in her own mind for the reception of the new child. The mistress would, of course, teach it to read; but it would have a seat beside Anna, and with the companion whom she already had, there would be three to walk and amuse themselves together. It so happened that Eugénie did not arrive on the expected day. Anna was quite downcast in consequence; and when at last it did appear, it instantly became the object of all her tenderest petting and endearment. She led it to its seat, tried to make it understand all that it would have to do and learn, and at last, when she touched its little arm, and found that it was maimed, and incapable of being used, she burst into tears, and was for a long time inconsolable. I tried to find out the cause of her grief, and in what she considered the greatness of the child's misfortune to consist, and she immediately directed my attention to the fact that the child would never be able to learn to knit. The power of occupation had been such an inestimable boon to herself, that she naturally felt any inability on that score to be the most intolerable misfortune that could befall a human being. When we assured her that Eugénie would be able to knit as well and easily as she did herself, she became calm. The next day, however, she was discovered trying to knit with both hands shut, as if they had been maimed like the blind child's, and she immediately made her mistress observe that in such a state she could neither knit, blow her nose, nor dress herself, ending all by expressing the immense happiness she felt at possessing the free use of her hands. Providence has provided an antidote to every misfortune. The blind child pities the deaf-mute, the deaf-mute sighs over the blind, and the blind, deaf, and dumb girl feels her heart filled with inexpressible compassion for one deprived of the free use of her hands. Anna kept her word, and took great care of the little Eugénie. She placed herself indeed somewhat in the position of a mother to the child, watched over its conduct, examined its work, and went so far as occasionally to administer a slight correction.

If the weather was cold, she never went to bed herself without feeling that Eugénie was well covered up, and giving her her blessing; a good deed she always took care to make known to me in the morning. When first the little thing came it was rather refractory and disinclined to submit to rules, and the mistress acquainted Anna with the fact. "Does not she like to knit?" asked Anna. "It is not with that," answered the mistress, "but with her reading lesson, that she will not take pains." Anna immediately went over to the child, to try and persuade her to fulfil her duty. She took her hand, laid it on the book, remained for at least a quarter of an hour persuading and encouraging her; and then, perceiving that she had begun to be really attentive, bade her get up and ask pardon of her mistress for her past disobedience.

Another day she examined the child's knitting, and finding it badly done, shook her head gravely, in sign of disapprobation. She then took Eugénie's hand, made her feel with her own fingers the long loose stitches she had made; and making her kneel down in the middle of the room, pinned the work to her back, with threats of even more serious punishment in the future. Just then the {336} mistress joined the class, and found Eugénie in tears, and on her knees, with her work pinned behind her. "Eugénie," she asked, "what are you doing there, and why do you cry?" "The deaf and dumb girl has punished me because my knitting was badly done," said the child; "and she says, when M. Carton comes in, he will throw a glass of water in my face." In order to prevent this terrible assault, the mistress advised her to ask pardon of Anna, which she immediately did; but the latter felt it due to the dignity of the situation to allow herself to be entreated a long time before she consented to grant it.

But though Anna considered it a part of her duty to punish Eugénie for her idleness, she was always otherwise very gentle to the child. In giving her a lesson, her mistress, with a view of testing her knowledge of the verb in question, once bade her "strike Eugénie." Anna behaved very prettily on this occasion. Before she would perform the act required, she took the blind child's hand and laid it on the letters, in order to show her that if she struck her, it was not because she was angry with her, but simply because that phrase had been given to her as an exercise in language. On another occasion one of the blind children disturbed the arrangement of her words in their separate cases, and one or two of them were lost. Anna wept bitterly; and not content with doing everything in her own power to discover the author of the mischief, she asked her mistress to assist in her researches. The guilty one was found out at last, and, in the heat of the moment, Anna demanded that she should be punished; but yielding afterward to the natural goodness of her heart, she went herself and interceded for the little criminal. "She is blind, like myself," she said, by way of excuse; and then embraced her with great cordiality in token of forgiveness. From that time, however, she became suspicious, and scarcely dared to leave her place for fear of a similar misfortune. Some one, seeing this, advised her to keep her letters in her pocket. "Very pleasant indeed!" she answered, bursting into a fit of laughter; "and a nice way, certainly, of preventing confusion! No; I will ask M. Carton to give me a lock and key for my box, and then no one can touch them without my knowing it." This was accordingly done; and the key once safe in her pocket, Anna could leave her property in perfect security that it would not be injured or stolen in her absence.

Anna likes dainty food, and is very fond of fruit. I suspected, however, when first she came, that she had not an idea of the way in which it was procured. She had been so shut up in her old home, that nature was still an unexplored page to her; and blind, deaf, and dumb as she was, it was only through the fingers that even now this poor child could ever be taught to read and comprehend it. It is not difficult, therefore, to imagine her astonishment and joy at each new discovery of this kind which she makes. One day I led her to an apricot tree, and made her feel and examine it all over. She dislikes trees extremely, probably because in her solitary excursions she must have often hurt herself against them. She obeyed me, however, though very languidly and unwillingly at first; but I never saw such astonishment on any face before as I did on hers, when, after a short delay, I took her hand and laid it on an apricot. She clasped her hands delightedly together, then made me touch the fruit, as if she expected that I also would be astonished; and then recommenced her examination of the tree, returning over and over again, with an expression of intense joy over all her person, to the fruit she had so unexpectedly discovered. I permitted her at last to pull the fruit and eat it, and she kissed my hand most affectionately, in token of gratitude for the immense favor I had conferred upon her. After classtime she returned alone to the garden; {337} and as I foresaw that the discovery of the morning would not be sterile, but that, once put on the track, she would continue her explorations on her own account, I watched her closely. So, in fact, it happened.

She was no sooner in the garden than she began carefully to examine all the plants and trees around her, and it was amusing beyond anything to watch her making her way cautiously among the cabbages, touching the leaves and stems, and trying with great care and prudence to discover if this plant also produced apricots. I suffered her to continue this exercise for a little time in vain; then coming to the rescue, after making her comprehend that cabbages, though good in themselves to be eaten, did not bear apricots, I led her to various kinds of fruit-trees growing in the garden. I did not name any of them to her then, for I knew that in time she would learn to distinguish one from the other, and she had still so much to discover of nature and her ways, that I did not like to delay her by dwelling on distinctions which were, comparatively speaking, of little consequence to her in that early stage of her education. This little course of botany we continued throughout the year. She was taught to observe the fall of the leaf, encouraged to examine the tree when entirely bereft of foliage, and when the spring-buds began to swell she was once more brought to touch them, and made to understand that they were about to burst again into leaf and flowers. The moment the leaves were visible she inquired of one of her companions if the tree was going to bear fruit likewise; and received for answer that it would certainly do so whenever the weather should become sufficiently warm. Satisfied with this information, she waited some time with patience; but a few very warm days chancing to occur in the month of May, she reminded her companion of what she had been told, and inquired eagerly if the fruit was at last come.

In this way, during all that summer, she found constant amusement in watching the progress of the different fruit-trees, and I found her one day examining a pear with great attention. She had not met with one before, so it was quite a discovery to her, and she begged me to let her have it in order that she might show it to her mistress and learn its name. With all her love of fruit, however, I must record it to the honor of this poor child that she never attempted to touch it without permission; and that having been guided once to a tree by one of her deaf-mute companions, and incited to gather the fruit, she made a very intelligible sign that it must not be done without an order from me. On another occasion I gave her a bunch of currants and told her to eat them, but the moment she touched them she discovered that they were not ripe, and made signs to me that she "must wait for a few days longer, and that then they would be good to eat."

Her delicacy of touch is in fact surprising. I have often effaced her letters, and flattened them with my nail until it seemed impossible to discover even a trace of them, and yet with her finger she has never failed in following out the form. She often also finds pins and small pieces of money, and picks them up when walking. She is very proud on these occasions, and takes good care to inform any one who comes near her of the fact. She is very active now, and always ready to go and look for any thing or person that she wants; and if she does not succeed in finding them, she engages one of her companions to aid her in the search. She seemed indeed always to suspect that we knew better than she did what was passing around us; though it was probably some time before she asked herself what the nature of her own deficiency might be. A day came, however, upon which she obtained some clearer knowledge on the subject; and this was the way it happened.

She had dropped one of her knitting-needles, and after a vain attempt to {338} find it for herself, she was obliged to have recourse to her mistress, who immediately picked it up and gave it back to her. Anna appeared to reflect earnestly for a moment, and then drawing the sister toward her writing-table, she wrote: "Theresa," naming one of the pupils of the institution—"Theresa is deaf; Lucy is deaf; Jane is blind; I am blind and deaf; you are—;" and then she presented her tablets to the sister, in order that the latter might explain to her the nature of that other faculty which she possessed, and which enabled her to find so easily anything that was lost.

This was a problem which had evidently occupied her for a long time; and with her head bent forward and fingers ready to seize the slightest gesture, Anna waited eagerly for the answer by which she hoped the mystery would be solved to her at last. In a second or two the embarrassment of the mistress was nearly equal to the eagerness of the pupil; but after a minute's hesitation she, with great tact, resolved to repeat the action which had caused Anna's question. Making the blind-mute walk down the room with her, she desired her once more to drop her needle and then to pick it up again, after which she wrote upon the board, "The needle falls; you touch the needle with your hand; you pick it up with your fingers." Anna read these words with an air which seemed to say, "I know all that already; but there must be something more;" and so there was.

Her mistress made her once more drop her needle; and then, just as Anna was stooping to pick it up, she dragged her, in spite of the poor girl's resistance, so far from it that she could not touch it either with her hands or feet. "It is ever so far away," Anna said, in her mute language; and stooping down to the floor, she stretched out her hand as far as ever it would go in a vain attempt to reach it. The sister waited until she was a little pacified, and then wrote: "The needle falls." Anna answered: "Yes." "The needle is far off," the sister wrote again; and Anna replied: "Alas, it is." "Sister N. cannot touch the needle with her hand." "Nor I either," Anna wrote in answer. "Sister N. can touch the needle with her eyes." Then followed a mimic scene, in which the thing expressed by words was put into action. Anna understood at last; but, evidently in order to make certain that she did, she desired the sister to guide her hand once more to the fallen needle. Her mistress complied with her request, and Anna was convinced. The experiment was repeated over and over again. Anna threw her needle into various places, and then asked the sister if she could touch it without stooping. "Yes," replied her mistress; "I touch the needle with my eyes." "Can you pick it up with your eyes?" asked Anna. The sister made her feel that her eyes were not fingers; and then once more picking up the needle she gave it to Anna, to be satisfied that she at last understood the nature of the faculty which her instructress possessed and which was wanting in herself.

From that time she invariably made a distinction between the blind children and those who were merely deaf-mutes. She had always hitherto been ready enough to avenge herself on any of her companions who struck her, whether accidentally or on purpose. Now if she found it was a blind child who had done so, she would of her own accord excuse her, saying, "She is blind; she cannot touch me with her eyes when I am at a distance from her." In the same manner, if she lost anything, she would ask the first deaf-mute whom she met to help her to look for it, while she never attempted to seek a similar service from any of the children whom she knew to be blind. She showed her knowledge of the difference between the two classes most distinctly upon one occasion, when her knitting having got irretrievably out of order, she communicated her perplexity to the {339} blind child at her side. The latter wanted to take it from her in order to arrange it; but Anna drew it back, and, touching first the eyes of the child and then her own, as if she would have said, "You also are blind, and can do no better than myself," she waited quietly until she could give it to the mistress to disentangle for her.

Anna delights in telling her companions all her adventures, though she takes care never to mention her faults or their punishment. She will acknowledge the former if taxed with them, but she does not like to be reminded either of the one or of the other. "I have done my penance," she says: "it is past; you must not speak of it any more." With this exception she tells all that she has done or intends to do; and she is enchanted beyond measure when she can inform them that she has succeeded in playing a trick on her mistress. She will tell the story with infinite glee, and always contrives exceedingly well to put the thing in its most ridiculous light before them.

She was fond of milk, and observed, or was told, one day that a cup of milk had been given to a child who was sick. The next morning, while in chapel, she burst into tears. Her mistress led her from the class, and asked what was the matter. She coughed, showed her tongue, held out her hand, that the mistress might feel her pulse; in fact she was as ill as she could be, and excessively thirsty. A cup of milk was brought; and the medicine was so good, that five minutes afterward she managed to eat her breakfast with an excellent appetite. During the recreation that followed, she took care to explain to her companions the means by which she had procured herself the milk. A few days afterward she recommenced the comedy, and played it so well, that, thinking she really was ill, her mistress desired her to go to bed. This was more than she wished for; but she went upstairs, trusting, no doubt, that something would happen to extricate her from the dilemma. Her mistress went to see her; and finding her sitting on the side of the bed, asked why she did not get into it, as she had been desired. "Madame," said Anna, "it is very cold, but I should get warm if you would give me a cup of milk; that would cure me in no time; and a little bread and butter with it would also do me good." The sister then perceived how the case really stood, and answered promptly, "If you will get into bed you shall have the milk, but not the bread and butter. If, on the contrary, you prefer to go downstairs, you shall have the bread and butter, but not the milk. Which do you choose?" "Both," quoth Anna. But as both were not to be had, she was obliged to content herself with the amusement of telling her intended trick to her companions, which she did with many regrets that it had not been successful.

But though Anna likes to tell all these little schemes and adventures to any one who will listen to her; and though, if taxed with them by her mistress, she is quite ready to acknowledge them with a laugh, it is far otherwise when the action itself contains anything seriously contrary to honesty or justice. In that case she takes good care to be silent on the subject; and if silence is impossible, she endeavors, in all manner of ways, to explain it away or excuse it.

One day she entered the schoolroom before any of the other pupils, and finding that a piece of wire, belonging to the pedal of the piano, was loose, she broke it quite off, put it into her pocket, and returned triumphantly to her place. Her mistress, happening to be in the room at the moment, saw the whole affair, and placed herself in her way, in order that Anna might know she had been observed. She then asked her what she had put in her pocket, and Anna instantly replied that it was her beads. Her mistress gave her to understand that she was trying to deceive her, and made her touch, as a {340} proof, the other end of the wire which she had broken. She was evidently confused, and became as red as fire, but with marvellous adroitness managed to let the wire slip out of her pocket to the ground. She had, of course, no idea that it would make a noise in falling; and fancying that she had concealed the theft, continued positively to deny it. In order still better to prove her innocence, she then knelt down and began feeling all over the floor, until she had found the wire which she had dropped, and holding it up in triumph, said, by signs, "I will ask M. Carton to give it to me that I may make it into a cross for my beads."

In this way she is always being ingenious in finding excuses for her faults. Her mistress once complained of her knitting, and she immediately held up her needles, which were bent, as if she would have said, "How is it possible to knit with such needles as these?" Another day, feeling more idle than usual, and wishing to remain in bed, she made them count her pulse, and begged by signs that they would send immediately for M. Verte, the physician of the house. We knew well it was only a trick to stay a little longer in bed, and she was the first to acknowledge it as soon as she had risen.

I like to watch her when she fancies herself alone, as I then often find in her most trivial actions a something interesting or suggestive for her future improvement. I discovered her once alone in the class-room and busily engaged in examining every corner of the desks. All at once she went toward the black table on which the deaf-mutes write their exercises, and taking a piece of chalk, began to trace lines upon it at random. I was curious to know what discovery she was trying to make, and in a few minutes I perceived it. As soon as she had traced her lines, she passed her hands over them to see if she could read them. She was aware that her companions read upon this board; and as she knew of no other method of reading than by letters in relief, she naturally supposed that the lines she had traced would be sufficiently raised to enable her to do so. For a few minutes she continued thus trying to follow with her finger the chalk-lines she had made; but finding considerable difficulty in doing so, she at last returned to her book, compared the letters in it with the lines on the board, and evidently pronounced a verdict in favor of the former. I could see, in fact, that she was quite delighted with its apparent superiority, and she never attempted to write on the black-board again.

She often makes signs that seem to indicate an inexplicable knowledge of things of which it is impossible she can naturally have any real perception. She was born blind; she can look at the sun without blinking, and the pupil of the eye is as opaque as the skin. Nevertheless her mistress happening to ask her one night why she had left off her work, she answered that it was too dark to work any longer, and that she must wait for a light. [Footnote 76] In chapel, also, she has evidently impressions which she does not receive elsewhere. She likes to go there; often asks to be permitted to do so, and while in it always remains in an attitude and with an expression of face which would indicate a profound consciousness of the presence of God. One of her companions once told her that I was ill. Anna perceived that the child was crying: "I will not cry," she said immediately, "but I will pray;" and she actually did go down on her knees, and remained in that position for nearly a quarter of an hour. She told me this herself, and I was enchanted; for who can doubt that God held himself honored by the supplicating attitude of his poor mutilated creature? And yet what passes in the mind of this child during the moments which she spends in the attitude of prayer? What is her idea of {341} God? What is the language of her heart when she thus places herself in solemn adoration in his presence? What is, in fact, her prayer? I know not; it is a mystery—yet a mystery—which I trust she will some day find words to explain to me herself. One thing alone is certain;—there is that in her heart and mind which has not been placed there by man, and which tells her there is a Father and a God for her in heaven.

[Footnote 76: She possibly may have learned the expression from some of the deaf-mutes not blind.—TR.]

CONCLUSION.

Extract of a letter from M. Carton, announcing the death of the blind mute, Anna Timmermans, after a residence of twenty-one years in his establishment at Bruges:

BRUGES, Sept. 26, 1859.

GENTLEMEN,—I write to you in deep affliction, for death hath this day deprived me of my blind mute, Anna Timmermans, whom you may remember to have seen at my establishment last year.

She was just forty-three years of age; and twenty-one of these had been passed at my asylum. God has taken her from this life to bestow upon her a better, and his holy will be done! It was a great mercy to her, but I shall regret her all my lifetime, even while rejoicing at her present happiness, and feeling most thankful for that love and knowledge of Almighty God to which, through all the physical difficulties of her position, he enabled her to attain. She loved him indeed with all the náiveté, and invoked him with the simple confidence of a child; and the last weeks of her life were almost entirely devoted to earnest entreaties that he would call her to himself.

You are the first to whom I announce my loss, because of all those persons who have visited my house, you seem best to have comprehended the painful position of a deaf-mute, and the exquisite sensibility which they are capable of feeling toward any one who shows them sympathy and affection. I have already described Anna as she was when she came first among us—a girl twenty-one years of age, with the stature of a woman and the habits of a child. I need not recall her to your remembrance as she appeared to you last year, a woman thoughtful beyond the common, and endowed with such true knowledge of God and of religion, that you deemed it no indignity to ask her prayers, and were pleased by her simple promise never to forget you.

Thanks be to God for his great goodness toward his poor, afflicted child! She not only learned to know him and to love him, but we were enabled by degrees to place her in still closer communication with him, by means of those sacraments which he has appointed to convey grace to the soul. The last confession which she made previous to receiving extreme unction reminds me of all the difficulty we had long ago experienced in persuading her to make her first.

"It will soon be Easter," said one day to her the sister appointed to prepare her for this duty. "It will soon be Easter, and then you and all of us will have to go to confession."

"What is confession?" asked Anna. "It is to tell our sins to the priest," explained the sister; "and to ask pardon of them from God."

"But why should we do that?" quoth Anna.

"Because," replied the sister, "God himself has commanded us to confess our sins. You will have to do it, therefore, like the rest of us; and when you go to confession, you must say in your heart to God, 'I am sorry for my sins. Forgive me, O my God; and I promise I will sin no more.'"

"And what are the sins I must confess?" asked Anna. She was standing in the midst of her class, who had all assembled to receive instruction, at the moment when she put the question.

"You have been in a passion," replied the sister; "you must confess {342} that. You have broken M. Carton's spectacles. You have torn the cap of Sister So-and-so. You have scratched one of the blind children;—and you must mention all these things when you go to confession."

"All these things are past and gone," replied Anna, resolutely; "when I broke M. Carton's spectacles, I was made, for my punishment, to kneel down; and," she continued, lightly passing one hand over the other, as if rubbing out something, "that was effaced. When I tore Sister So-and-so's cap, I was not allowed any coffee; and," repeating the action with her hands, "that was effaced. When I scratched the blind child, I went to bed without supper; and that was effaced. I will not, therefore, confess any of these things."

"But, Anna," replied the sister, "we are all obliged to go to confession. I am going myself, as well as you."

"Oui da! Have you, then, also, been in a passion, my sister? Have you broken M. Carton's spectacles, torn our sister's cap, and scratched a blind child?"

Anna asked these questions with an immense air of triumph, and waited the answer with a wicked smile, which seemed to say she had put the sister in a dilemma. Not one of the class misunderstood the little malice of her questions. Indeed, the uncharitable surmise as to the nature of their mistress's conduct appeared so piquant to all of them, that they unanimously insisted on its receiving a reply. It is not difficult, indeed, to imagine their amusement, for they were all daughters of Eve; and, beside, the best of children have an especial delight in embarrassing their superiors. Altogether it was a scene for a painter.

"I have not been in a passion; God forbid!" replied the poor sister, gently. "And I have not scratched or done injury to any one; but I have done so-and-so, and so-and-so." And here, with the greatest náiveté and humility, the sister mentioned some of her own shortcomings. "I have done so-and-so and so-and-so, and am going to confess them; for I know I have sinned by doing these things; but I hope God will pardon me, and give me grace not to offend him again in like manner."

When the children heard this humble confession, they one by one quietly left the class, like those in the gospel, beginning with the eldest; but Anna, even while acknowledging herself defeated, could not resist the small vengeance of giving the sister a lecture on her peccadilloes.

"Remember, my sister, you are never again to do so-and-so and so-and-so. You must be very sorry, and promise to be wiser another time. And above all other things, you must go to confession to obtain God's pardon."

"And you?" asked the sister, as her only answer to this grave exhortation.

"And I also will go to confession," replied Anna, completely vanquished at last by the tenderness and humility of the good religious.

From that time, in fact, Anna went regularly to confession; and so far from having any difficulty in persuading her to do so, she often reminded us herself when the time was approaching for the performance of that duty.

During the winter preceding her death she grew weaker from day to day; and her loss of appetite, extreme emaciation, and inability to exert herself, all convinced us that we were about to lose her. She herself often spoke about dying, though for a long time she would not permit any one else to address her on the subject. If any of the sisters even hinted at her danger, she would grow quite pale, and turn off the conversation; and even when she alluded of her own accord to the symptoms that alarmed her, it seemed as if, like many other invalids, she did so in order to be reassured as to her state. She became convinced at last, however, that she could not recover, and from that moment her life was one uninterrupted act of resignation {343} to the will of God, submission to his providence, and hope and confidence in his mercy. These sentiments never forsook her even for a moment. "I suffer," she used to say,—"I suffer a great deal; but Jesus suffered more;" and, embracing her crucifix, she would renew all her good resolutions to suffer patiently, and her earnest entreaties for grace to do so.

Previous to receiving the last sacraments, Anna disposed of everything belonging to her in favor of her companions, and then causing them all to be brought to her bedside, she kissed each one affectionately, and bade her adieu. After that she refused to see any of them again, seeking only the company of the sisters, and of that one in particular who best understood the silent language of the fingers. "Let us speak a little," the poor sufferer would often say, "of God and heaven;" and then would follow long and earnest conversations full of faith and hope and love, confidence in the mercies of Almighty God, and gratitude for his goodness.

During these communications Anna would become quite absorbed, as it were, in the love of God; her poor face would brighten into an expression of absolute beauty; and she seemed to lose all sense of present suffering in her certain hope and expectation of the joy that was about to come in on her soul.

"A little more," she would often say, when she fancied the conversation was about to finish; "speak to me a little more of God. I love him and he loves me. O my dear sister, will you not also come soon to heaven, and love him for evermore?"

Her agony commenced on the morning of the 26th of September, and she expired about noon, so quietly that we scarce perceived the moment in which she passed away (safe and happy, as I trust) to the presence of her God.

I recommend her to your good prayers; and I trust that she also will sometimes think of us and pray for us in heaven.

{344}

From Macmillan's Magazine.

TWILIGHT IN THE NORTH.

"UNTIL THE DAY BREAK, AND THE SHADOWS FLEE AWAY."

  Oh the long northern twilight between the day and the night,
  When the heat and the weariness of the world are ended quite;
  When the hills grow dim as dreams; and the crystal river seems
  Like that River of Life from out the Throne where the blessed walk in white.

  Oh the weird northern twilight, which is neither night nor day,
  When the amber wake of the long-set sun still marks his western way;
  And but one great golden star in the deep blue east afar
  Warns of sleep and dark and midnight—of oblivion and decay.

  Oh the calm northern twilight, when labor is all done,
  And the birds in drowsy twitter have dropped silent one by one;
  And nothing stirs or sighs in mountains, waters, skies—
  Earth sleeps—but her heart waketh, till the rising of the sun.

  Oh the sweet, sweet twilight, just before the time of rest,
  When the black clouds are driven away, and the stormy winds suppressed:
  And the dead day smiles so bright, filling earth and heaven with light—
  You would think 'twas dawn come back again—but the light is in the west.

  Oh the grand solemn twilight, spreading peace from pole to pole!—
  Ere the rains sweep o'er the hill-sides, and the waters rise and roll,
  In the lull and the calm, come, O angel with the palm—
  In the still northern twilight, Azrael, take my soul.

{345}

From Chambers's Journal.

A NIGHT IN A GLACIER.

Nothing is more common than to hear the wish expressed among ordinary tourists "to see Switzerland in the winter;" and nothing is more disappointing than its fulfilment. To see Switzerland then is just what you cannot do; all that is visible is one vast sheet of blinding snow, unrelieved by a particle of color; and the view is not even grand—it is simply monotonous. However, in April, 1864, I made the experiment of choosing that month, instead of the conventional August, for a mountaineering ramble; and having been weather-bound at least half a dozen times, in various places, found myself in the same miserable predicament, at the hospice of the Great St. Bernard. It was terribly wearisome work. We had exhausted all our small-talk, had discussed all the celebrated passages of the Alps, from that of Hannibal with his vinegar-cruets to that of Macdonald with his dragoons; had worked the piano to death by playing derisive waltzes; had elicited fearful wheezings from the harmonium, and blundered inappropriate marches on the organ—when, early on the third morning, two momentous events occurred. In the first place, the weather had become suddenly fine; and in the second, the news had arrived that a party of Italian wood-carvers had reached St. Remy, on their passage to the Rhone valley, and that two of their number had left the main body on the previous evening, avowing their intention of making their way to a little stone hut, which is used in summer as a dairy for the supply of the hospice, and passing the night there. This hut, however, had been visited that morning, and found to be untenanted; and as the traces of the two wanderers had been obliterated by the snow during the night, the messenger had been sent forward to obtain assistance in the search for them.

Though the unusually large fall of snow in the winter of 1863-64 made mountain-climbing singularly easy in the past autumn (Mont Blanc was ascended by more than seventy tourists in the latter year), yet in the spring the passes were rendered more than usually difficult by the loose snow which the sun had not yet been powerful enough to solidify by regelation. Most travellers who cross in summer must have noticed a line of stout posts about ten or twelve feet high, which are placed on the most elevated points of the path, so that their summits, which the snow rarely reaches, may serve as landmarks in the winter; but at this time the posts were entirely covered, and it was not without great difficulty that the man who brought the news had been able to find his way to the Hospice. There was no time to be lost. Abandoning their usual costume for a dress more suited to do battle with the elements, four of the "fathers" were soon ready to start, two of them shouldering knapsacks of provisions, one bearing a stout rope, and the fourth carrying an axe, with which to cut steps, if necessary, in the ice. Just as they were leaving, it was discovered that the last-named implement had a crack in its handle, which would most probably cause it to break short off when brought into active service; and as some delay would be caused by fitting a fresh handle, Père Christophe, to whose cordial politeness few travellers are not indebted, came to ask for the loan of my axe for the day. "Perhaps, however," he said, "as monsieur is used to glacier expeditions, he would like to accompany us in our search, and so to carry his axe himself?"—a proposal {346} with which I eagerly closed, promising that my preparations should not delay them above five minutes.

The messenger had arrived at eight in the morning; and in less than half an hour afterward, we were making our way over the lake on the Italian side of the pass. Two of the renowned dogs were with us; but their proceedings did not confirm the idea which had long ago been produced on my childish mind by the well-known print of a St. Bernard dog, with a bottle of wine and a basket of food round its neck, scratching away the snow under which a wayfarer was supposed to lie buried. For finding lost travellers, indeed, they are, as I was assured by the monks, in no-wise adapted; their function, and a most important one it is, is to find the direct path up and down the pass, when it is covered with snow, and in this duty they are unrivalled. Fortunately, the frosts had been very severe, so that we were able to tramp cheerily over the crisp snow, instead of having to undergo the fatigue of sinking up to our knees at every step. But probably the poor fellows down below wished that the frost had been lighter, and our walk heavier. The scene was grand in its wildness. Huge clouds hung along the mountain-sides at our feet, now whirling boisterously, now creeping sullenly along; and rough gusts of wind dashed the snow with blinding coldness into our faces, and produced on ears and nose a tingling terribly suggestive of frost-bites. It was unusual, M. Christophe said, for the fathers themselves to go out in search of travellers; the latter generally waited at the house of refuge near the Cantine, or that near St. Remy, and a servant was sent down with a dog to lead them up; but in cases like the present, where search must be made in different directions, it was of advantage to have three or four people with local knowledge to join in it. Beside, the expedition was a relief to the ordinary monotony of convent life; though the kindness of English travellers had done much for the comfort of the brethren, in supplying them with musical instruments, books, and similar means of recreation. The circumstances under which the Prince of Wales sent them their piano were curious enough. He had bought one of the dogs, which, being quite young and very fat, was given into the charge of a porter to carry down. The man stupidly let it fall, and it was killed on the spot. The prince (this was some time ago) burst into tears, and was almost inconsolable; but the monks, on hearing of the loss, sent another dog, which the prince received while at Martigny; and when he reached Paris, he forwarded, as a royal acknowledgment for the gift, one of Erard's best piano-fortes, which has been the great cheerer of their winter evenings, and on which they set no small store.

Pleasantly chatting after this fashion, my friend beguiled the way to the house of refuge, which we reached before ten o'clock, and where we found collected about five-and-twenty people, waiting to be led up to the hospice. Leaving them in charge of one of the monks, we proceeded along the valley where the vacherie of the hospice is situated, toward the Col de la Fenêtre, in search of the man and woman who were missing. It appeared that they were natives of the Val de Lys, which descends from Monte Rosa toward Italy, and the inhabitants of which have, from time immemorial, held themselves aloof from all communication with their neighbors, and have formed of their little community a sort of nation within a nation, to which a native of Alagna or St. Martin would have no more chance of being admitted by marriage, than a reformer of the franchise would of being elected a member of the Carlton Club. So we discovered that the two lost sheep, presuming on their fortunate accident of birth, had been sneering at the others as having been "raised" in the country of cretins and lean pigs, and had excited such a storm of abuse about their ears, that, finding themselves only two to twenty, they {347} had beaten a retreat, and decided to sleep at the cow-hut. At this we arrived in about half an hour; but it was evident that it had not been tenanted for some weeks by anything but marmots, of which we saw a couple scudding along with that awkward mixture of scratch and shuffle which is their ordinary mode of locomotion. From here we each made casts, to use the hunting phrase, in different directions, especially trying places which lay on the leeward side of rocks, and on which, therefore, any tracks might not have been effaced by the night's snow. A diabolical yell, which was the result of an attempt to imitate the jödel of the Oberland guides, met with no human response, but was taken up, as it seemed, by a chorus of imps in the depths of the mountain; and by the multiplying echoes so common in Switzerland was carried on from crag to crag, till it appeared to be lost only at the top of the valley. We fixed on a point about a mile off at which to reunite, as what was snow in the lower part of the valley would be ice higher up, and would probably be crossed by crevasses, among which it would be dangerous to go singly, and without the protection of the rope. Presently there came a shout from the extreme left of our quartett, and we saw the young marronnier (that is, a half-fledged monk or deacon) standing on the top of some rocks, and indulging in various contortions and gesticulations, which we interpreted as a summons for our help; and when we reached him, he wanted it badly enough, for right before him were the objects of our search; but how to get at them was a problem which required all our skill and all our strength for its solution.

He had come to where the glacier joined the rocks over which our course had hitherto been, when his progress was stopped by a bergschrund or deep chasm between a nearly perpendicular wall of rock on one side, and a wall of ice on the other, inclined at an angle of probably sixty-five degrees. On reaching this, we could see the fugitives about fifty feet below us, and were relieved by the assurance that they were neither of them seriously injured, except by the cold, which had made them unable to do anything to extricate themselves. It was evident that nothing could be done from the side of the rocks, so we made our way as quickly-as-possible along the side of the bergschrund, to cross on to the glacier. This involved a long detour; but the bergschrund was too wide to be jumped, and far too steep to be scaled, while the insecurity of the snow-bridges over it was apparent. At last we found one that seemed solid, and M. Christophe led the way upon it boldly, but had scarcely reached the middle, when it suddenly broke down; and but for the rope—that great protection of mountaineers—he would have had very little chance of seeing the hospice again. As it was, I was the chief sufferer, for I happened to be second in line, and had my waist (round which the rope was tied in a slip-knot) reduced to wasp-like proportions by the jerk of a man of fourteen stone falling in front, and the counteracting strain which my rear-rank man forthwith put on behind. At last we crossed, and hastily made our way to the scene of action. I have estimated the angle of the ice-wall at sixty-five degrees, and tremendous as that inclination is, I believe I have rather understated it, though, as my clinometer was left behind, I could only compare it mentally with the well-known ice-wall on the Strahleck, which seemed about fifteen degrees less. Our rope was about ten feet too short to reach the bottom, so the axe was brought into requisition to cut steps for that distance, and to carve out a ledge which should give us secure hand-hold as well. This done, we let down the rope; but the man's fingers were so benumbed with the night's exposure, that he was unable to tie it round his wife; and though she offered to attach it to him first, he refused to be drawn up until after her. This punctilio seemed rather misplaced, as it involved {348} the descent of one of our number; but you cannot argue with a man who has spent the night in the heart of a glacier; so the lightest of our party lost no time in descending, which was only difficult from the piercing cold that was beginning to get the better of us, and which was so benumbing, that cutting the five-and-fifty steps for the descent was a rather formidable task.

The appearance of the girl's face—she was scarcely more than a girl— was one to fix itself in the memory. It was white—almost as white as the snow which had so nearly formed her cold winding-sheet; stains of blood were on the blue lips, which she had involuntarily bitten through in that night's agony. Her large Italian eyes seemed fascinated by the wall of snow at which she glared; and even now, when rescue was certain, she could only burst into a flood of tears, and repeatedly ejaculate "gerettet!" (saved!) having again sunk into the crouching position from which the question as to the rope had roused her. The tears indeed gave relief to the heart over which a shadow of a terrible death had for long hours been brooding. The shortness of our rope caused the only difficulty in the ascent; but we managed to hew out a sort of stage on the ice at which we could rest with her, while the two younger monks carried the rope to the top, and then completed her restoration to the upper day. The husband's ascent was rather harder of achievement, as his chilled limbs made him as helpless as a child in arms, without reducing his weight in the same proportion; but after some awkward slips, it was managed; and having refreshed the inner man, we made our way painfully toward the hospice, obliging the husband to walk, in spite of the agony which it caused him, as the only means of saving his limbs. We then learned that on the previous evening they had started for the chalet, the situation of which was well known to them, but had been completely enveloped in a cloud of thick mist which had risen from the valley, and had obscured their way; that after numerous turnings, they had decided, just before darkness came on, to make their way up the St. Bernard valley, knowing that in time they must come to the hospice, but that they had actually mistaken for it the valley leading up to the Col de la Fenêtre, which is nearly at right angles to the other, and had come upon the bergschrund at a point where there was fortunately a huge cornice of snow. On this they must have unwittingly walked, as they believed, for many yards, when it suddenly gave way with that terrible rushing sound at which most explorers of the great ice-world have shuddered once or twice in their lives. Fortunately, an immense mass of snow gave way, and its bulk broke their fall, and saved them from being dashed with fatal violence against the rocks. They were warmly clad, and had the courage to keep in motion during nearly the whole night, performing an evolution corresponding to the goose-step of the volunteers, as they dared not change their ground in the darkness.

When the gray morning showed that there was no possibility of their extricating themselves, and the snow fell, which they knew would hide their track, the husband sank down in despair, saying: "Nun bedeckt mich mien Grabtuch" (Now my shroud is covering me)—and two hours of inaction were sufficient to allow the cold to seize his hands and feet. It was curious to observe how, as we gleaned the story from husband and wife, each praised the other's endurance, and depreciated his or her own. They had only been married at Gressonnay St. Giacomo four days before, and were on their way to the celebrated wood-carving manufactory at Freyburg. We had nearly reached the hospice, having had hard work in helping our friend to walk, and in beating his fingers smartly to restore circulation, when the girl, who had refused our aid en route, suddenly gave a shriek and fainted away. The cause of this had not to be sought for long. Our path had led {349} us close by the Morgue, in which, as is well known, the rarity of the air preserves the corpses so thoroughly that they retain for years the appearance of only recent death. There, placed upright against the wall, is the ghastly row; and one figure—that of a woman with a child in her arms— is especially noticeable for having preserved not only the features, but even the expression which marked the last agony of despair. To see these, you must generally wait some moments before your eyes get accustomed to the dim light in which they are; but on this occasion, the glare reflected from the snow threw the whole interior of the charnel-house into full view, and the revulsion of feeling was too much for the poor girl, who had so narrowly escaped a similar fate. She was borne into the hospice, and soon recovered; and on the following morning, both were able to resume their journey, though it was feared by the monks, who had had large experience of frostbites, that one of the man's fingers would be sacrificed. They were profuse in their gratitude, and left, determined that the superiority of the inhabitants of the Val de Lys over all other Piedmontese, Italians, and Savoyards, was not best maintained by spending a night in a bergschrund.

From The Month.

CONSTANCE SHERWOOD.

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

BY LADY GEORGIANA FULLERTON.

CHAPTER VI.

I was to travel, as had been ordered for our mutual convenience and protection, with Mistress Ward, a gentlewoman who resided some months in our vicinity, and had heard mass in our chapel on such rare occasions as of late had occurred, when a priest was at our house, and we had commodity to give notice thereof to such as were Catholic in the adjacent villages. We had with us on the journey two serving-men and a waiting-woman, who had been my mother's chambermaid; and so accompanied, we set out on our way, singing as we went, for greater safety, the litanies of our Lady; to whom we did commend ourselves, as my father had willed us to do, with many fervent prayers. The gentlewoman to whose charge I was committed was a lady of singular zeal and discretion, as well as great virtue; albeit, where religion was not concerned, of an exceeding timid disposition; which, to my no small diversion then, and great shame since, I took particular notice of on this journey. Much talk had been ministered in the county touching the number of rogues and vagabonds which infested the public roads, of which sundry had been taken up and whipped during the last months, in Lichfield, Stafford, and other places. I did perceive that good Mistress Ward glanced uneasily as we rode along at every foot-passenger or horseman that came in sight. Albeit my heart was heavy, and may be also that when the affections are inclined to tears they be likewise prone to laughter, I scarce could restrain from smiling at these her fears and the manner of her showing them.

"Mistress Constance," she said at last, as we came to the foot of a steep {350} ascent, "methinks you have a great heart concerning the dangers which may befall us on the road, and that the sight of a robber would move you not one whit more than that of an honest pedler or hawker, such as I take those men to be who are mounting the hill in advance of us. Doth it not seem to you that the box which they do carry betokens them to be such worthy persons as I wish them to prove?"

"Now surely," I answered, "good Mistress Ward, 'tis my opinion that they be not such honest knaves as you do suppose. I perceive somewhat I mislike in the shape of that box. What an if it be framed to entice travellers to their ruin by such displays and shows of rare ribbons and gewgaws as may prove the means of detaining them on the road, and a-robbing of them in the end?"

Mistress Ward laughed, and commended my jesting, but was yet ill at ease; and, as a mischievous and thoughtless creature, I did somewhat excite and maintain her fears, in order to set her on asking questions of our attendants touching the perils of the road, which led them to relate such fearful stories of what they had seen of this sort as served to increase her apprehensions, and greatly to divert me, who had not the like fears; but rather entertained myself with hers, in a manner such as I have been since ashamed to think of, who should have kissed the ground on which she had trodden.

The fairness of the sky, the beauty of the fields and hedges, the motion of the horse, stirred up my spirits; albeit my heart was at moments so brimful of sorrow that I hated my tongue for its wantonness, my eyes for their curious gazing, and my fancy for its eager thoughts anent London and the new scenes I should behold there. What mostly dwelt in them was the hope to see my Lady Surrey, of whom I had had of late but brief and scanty tidings. The last letter I had from her was writ at the time when the Duke of Norfolk was for the second time thrown in the Tower, which she said was the greatest sorrow that had befallen her since the death of my Lady Mounteagle, which had happened at his grace's house a few months back, with all the assistance she desired touching her religion. She had been urged, my Lady Surrey said, by the duke some time before to do something contrary to her faith; but though she much esteemed and respected him, her answer was so round and resolute that he never mentioned the like to her any more. Since then I had no more tidings of her, who was dearer to me than our brief acquaintance and the slender tie of such correspondence as had taken place between us might in most cases warrant; but whether owing to some congeniality of mind, or to a presentiment of future friendship, 'tis most certain my heart was bound to her in an extraordinary manner; so that she was the continual theme of my thoughts and mirror of my fancy.

The first night of our journey we lay at a small inn, which was held by persons Mistress Ward was acquainted with, and by whom we were entertained in a decent chamber, looking on unto a little garden, and with as much comfort as the fashion of the place might afford, and greater cleanliness than is often to be found in larger hostelries. After supper, being somewhat weary with travel, but not yet inclined for bed, and the evening fine, we sat out of doors in a bower of eglantine near to some bee-hives, of which our hostess had a great store; and methinks she took example from them, for we could see her through the window as busy in the kitchen amongst her maids as the queen-bee amidst her subjects. Mistress Ward took occasion to observe, as we watched one of these little commonwealths of nature, that she admired how they do live, laboring and swarming, and gathering honey together so neat and finely, that they abhor nothing so much as uncleanliness, drinking pure and clear water, even the dew-drops on the leaves and flowers, {351} and delighting in sweet music, which if they hear but once out of tune they fly out of sight.

"They live," she said, "under a law, and use great reverence to their elders. Every one hath his office; some trimming the honey, another framing hives, another the combs. When they go forth to work, they mark the wind and the clouds, and whatsoever doth threaten their ruin; and having gathered, out of every flower, honey, they return loaded in their mouths and on their wings, whom they that tarried at home receive readily, easing their backs of their great burthens with as great care as can be thought of."

"Methinks," I answered, "that if it be as you say, Mistress Ward, the bees be wiser than men."

At the which she smiled; but withal, sighing, made reply:

"One might have wished of late years rather to be a bee than such as we see men sometimes to be. But, Mistress Constance, if they are indeed so wise and so happy, 'tis that they are fixed in a condition in which they must needs do the will of him who created them; and the like wisdom and happiness in a far higher state we may ourselves enjoy, if we do but choose of our free will to live by the same rule."

Then, after some further discourse on the habits of these little citizens, I inquired of Mistress Ward if she were acquainted with mine aunt, Mistress Congleton; at the which question she seemed surprised, and said,

"Methought, my dear, you had known my condition in your aunt's family, having been governess for many years to her three daughters, and only by reason of my sister's sickness having stayed away from them for some time."

At the which intelligence I greatly rejoiced; for the few hours we had rode together, and our discourse that evening, had wrought in me a liking for this lady as great as could arise in so short a period. But I minded me then of my jests at her fears anent robbers, and also of having been less dutiful in my manners than I should have been toward one who was like to be set over me; and I likewise bethought me this might be the cause that she had spoken of the bees having a reverence for their elders, and doubted if I should crave her pardon for my want of it. But, like many good thoughts which we give not entertainment to by reason that they be irksome, I changed that intent for one which had in it more of pleasantness, though less of virtue. Kissing her, I said it was the best news I had heard for a long time that I should live in the same house with her, and, as I hoped, under her care and good government. And she answered, that she was well pleased with it too, and would be a good friend to me as long as she lived. Then I asked her touching my cousins, and of their sundry looks and qualities. She answered, that the eldest, Kate, was very fair, and said nothing further concerning her. Polly, she told me, was marvellous witty and very pleasant, and could give a quick answer, full of entertaining conceits.

"And is she, then, not fair?" I asked.

"Neither fair nor foul," was her reply; "but well favored enough, and has an excellent head."

"Then," I cried, letting my words exceed good behavior, "I shall like her better than the pretty fool her sister." For the which speech I received the first, but not the last, chiding I ever had from Mistress Ward for foolish talking and pert behavior, which was what I very well deserved. When she had done speaking, I put my arm round her neck—for it put me in mind of my mother to be so gravely yet so sweetly corrected—and said, "Forgive me, dear Mistress Ward, for my saucy words, and tell me somewhat I beseech you touching my youngest cousin, who must be nearest to mine own age."

"She is no pearl to hang at one's ear," quoth she, "yet so gifted with a well-disposed mind that in her grace {352} seems almost to supersede nature. Muriel is deformed in body, and slow in speech; but in behavior so honest, in prayer so devout, so noble in all her dealings, that I never heard her speak anything that either concerned not good instruction or godly mirth."

"And doth she not care to be ugly?" I asked.

"So little doth she value beauty," quoth Mistress Ward, "save in the admiring of it in others, that I have known her to look into a glass and smiling cry out, 'This face were fair if it were turned and every feature the opposite to what it is;' and so jest pleasantly at her own deformities, and would have others do so too. Oh, she is a rare treasure of goodness and piety, and a true comfort to her friends!"

With suchlike pleasant discourse we whiled away the time until going to rest; and next day were on horseback betimes on our way to Coventry, where we were to lie that night at the house of Mr. Page, a Catholic, albeit not openly, by reason of the times. This gentleman is for his hospitality so much haunted, that no news stirs but comes to his ears, and no gentlefolks pass his door but have a cheerful welcome to his house; and 'tis said no music is so sweet to his ears as deserved thanks. He vouchsafed much favor to us, and by his merry speeches procured us much entertainment, provoking me to laughter thereby more than I desired. He took us to see St. Mary's Hall, which is a building which has not its equal for magnificence in any town I have seen, no, not even in London. As we walked through the streets he showed us a window in which was an inscription, set up in the reign of King Richard the Second, which did run thus:

"I, Luriche, for the love of thee
Do make Coventry toll free."

And further on, the figure of Peeping Tom of Coventry, that false knave I was so angry with when my father (ah, me! how sharp and sudden was the pain which went through my heart as I called to mind the hours I was wont to sit on his knee hearkening to the like tales) told me the story of the Lady Godiva, who won mercy for her townsfolk by a ride which none had dared to take but one so holy as herself. And, as I said before, being then in a humor as prone to tears at one moment as laughter at another, I fell to weeping for the noble lady who had been in so sore a strait that she must needs have chosen between complying with her savage lord's conditions or the misery of her poor clients. When Mr. Page noticed my tears, which flowed partly for myself and partly for one who had been long dead, but yet lived in the hearts of these citizens, he sought to cheer me by the recital of the fair and rare pageant which doth take place every year in Coventry, and is of the most admirable beauty, and such as is not witnessed in any other city in the world. He said I should not weep if I were to see it, which he very much desired I should; and he hoped he might be then alive, and ride by my side in the procession as my esquire; at the which I smiled, for the good gentleman had a face and figure such as would not grace a pageant, and methought I might be ashamed some years hence to have him for my knight; and I said, "Good Mr. Page, be the shutters closed on those days as when the Lady Godiva rode?" at the which he laughed, and answered,

"No; and that for one Tom who then peeped, there were a thousand eyes to gaze on the show as it passed."

"Then if it please you, sir, when the time comes," I said, "I would like to look on and not to ride;" and he replied, it should be as I pleased; and with such merry discourse we spent the time till supper was ready. And afterward that good gentleman slackened not his efforts in entertaining us; but related so many laughable stories, and took so great notice of me, that I was moved to answer him sometimes in a manner too forward for my years. He told us of the queen's visit to that {353} city, and that the mayor, who had heard her grace's majesty considered poets, and herself wrote verses, thought to commend himself to her favor by such rare rhymes as these, wherewith he did greet her at her entrance into the town:

"We, the men of Coventry,
Be pleased to see your majesty,
Good Lord! how fair you be!"

at the which her highness made but an instant's pause, and then straightway replied,

"It pleaseth well her majesty
To see the men of Coventry.
Good Lord! what fools you be!"

"But," quoth Mr. Page, "the good man was so well pleased that the Queen had answered his compliment, that 'tis said he has had her majesty's speech framed, and hung up in his parlor."

"Pity 'tis not in the town-hall," I cried; and he laughing commended me for sharpness; but Mistress Ward said:

"A sharp tongue in a woman's head was always a stinging weapon; but in a queen's she prayed God it might never prove a murtherous one." Which words somewhat checked our merriment, for that they savored of rebuke to me for forward speech, and I ween awoke in Mr. Page thoughts of a graver sort.

When we rode through the town next day, he went with us for the space of some miles, and then bade us farewell with singular courtesy, and professions of good will and proffered service if we should do him the good at any time to remember his poor house; which we told him he had given us sufficient reason not to forget. Toward evening, when the sun was setting, we did see the towers of Warwick Castle; and I would fain have discerned the one which doth bear the name of the great earl who in a poor pilgrim's garb slew the giant Colbrand, and the cave 'neath Guy's Cliff where he spent his last years in prayer. But the light was declining as we rode into Leamington, where we lay that night, and darkness hid from us that fair country, which methought was a meet abode for such as would lead a hermit's life.

The next day we had the longest ride and the hottest sun we had yet met with; and at noon we halted to rest in a thicket on the roadside, which we made our pavilion, and from which our eyes did feast themselves on a delightful prospect. There were heights on one side garnished with stately oaks, and a meadow betwixt the road and the hill enamelled with all sorts of pleasing flowers, and stored with sheep, which were feeding in sober security. Mistress Ward, who was greatly tired with the journey, fell asleep with her head on her hand, and I pulled from my pocket a volume with which Mr. Page had gifted me at parting, and which contained sundry tales anent Amadis de Gaul, Huon de Bordeaux, Palmerin of England, and suchlike famous knights, which he said, as I knew how to read, for which he greatly commended my parents' care, I should entertain myself with on the road. So, one-half sitting, one-half lying on the grass, I reclined in an easy posture, with my head resting against the trunk of a tree, pleasing my fancy with the writers' conceits; but ever and anon lifting my eyes to the blue sky above my head, seen through the green branches, or fixed them on the quaint patterns the quivering light drew on the grass, or else on the valley refreshed with a silver river, and the fair hills beyond it. And as I read of knights and ladies, and the many perils which befel them, and passages of love betwixt them, which was new to me, and what I had not met with in any of the books I had yet read, I fell into a fit of musing, wondering if in London the folks I should see would discourse in the same fashion, and the gentlemen have so much bravery and the ladies so great beauty as those my book treated of. And as I noticed it was chiefly on the high-roads they did come into such dangerous adventures, {354} I gazed as far as I could discern on the one I had in view before me with a foolish kind of desire for some robbers to come and assail us, and then a great nobleman or gallant esquire to ride up and fall on them, and to deliver us from a great peril, and may be to be wounded in the encounter, and I to bind up those wounds as from my mother's teaching I knew how to do, and then give thanks to the noble gentleman in such courteous and well-picked words as I could think of. But for all my gazing I could naught perceive save a wain slowly ascending the hill loaden with corn, midst clouds of dust, and some poorer sort of people, who had been gleaning, and were carrying sheaves on their heads. After an hour Mistress Ward awoke from her nap; and methinks I had been dozing also, for when she called to me, and said it was time to eat somewhat, and then get to horse, I cried out, "Good sir, I wait your pleasure;" and rubbed my eyes to see her standing before me in her riding-habit, and not the gentleman whose wounds I had been tending.

That night we slept at Northampton, at Mistress Engerfield's house. She was a cousin of Mr. Congleton's, and a lady whose sweet affability and gravity would have extorted reverence from those that least loved her. She was then very aged, and had been a nun in King Henry's reign; and, since her convent had been despoiled, and the religious driven out of it, having a large fortune of her own, which she inherited about that time, she made her house a secret monastery, wherein God was served in a religious manner by such persons as the circumstances of the time, and not their own desires, had forced back into the world, and who as yet had found no commodity for passing beyond seas into countries where that manner of life is allowed. They dressed in sober black, and kept stated hours of prayer, and went not abroad unless necessity compelled them thereunto. When we went into the dining-room, which I noticed Mistress Engerfield called the refectory, grace was said in Latin; and whilst we did eat one lady read out loud out of a book, which methinks was the life of a saint; but the fatigue of the journey, and the darkness of the room, which was wainscotted with oak-wood, so overpowered my senses with drowsiness, that before the meal was ended I had fallen asleep, which was discovered, to my great confusion, when the company rose from table. But that good lady, in whose face was so great a kindliness that I never saw one to be compared with it in that respect before or since, took me by the hand and said, "Young eyes wax heavy for lack of rest, and travellers should have repose. Come to thy chamber, sweet one, and, after commending thyself by a brief prayer to him who sleepeth not nor slumbereth, and to her who is the Mother of the motherless, get thee to bed and take thy fill of the sleep thou hast so great need of, and good angels will watch near thee."

Oh, how I did weep then, partly from fatigue, and partly from the dear comfort her words did yield me, and, kneeling, asked her blessing, as I had been wont to do of my dear parents. And she, whose countenance was full of majesty, and withal of most attractive gentleness, which made me deem her to be more than an ordinary woman, and a great servant of God, as indeed she was, raised me from the ground, and herself assisted to get me to bed, having first said my prayers by her side, whose inflamed devotion, visible in her face, awakened in me a greater fervor than I had hitherto experienced when performing this duty. After I had slept heavily for the space of two or three hours I awoke, as is the wont of those who be over-fatigued, and could not get to sleep again, so that I heard the clock of a church strike twelve; and as the last stroke fell on my ear, it was followed by a sound of chanting, as if close unto my chamber, which resembled what on rare occasions I had heard performed {355} by two or three persons in our chapel; but here, with so full a concord of voices, and so great melody and sweetness, that methought, being at that time of night and every one abed, it must be the angels that were singing. But the next day, questioning Mrs. Ward thereupon as of a strange thing which had happened to me, she said, the ladies in that house rose always at midnight, as they had been used to do in their several convents, to sing God's praises and give him thanks, which was what they did vow to do when they became religious. Before we departed, Mistress Engerfield took me into her own room, which was small and plainly furnished, with no other furniture in it but a bed, table, and kneeling-stool, and against the wall a large crucifix, and she bestowed upon me a small book in French, titled "The Spiritual Combat," which she said was a treasury of pious riches, which she counselled me by frequent study to make my own; and with many prayers and blessings she then bade us God-speed, and took leave of us. Our last day's lodging on the road was at Bedford; and there being no Catholics of note in that town wont to entertain travellers, we halted at a quiet hostelry, which was kept by very decent people, who showed us much civility; and the landlady, after we had supped, the evening being rainy (for else she said we might have walked through her means into the fair grounds of the Abbey of Woburn, which she thanked God was not now a hive for drones, as it had once been, but the seat of a worthy nobleman; which did more credit to the town, and drew customers to the inn), brought us for our entertainment a huge book, which she said had as much godliness in each of its pages as might serve to convert as many Papists—God save the mark!—as there were leaves in the volume. My cheeks glowed like fire when she thus spoke, and I looked at Mistress Ward, wondering what she would say. But she only bowed her head, and made pretence to open the book, which, when the good woman was gone,

"Mistress Constance," quoth she, "this is a book writ by Mr. Fox, the Duke of Norfolk's old schoolmaster, touching those he doth call martyrs, who suffered for treason and for heresy in the days of Queen Mary,—God rest her soul!—and if it ever did convert a Papist, I do not say on his deathbed, but at any time of his life, except it was greatly for his own interest, I be ready …"

"To be a martyr yourself, Mistress Ward," I cried, with my ever too great proneness to let my tongue loose from restraint. The color rose in her cheek, which was usually pale, and she said:

"Child, I was about to say, that in the case I have named, I be ready to forego the hope of that which I thank God I be wise enough to desire, though unworthy to obtain; but for which I do pray each day that I live."

"Then would you not be afraid to die on a scaffold," I asked, "or to be hanged, Mistress Ward?"

"Not in a good cause," she said.

But before the words were out of her mouth our landlady knocked at the door, and said a gentleman was in the house with his two sons, who asked to pay their compliments to Mistress Ward and the young lady under her care. The name of this gentleman was Rookwood, of Rookwood Hall in Suffolk, and Mistress Ward desired the landlady presently to bring them in, for she had often met them at my aunt's house, as she afterward told me, and had great contentment we should have such good company under the same roof with us; whom when they came in she very pleasantly received, and informed Mr. Rookwood of my name and relationship to Mistress Congleton; which when he heard, he asked if I was Mr. Henry Sherwood's daughter; which being certified of, he saluted me, and said my father was at one time, when both were at college, the closest friend that ever he had, and his esteem for him was so great that he would be better {356} pleased with the news that he should see him but once again, than if any one was to give him a thousand pounds. I told him my father often spake of him with singular affection, and that the letter I should write to him from London would be more welcome than anything else could make it, by the mention of the honor I had had of his notice. Mistress Ward then asked him what was the news in London, from whence he had come that morning. He answered that the news was not so good as he would wish it to be; for that the queen's marriage with monsieur was broke off, and the King of France greatly incensed at the favor M. de Montgomeri had experienced at her hands; and that when he had demanded he should be given up, she had answered that she did not see why she should be the King of France's hangman; which was what his father had replied to her sister, when she had made the like request anent some of her traitors who had fled to France.

"Her majesty," he said, "was greatly incensed against the Bishop of Ross, and had determined to put him to death; but that she was dissuaded from it by her council; and that he prayed God Catholics should not fare worse now that Ridolfi's plot had been discovered to declare her highness illegitimate, and place the Queen of Scots on the throne, which had moved her to greater anger than even the rising in the north.

"And touching the Duke of Norfolk," Mistress Ward did ask, "what is like to befal him?"

Mr. Rookwood said, "His grace had been removed from the Tower to his own house on account of the plague; but it is reported the queen is more urgent against him than ever, and will have his head in the end."

"If her majesty will not marry monsieur," Mistress Ward said, "it will fare worse with recusants."

Upon which one of the young gentlemen cried out, "'Tis not her majesty will not have him; but monsieur will not have her. My Lord of Oxford, who is to marry my Lord Burleigh's daughter, said yesterday at the tennis court, that that matter of monsieur is grieviously taken on her grace's part; but that my lord is of opinion that where amity is so needful, her majesty should stomach it; and so she doth pretend to break it off herself by reason of her religious scruples."

At the which both brothers did laugh, but Mr. Rookwood bade them have a care how they did suffer their tongues to wag anent her grace and such matters as her grace's marriage; which although in the present company might be without danger, was an ill habit, which in these times was like to bring divers persons into troubles.

"Hang it!" cried the eldest of his sons, who was of a well-pleasing favor and exceeding goodly figure; "recusants be always in trouble, whatsoever they do; both taxed for silence and checked for speech, as the play hath it. For good Mr. Weston was racked for silence last week till he fainted, for that he would not reveal what he had heard in confession from one concerned in Ridolfi's plot; and as to my Lord Morley, he hath been examined before the council, touching his having said he would go abroad poorly and would return in glory, which he did speak concerning his health; but they would have it meant treason."

"Methinks, Master Basil," said his father, "thou art not like to be taxed for silence; unless indeed on the rack, which the freedom of thy speech may yet bring thee to, an thou hast not more care of thy words. See now, thy brother keeps his lips closed in modest silence."

"Ay, as if butter would not melt in his mouth," cried Basil, laughing.

And I then noticed the countenance of the younger brother, who was fairer and shorter by a head than Basil, and had the most beautiful eyes imaginable, and a high forehead betokening thoughtfulness. Mr. Rookwood drew his chair further from the table, and conversed in a low voice with Mrs. Ward, {357} touching matters which I ween were of too great import to be lightly treated of. I heard the name of Mr. Felton mentioned in their discourse, and somewhat about the Pope's Bull, in the affixing of which at the Bishop of London's gate he had lent a hand; but my ears were not free to listen to them, for the young gentlemen began to entertain me with divers accounts of the shows in London; which, as they were some years older than myself, who was then no better than a child, though tall of mine age, I took as a great favor, and answered them in the best way I could. Basil spoke mostly of the sights he had seen, and a fight between a lion and three dogs, in which the dogs were victorious; and Hubert of books, which he said, for his part, he had always a care to keep handsome and well bound.

"Ay," quoth his brother, "gilding them and stringing them like the prayer-books of girls and gallants, which are carried to church but for their outsides. I do hate a book with clasps, 'tis a trouble to open them."

"A trouble thou dost seldom take," quoth Hubert. "Thou art ready enough to unclasp the book of thy inward soul to whosoever will read in it, and thy purse to whosoever begs or borrows of thee; but with such clasps as shut in the various stores of thought which have issued forth from men's minds thou dost not often meddle."

"Beshrew me if I do! The best prayer-book I take to be a pair of beads; and the most entertaining reading, the 'Rules for the Hunting of Deer;' which, by what I have heard from Sir Roger Ashlon, my Lord Stafford hath grievously transgressed by assaulting Lord Lyttleton's keepers in Teddesley Haye."

"What have you here?" Hubert asked, glancing at Mr. Fox's Book of Martyrs, and another which the landlady had left on the table; A profitable New Year's Gift to all England.

"They are not mine," I answered, "nor such as I do care to read; but this," I said, holding out Mr. Page's gift, which I had in my pocket, "is a rare fund of entertainment and very full of pleasant tales."

"But," quoth he, "you should read the Morte d'Arthur and the Seven Champions of Christendom."

Which I said I should be glad to do when I had the good chance to meet with them. He said, "My cousin Polly had a store of such pleasant volumes, and would, no doubt, lend them to me. She has such a sharp wit," he added, "that she is ever exercising it on herself or on others; on herself by the bettering of her mind through reading; and on others by such applications, of what she thus acquires as leaves them no chance in discoursing with her but to yield to her superior knowledge."

"Methinks," I said, "if that be her aim in reading, may be she will not lend to others the means of sharpening their wits to encounter hers."

At the which both of them laughed, and Basil said he hoped I might prove a match for Mistress Polly, who carried herself too high, and despised such as were slower of speech and less witty than herself. "For my part," he cried, "I am of opinion that too much reading doth lead to too much thinking, and too much thinking doth consume the spirits; and often it falls out that while one thinks too much of his doing, he leaves to do the effect of his thinking."

At the which Hubert smiled, and I bethought myself that if Basil was no book-worm neither was he a fool. With such like discourse the evening sped away, and Mr. Rookwood and his sons took their leave with many civilities and pleasant speeches, such as gentlemen are wont to address to ladies, and hopes expressed to meet again in London, and good wishes for the safe ending of our journey thither.

Ah, me! 'tis passing strange to sit here and write in this little chamber, after so many years, of that first meeting with those brothers, Basil and Hubert; to call to mind how they did look and speak, and of the pretty kind {358} of natural affection there was betwixt them in their manner to each other. Ah, me! the old trick of sighing is coming over me again, which I had well-nigh corrected myself of, who have more reason to give thanks than to complain. Good Lord, what fools you be! sighing heart and watering eyes! As great fools, I ween, as the Mayor of Coventry, whose foolish rhymes do keep running in my head.

The day following we came to London, which being, as it were, the beginning of a new life to me, I will defer to speak of until I find myself, after a night's rest and special prayers unto that end, less heavy of heart than at present.

CHAPTER VII.

Upon a sultry evening which did follow an exceeding hot day, with no clouds in the sky, and a great store of dust on the road, we entered London, that great fair of the whole world, as some have titled it. When for many years we do think of a place we have not seen, a picture forms itself in the mind as distinct as if the eye had taken cognizance thereof, and a singular curiosity attends the actual vision of what the imagination hath so oft portrayed. On this occasion my eyes were slow servants to my desires, which longed to embrace in the compass of one glance the various objects they craved to behold. Albeit the sky was cloudless above our heads, I feared it would rain in London, by reason of a dark vapor which did hang over it; but Mistress Ward informed me that this appearance was owing to the smoke of sea-coal, of which so great a store is used in the houses that the air is filled with it. "And do those in London always live in that smoke?" I inquired, not greatly contented to think it should be so; but she said Mr. Congleton's house was not in the city, but in a very pleasant suburb outside of it, close unto Holborn Hill and Ely Place, the bishop's palace, in whose garden the roses were so plentiful that in June the air is perfumed with their odor. I troubled her not with further questions at that time, being soon wholly taken up with the new sights which then did meet us at every step. So great a number of gay horsemen, and litters carried by footmen with fine liveries, and coaches drawn by horses richly caparisoned and men running alongside of them, and withal so many carts, that I was constrained to give over the guiding of mine own horse by reason of the confusion which the noise of wheels and men's cries and the rapid motion of so many vehicles did cause in me, who had never rode before in so great a crowd.

At about six o'clock of the afternoon we did reach Ely Place, and passing by the bishop's palace stopped at the gate of Mr. Congleton's house, which doth stand somewhat retired from the high-road, and the first sight of which did greatly content me. It is built of fair and strong stone, not affecting fineness, but honorably representing a firm stateliness, for it was handsome without curiosity, and homely without negligence. At the front of it was a well-arranged ground cunningly set with trees, through which we rode to the foot of the stairs, where we were met by a gentleman dressed in a coat of black satin and a quilted waistcoat, with a white beaver in his hand, whom I guessed to be my good uncle. He shook Mistress Ward by the hand, saluted me on both cheeks, and vowed I was the precise counterpart of my mother, who at my age, he said, was the prettiest Lancashire witch that ever he had looked upon. He seemed to me not so old as I did suppose him to be, lean of body and something low of stature, with a long visage and a little sharp beard upon the chin of a brown color; a countenance not very grave, and, for his age, wanting the authority of gray hairs. He conducted me to mine aunt's chamber, who was seated in an easy-chair near unto the window, with a cat upon her knees and {359} a tambour-frame before her. She oped her arms and kissed me with great affection, and I, sliding down, knelt at her feet and prayed her to be a good mother to me, which was what my father had charged me to do when I should come into her presence. She raised me with her hand and made me sit on a stool beside her, and stroking my face gently, gazed upon it, and said it put her in mind of both of my parents, for that I had my father's brow and eyes, and my mother's mouth and dimpling smiles.

"Mr. Congleton," she cried, "you do hear what this wench saith. I pray you to bear it in mind, and how near in blood she is to me, so that you may show her favor when I am gone, which may be sooner than you think for."

I looked up into her face greatly concerned that she was like so soon to die. Methought she had the semblance of one in good health and a reasonable good color in her cheeks, and I perceived Mr. Congleton did smile as he answered:

"I will show favor to thy pretty niece, good Moll, I promise thee, be thou alive or be thou dead; but if the leeches are to be credited, who do affirm thou hast the best strength and stomach of the twain, thou art more like to bury me than I thee."

Upon which the good lady did sigh deeply and cast up her eyes and lifted up her hands as one grievously injured, and he cried:

"Prithee, sweetheart, take it not amiss, for beshrew me if I be not willing to grant thee to be as diseased as will pleasure thee, so that thou wilt continue to eat and sleep as well as thou dost at the present and so keep thyself from dying."

Upon which she said that she did admire how a man could have so much cruelty as to jest and jeer at her ill-health, but that she would spend no more of her breath upon him; and turning toward me she asked a store of questions anent my father, whom for many years she had not seen, and touching the manner of my mother's death, at the mention of which my tears flowed afresh, which caused her also to weep; and calling for her women she bade one of them bring her some hartshorn, for that sorrow, she said, would occasion the vapors to rise in her head, and the other she sent for to fetch her case of trinkets, for that she would wear the ring her brother had presented her with some years back, in which was a stone which doth cure melancholy. When the case was brought she displayed before my eyes its rich contents, and gifted me with a brooch set with turquoises, the wearing of which, she said, doth often keep persons from falling into divers sorts of peril. Then presently kissing me she said she felt fatigued, and would send for her daughters to take charge of me; who, when they came, embraced me with exceeding great affection, and carried me to what had been their schoolroom and was now Mrs. Ward's chamber, who no longer was their governess, they said, but as a friend abode in the house for to go abroad with them, their mother being of so delicate a constitution that she seldom left her room. Next to this chamber was a closet, wherein Kate said I should lie, and as it is one I inhabited for a long space of time, and the remembrance of which doth connect itself with very many events which, as they did take place, I therein mused on, and prayed or wept, or sometimes laughed over in solitude, I will here set down what it was like when first I saw it.

The bed was in an alcove, closed in the day by fair curtains of taffety; and the walls, which were in wood, had carvings above the door and over the chimney of very dainty workmanship. The floor was strewn with dried neatly-cut rushes, and in the projecting space where the window was, a table was set, and two chairs with backs and seats cunningly furnished with tapestry. In another recess betwixt the alcove and the chimney stood a praying stool and a desk with a cushion for a book to lie on. Ah, me! how often has my head {360} rested on that cushion and my knees on that stool when my heart has been too full to utter other prayers than a "God ha' mercy on me!" which at such times broke as a cry from an overcharged breast. But, oh! what a vain pleasure I did take on that first day in the bravery of this little chamber, which Kate said was to be mine own! With what great contentment I viewed each part of it, and looked out of the window on the beds of flowers which did form a mosaical floor in the garden around the house, in the midst of which was a fair pond whose shaking crystal mirrored the shrubs which grew about it, and a thicket beyond, which did appear to me a place for pleasantness and not unfit to flatter solitariness, albeit so close unto the city. Beyond were the bishop's grounds, and I could smell the scent of roses coming thence as the wind blew. I could have stood there many hours gazing on this new scene, but that my cousins brought me down to sup with them in the garden, which was not fairer in natural ornaments than in artificial inventions. The table was set in a small banqueting-house among certain pleasant trees near to a pretty water-work; and now I had leisure to scan my cousins' faces and compare what I did notice in them with what Mistress Ward had said the first night of our journey.

Kate, the eldest of the three, was in sooth a very fair creature, proportioned without any fault, and by nature endowed with the most delightful colors; but there was a made countenance about her mouth, between simpering and smiling, and somewhat in her bowed-down head which seemed to languish with over-much idleness, and an inviting look in her eyes as if they would over-persuade those she spoke to, which betokened a lack of those nobler powers of the mind which are the highest gifts of womanhood. Polly's face fault-finding wits might scoff at as too little for the rest of the body, her features as not so well proportioned as Kate's, and her skin somewhat browner than doth consist with beauty; but in her eyes there was a cheerfulness as if nature smiled in them, in her mouth so pretty a demureness, and in her countenance such a spark of wit that, if it struck not with admiration, filled with delight. No indifferent soul there was which, if it resisted making her its princess, would not long to have such a playfellow. Muriel, the youngest of these sisters, was deformed in shape, sallow in hue, in speech, as Mistress Ward had said, slow; but withal in her eyes, which were deep-set, there was lacking neither the fire which betokens intelligence, nor the sweetness which commands affection, and somewhat in her plain face which, though it may not be called beauty, had some of its qualities. Methought it savored more of heaven than earth. The ill-shaped body seemed but a case for a soul the fairness of which did shine through the foul lineaments which enclosed it. Albeit her lips opened but seldom that evening, only twice or thrice, and they were common words she uttered and fraught with hesitation, my heart did more incline toward her than to the pretty Kate or the lively Polly.

An hour before we retired to rest, Mr. Congleton came into the garden, and brought with him Mr. Swithin Wells and Mr. Bryan Lacy, two gentlemen who lived also in Holborn; the latter of which, Polly whispered in mine ear, was her sister Kate's suitor. Talk was ministered among them touching the queen's marriage with Monsieur; which, as Mr. Rookwood had said, was broken off; but that day they had heard that M. de la Motte had proposed to her majesty the Due d'Alençon, who would be more complying, he promised, touching religion than his brother. She inquired of the prince's age, and of his height; to the which he did answer, "About your majesty's own height." But her highness would not be so put off, and willed the ambassador to write for the precise measurement of the prince's stature.

"She will never marry," quoth Mr. Wells, "but only amuse the French {361} court and her council with further negotiations touching this new suitor, as heretofore anent the archduke and Monsieur. But I would to God her majesty were well married, and to a Catholic prince; which would do us more good than anything else which can be thought of."

"What news did you hear, sir, of Mr. Felton?" Mistress Ward asked. Upon which their countenances fell; and one of them answered that that gentleman had been racked the day before, but steadily refused, though in the extremity of torture, to name his accomplices; and would give her majesty no title but that of the Pretender; which they said was greatly to be regretted, and what no other Catholic had done. But when his sentence was read to him, for that he was to die on Friday, he drew from his finger a ring, which had diamonds in it, and was worth four hundred pounds, and requested the Earl of Sussex to give it to the queen, in token that he bore her no ill-will or malice, but rather the contrary.

Mr. Wells said he was a gentleman of very great heart and noble disposition, but for his part he would as lief this ring had been sold, and the money bestowed on the poorer sort of prisoners in Newgate, than see it grace her majesty's finger; who would thus play the hangman's part, who inherits the spoils of such as he doth put to death. But the others affirmed it was done in a Christian manner, and so greatly to be commended; and that Mr. Felton, albeit he was somewhat rash in his actions, and by some titled Don Magnifico, by reason of a certain bravery in his style of dress and fashion of speaking, which smacked of Monsieur Traveller, was a right worthy gentleman, and his death a blow to his friends, amongst whom there were some, nevertheless, to be found who did blame him for the act which had brought him into trouble. Mistress Ward cried, that such as fell into trouble, be the cause ever so good, did always find those who would blame them. Mr. Lacy said, one should not cast himself into danger wilfully, but when occasion offered take it with patience. Polly replied, that some were so prudent, occasions never came to them. And then those two fell to disputing, in a merry but withal sharp fashion. As he did pick his words, and used new-fangled terms, and she spoke roundly and to the point, methinks she was the nimblest in this encounter of wit.

Meanwhile Mr. Wells asked Mr. Congleton if he had had news from the north, where much blood was spilt since the rising; and he apprehended that his kinsmen in Richmondshire should suffer under the last orders sent to Sir George Bowes by my Lord Sussex. But Mr. Congleton did minister to him this comfort, that if they were noted wealthy, and had freeholds, it was the queen's special commandment they should not be executed, but two hundred of the commoner sort to lose their lives in each town; which was about one to each five.

"But none of note?" quoth Mr. Wells.

"None which can pay the worth of their heads," Mr. Congleton replied.

"And who, then, doth price them?" asked Kate, in a languishing voice.

"Nay, sister," quoth Polly, "I warrant thee they do price themselves; for he that will not pay well for his head must needs opine he hath a worthless one."

Upon which Mr. Lacy said to Kate, "One hundred angels would not pay for thine, sweet Kate."

"Then she must needs be an archangel, sir," quoth Polly, "if she be of greater worth than one hundred angels."

"Ah, me!" cried Kate, very earnestly, "I would I had but half one hundred gold-pieces to buy me a gown with!"

"Hast thou not gowns enough, wench?" asked her father. "Methought thou wert indifferently well provided in that respect."

"Ah, but I would have, sir, such a {362} velvet suit as I did see some weeks back at the Italian house in Cheapside, where the ladies of the court do buy their vestures. It had a border the daintiest I ever beheld, all powdered with gold and pearls. Ruffiano said it was the rarest suit he had ever made; and he is the Queen of France's tailor, which Sir Nicholas Throgmorton did secretly entice away, by the queen's desire, from that court to her own."

"And what fair nymph owns this rare suit, sweetest Kate?" Mr. Lacy asked. "I'll warrant none so fair that it should become her, or rather that she should become it, more than her who doth covet it."

"I know not if she be fair or foul," quoth Kate, "but she is the Lady Mary Howard, one of the maids of honor of her majesty, and so may wear what pleaseth her."

"By that token of the gold and pearls," cried Mr. Wells, "I doubt not but 'tis the very suit anent which the court have been wagging their tongues for the last week; and if it be so, indeed, Mistress Kate, you have no need to envy the poor lady that doth own it."

Kate protested she had not envied her, and taxed Mr. Wells with unkindness that he did charge her with it; and for all he could say would not be pacified, but kept casting up her eyes, and the tears streaming down her lovely cheeks. Upon which Mr. Lacy cried:

"Sweet one, thou hast indeed no cause to envy her or any one else, howsoever rare or dainty their suits may be; for thy teeth are more beauteous than pearls, and thine hair more bright than the purest gold, and thine eyes more black and soft than the finest velvet, which nature so made that we might bear their wonderful shining, which else had dazzled us:" and so went on till her weeping was stayed, and then Mr. Wells said:

"The lady who owned that rich suit, which I did falsely and feloniously advance Mistress Kate did envy, had not great or long comfort in its possession; for it is very well known at court, and hence bruited in the city, what passed at Richmond last week concerning this rare vesture. It pleased not the queen, who thought it did exceed her own. And one day her majesty did send privately for it, and put it on herself, and came forth into the chamber among the ladies. The kirtle and border was far too short for her majesty's height, and she asked every one how they liked her new fancied suit. At length she asked the owner herself if it was not made too short and ill-becoming; which the poor lady did presently consent to. Upon which her highness cried: 'Why, then, if it become me not as being too short, I am minded it shall never become thee as being too fine, so it fitteth neither well.' This sharp rebuke so abashed the poor lady that she never adorned her herewith any more."

"Ah," cried Mr. Congleton, laughing, "her majesty's bishops do come by reproofs as well as her maids. Have you heard how one Sunday, last April, my Lord of London preached to the queen's majesty, and seemed to touch on the vanity of decking the body too finely. Her grace told the ladies after the sermon, that if the bishop held more discourse on such matters she would fit him for heaven, but he should walk thither without a staff and leave his mantle behind him."

"Nay," quoth Mr. Wells, "but if she makes such as be Catholics taste of the sharpness of the rack, and the edge of the axe, she doth then treat those of her own way of thinking with the edge of her wit and the sharpness of her tongue. 'Tis reported, Mr. Congleton, I know not with what truth, that a near neighbor of yours has been served with a letter, by which a new sheep is let into his pastures."

"What," cried Polly, "is Pecora Campi to roam amidst the roses, and go in and out at his pleasure through the bishop's gate? The 'sweet lids' have then danced away a large slice of the Church's acres. But what, I pray you, sir, did her majesty write?"

"Even this," quoth her father, "I {363} had it from Sir Robert Arundell: 'Proud Prelate! you know what you were before I made you, and what you are now. If you do not immediately comply with my request, I will unfrock you, by God!—ELIZABETH R.'"

"Our good neighbor," saith Polly, "must show a like patience with Job, and cry out touching his bishopric, 'The queen did give it; the queen doth take it away; the will of the queen be done.'"

"He is like to be encroached upon yet further by yon cunning Sir Christopher," Mr. Wells said; "I'll warrant Ely Place will soon be Hatton Garden."

"Well, for a neighbor," answered Polly, "I'd as soon have the queen's lids as her hedge-bishop, and her sheep as her shepherd. 'Tis not all for love of her sweet dancer her majesty doth despoil him. She never, 'tis said, hath forgiven him that he did remonstrate with her for keeping a crucifix and lighted tapers in her own chapel, and that her fool, set on by such as were of the same mind with him, did one day put them out."

In suchlike talk the time was spent; and when the gentlemen had taken leave, we retired to rest; and being greatly tired, I slept heavily, and had many quaint dreams, in which past scenes and present objects were curiously blended with the tales I had read on the journey, and the discourse I had heard that evening. When I awoke in the morning, my thoughts first flew to my father, of whom I had a very passionate desire to receive tidings. When my waiting-woman entered, with a letter in her hand, I foolishly did fancy it came from him, which could scarcely be, so soon after our coming to town; but I quickly discerned, by the rose-colored string which it was bounden with, and then the handwriting, that it was not from him, but from her whom, next to him, I most desired to hear from, to wit, the Countess of Surrey. That sweet lady wrote that she had an exceeding great desire to see me, and would be more beholden to my aunt than she could well express, if she would confer on her so great a benefit as to permit me to spend the day with her at the Charter House, and she would send her coach for to convey me there, which should never have done her so much good pleasure before as in that service. And more to that effect, with many kind and gracious words touching our previous meeting and correspondence.

When I was dressed, I took her ladyship's letter to Mrs. Ward, who was pleased to say she would herself ask permission for me to wait upon that noble lady; but that her ladyship might not be at the charge of sending for me, she would herself, if my aunt gave her license, carry me to the Charter House, for that she was to spend some hours that day with friends in the city, and "it would greatly content her," she added, "to further the expressed wish of the young countess, whose grandmother, Lady Mounteagle, and so many of her kinsfolk, were Catholics, or at the least, good friends to such as were so." My aunt did give leave for me to go, as she mostly did to whatsoever Mrs. Ward proposed, whom she trusted entirely, with a singular great affection, only bidding her to pray that she might not die in her absence, for that she feared some peaches she had eaten the day before had disordered her, and that she had heard of one who had died of the plague some weeks before in the Tower. Mrs. Ward exhorted her to be of good cheer, and to comfort herself both ways, for that the air of Holborn was so good, the plague was not likely to come into it, and that the kernels of peaches being medicinal, would rather prove an antidote to pestilence than an occasion to it; and left her better satisfied, insomuch that she sent for another dish of peaches for to secure the benefit. Before I left, Kate bade me note the fashion of the suit my Lady Surrey did wear, and if she had on her own hair, and if she dyed it, and if she covered her bosom, or wore plaits, and if her stomacher was straight {364} and broad, or formed a long waist, extending downward, and many more points touching her attire, which I cannot now call to mind. As I went through the hall to the steps where Mistress Ward was already standing, Muriel came hurrying toward me, with a faint color coming and going in her sallow cheek, and twice she tried to speak and failed. But when I kissed her she put her lips close to my ear and whispered,

"Sweet little cousin, there be in London prisoners in a very bad plight, in filthy dungeons, because of their religion. The noble young Lady Surrey hath a tender heart toward such if she do but hear of them. Prithee, sweet coz, move her to send them relief in food, money, or clothing."

Then Mistress Ward called to me to hasten, and I ran away, but Muriel stood at the window, and as we passed she kissed her hand, in which was a gold angel, which my father had gifted me with at parting.

"Mrs. Ward," I said, as we went along, "my cousin Muriel is not fair, and yet her face doth commend itself to my fancy more than many fair ones I have seen; it is so kindly."

"I have even from her infancy loved her," she answered, "and thus much I will say of her, that many have been titled saints who had not, methinks, more virtue than I have noticed in Muriel."

"Doth she herself visit the prisoners she spoke of?"

"She and I do visit them and carry them relief when we can by any means prevail with the gaolers from compassion or through bribing of them to admit us. But it is not always convenient to let this be known, not even at home, but I ween, Constance, as thou wilt have me to call thee so, that Muriel saw in thee—for she has a wonderful penetrative spirit—that thou dost know when to speak and when to keep silence."

"And may I go with you to the prisons?" I asked with a hot feeling in my heart, which I had not felt since I had left home.

"Thou art far too young," she answered. "But I will tell thee what thou canst do. Thou mayst work and beg for these good men, and not be ashamed of so doing. None may visit them who have not made up their minds to die, if they should be denounced for their charity."

"But Muriel is young," I answered. "Hath she so resolved?"

"Muriel is young," was the reply; "but she is one in whom wisdom and holiness have forestalled age. For two years that she hath been my companion on such occasions, she has each day prepared for martyrdom by such devout exercises as strengthen the soul at the approach of death."

"And Kate and Polly," I asked, "are they privy to the dangers that you do run, and have they no like ambition?"

"Rather the contrary," she answered; "but neither they nor any one else in the house is fully acquainted with these secret errands save Mr. Congleton, and he did for a long time refuse his daughter license to go with me, until at last, by prayers and tears, she won him over to suffer it. But he will never permit thee to do the like, for that thy father hath intrusted thee to his care for greater safety in these troublesome times."

"Pish!" I cried pettishly, "safety has a dull mean sound in it which I mislike. I would I were mine own mistress."

"Wish no such thing, Constance Sherwood," was her grave answer. "Wilfulness was never nurse to virtue, but rather her foe; nor ever did a rebellious spirit prove the herald of true greatness. And now, mark my words. Almighty God hath given thee a friend far above thee in rank, and I doubt not in merit also, but whose faith, if report saith true, doth run great dangers, and with few to advise her in these evil days in which we live. Peradventure he hath appointed thee a work in a palace as weighty as that of {365} others in a dungeon. Set thyself to it with thy whole heart, and such prayers as draw down blessings from above. There be great need in these times to bear in remembrance what the Lord says, that he will be ashamed in heaven before his angels of such as be ashamed of him on earth. And many there are, I greatly fear, who though they be Catholics, do assist the heretics by their cowardice to suppress the true religion in this land; and I pray to God this may never be our case. Yet I would not have thee to be rash in speech, using harsh words, or needlessly rebuking others, which would not become thy age, or be fitting and modest in one of inferior rank, but only where faith and conscience be in question not to be afraid to speak. And now God bless thee, who should be an Esther in this house, wherein so many true confessors of Christ some years ago surrendered their lives in great misery and torments, rather than yield up their faith."

This she said as we stopped at the gate of the Charter House, where one of the serving-men of the Countess of Surrey was waiting to conduct me to her lodgings, having had orders to that effect. She left me in his charge, and I followed him across the square, and through the cloisters and passages which led to the gallery, where my lady's chamber was situated. My heart fluttered like a frightened caged bird during that walk, for there was a solemnity about the place such as I had not been used to, and which filled me with apprehension lest I should be wanting in due respect where so much state was carried on. But when the door was opened at one end of the gallery, and my sweet lady ran out to meet me with a cry of joy, the silly heart, like a caught bird, nestled in her embrace, and my lips joined themselves to hers in a fond manner, as if not willing to part again, but by fervent kisses supplying the place of words, which were lacking, to express the great mutual joy of that meeting, until at last my lady raised her head, and still holding my hands, cried out as she gazed on my face:

"You are more welcome, sweet one, than my poor words can say. I pray you, doff your hat and mantle, and come and sit by me, for 'tis a weary while since we have met, and those are gone from us who loved us then, and for their sakes we must needs love one another dearly, if our hearts did not of themselves move us unto it, which indeed they do, if I may judge of yours, Mistress Constance, by mine own."

Then we kissed again, and she passed her arm around my neck with so many graceful endearments, in which were blended girlish simplicity and a youthful yet matronly dignity, that I felt that day the love which, methinks, up to that time had had its seat mostly in the fancy, take such root in mine heart, that it never lost its hold on it.

At the first our tongues were somewhat tied by joy and lack of knowledge how to begin to converse on the many subjects whereon both desired to hear the other speak, and the disuse of such intercourse as maketh it easy to discourse on what the heart is full of. Howsoever, Lady Surrey questioned me touching my father, and what had befallen us since my mother's death. I told her that he had left his home, and sent me to London by reason of the present troubles; but without mention of what I did apprehend to be his further intent. And she then said that the concern she was in anent her good father the Duke of Norfolk did cause her to pity those who were also in trouble.

"But his grace," I answered, "is, I hope, in safety at present, and in his own house?"

"In this house, indeed," she did reply, "but a strait prisoner in Sir Henry Neville's custody, and not suffered to see his friends without her majesty's especial permission. He did send for his son and me last evening, having obtained leave for to see us, which he had not done since the day my lord and I were married again, by {366} his order, from the Tower, out of fear lest our first marriage, being made before Phil was quite twelve years old, it should have been annulled by order of the queen, or by some other means. It grieved me much to notice how gray his hair had grown, and that his eyes lacked their wonted fire. When we entered he was sitting in a chair, leaning backward, with his head almost over the back of it, looking at a candle which burnt before him, and a letter in his hand. He smiled when he saw us, and said the greatest comfort he had in the world was that we were now so joined together that nothing could ever part us. You see, Mistress Constance," she said, with a pretty blush and smile, "I now do wear my wedding-ring below the middle joint."

"And do you live alone with my lord now in these grand chambers?" I said, looking round at the walls, which were hung with rare tapestry and fine pictures.

"Bess is with me," she answered, "and so will remain I hope until she is fourteen, when she will be married to my Lord William, my lord's brother. Our Moll is likewise here, and was to have wedded my Lord Thomas when she did grow up; but she is not like to live, the physicians do say."

The sweet lady's eyes filled with tears, but, as if unwilling to entertain me with her griefs, she quickly changed discourse, and spoke of my coming unto London, and inquired if my aunt's house were a pleasant one, and if she was like to prove a good kinswoman to me. I told her how comfortable had been the manner of my reception, and of my cousins' goodness to me; at the which she did express great contentment, and would not be satisfied until I had described each of them in turn, and what good looks or what good qualities they had; which I could the more easily do that the first could be discerned even at first sight, and touching the last, I had warrant from Mrs. Ward's commendations, which had more weight than my own speerings, even if I had been a year and not solely a day in their company. She was vastly taken with what I related to her of Muriel, and that she did visit and relieve poor persons and prisoners, and wished she had liberty to do the like; and with a lovely blush and a modest confusion, as of one who doth not willingly disclose her good deeds, she told me all the time she could spare she did employ in making clothes for such as she could hear of, and also salves and cordials (such as she had learnt to compound from her dear grandmother), and privately sent them by her waiting-maid, who was a young gentlewoman of good family, who had lost her parents, and was most excellently endowed with virtue and piety.

"Come to my closet, Miss Constance," she said, "and I doubt not but we shall find Milicent at work, if so be she has not gone abroad to-day on some such errand of charity." Upon which she led the way through a second chamber, still more richly fitted up than the first, into a smaller one, wherein, when she opened the door, I saw a pretty living picture of two girls at a table, busily engaged with a store of bottles and herbs and ointments, which were strewn upon it in great abundance. One of them was a young maid, who was measuring drops into a phial, with a look so attentive upon it as if that little bottle had been the circle of her thoughts. She was very fair and slim, and had a delicate appearance, which minded me of a snow-drop; and indeed, by what my lady said, she was a floweret which had blossomed amidst the frosts and cold winds of adversity. By her side was the most gleesome wench, of not more than eight years, I ever did set eyes on; of a fatness that at her age was comely, and a face so full of waggery and saucy mirth, that but to look upon it drove away melancholy. She was compounding in a cup a store of various liquids, which she said did cure shrewishness, and said she would pour some into her nurse's night-draught, to mend her of that disorder.

{367}

"Ah, Nan," she cried, as we entered, "I'll help thee to a taste of this rare medicine, for methinks thou art somewhat shrewish also and not so conformable to thy husband's will, my lady, as a good wife should be. By that same token that my lord willed to take me behind him on his horse a gay ride round the square, and, forsooth, because I had not learnt my lesson, thou didst shut me up to die of melancholy. Ah, me! My mother had a maid called Barbara—

  'Sing willow, willow, willow.'

That is one of Phil's favorite songs. Milicent, methinks I will call thee Barbara, and thou shalt sing with me—

  'The poor soul sat sighing by a sycamore tree,—
  Sing all a green willow;
  Her hand on her bosom,'—

There, put thy hand in that fashion—

  'her head on her knee,'—

Nay, prithee, thou must bend thy head lower—

  'Sing willow, willow, willow.'"

"My lady," said the gentlewoman, smiling, "I promise you I dare not take upon me to fulfil my tasks with credit to myself or your ladyship, if Mistress Bess hath the run of this room, and doth prepare cordials after her fashion from your ladyship's stores."

"Ah, Bess!" quoth my lady, shaking her finger at the saucy one; "I'll deliver thee up to Mrs. Fawcett, who will give thee a taste of the place of correction; and Phil is not here to-day to beg thee off. And now, good Milicent, prithee make a bundle of such clothes as we have in hand, and such comforts as be suitable to such as are sick and in prison, for this sweet young lady hath need of them for some who be in that sad plight."

"And, my lady," quoth the gentlewoman, "I would fain learn how to dress wounds when the flesh is galled; for I do sometimes meet with poor men who do suffer in that way, and would relieve them if I could."

"I know," I cried, "of a rare ointment my mother used to make for that sort of hurt; and if my Lady Surrey gives me license, I will remember you, mistress, with the receipt of it."

My lady, with a kindly smile and expressed thanks, assented; and when we left the closet, I greatly commending the young gentlewoman's beauty, she said that beauty in her was the worst half of her merit.

"But, Mistress Constance," she said, when we had returned to the saloon, "I may not send her to such poor men, and above all, priests, who be in prison for their faith, as I hear, to my great sorrow, there be so many at this time, and who suffer great hardships, more than can be easily believed, for she is Protestant, and not through conforming to the times, but so settled in her way of thinking, and earnest therein, having been brought up to it, that she would not so much as open a Catholic book or listen to a word in defence of papists."

"But how, then, doth she serve a Catholic lady?" I asked, with a beating heart; and oh, with what a sad one did hear her answer, for it was as follows:

"Dear Constance, I must needs obey those who have a right to command me, such as his grace my good father and my husband; and they are both very urgent and resolved that by all means I shall conform to the times. So I do go to Protestant service; but I use at home my prayers, as my grandmother did teach me; and Phil says them too, when I can get him to say any."

"Then you do not hear mass," I said, sorrowfully, "or confess your sins to a priest?"

"No," she answered, in a sad manner; "I once asked my Lady Lumley, who is a good Catholic, if she could procure I should see a priest with that intent at Arundel House; but she turned pale as a sheet, and said that to get any one to be reconciled who had {368} once conformed to the Protestant religion, was to run danger of death; and albeit for her own part she would not refuse to die for so good a cause, she dared not bring her father's gray hairs to the block."

As we were holding this discourse—and she so intent in speaking, and I in listening, that we had not heard the door open—Lord Surrey suddenly stood before us. His height made him more than a boy, and his face would not allow him a man; for the rest, he was well-proportioned, and did all things with so notable a grace, that nature had stamped him with the mark of true nobility. He made a slight obeisance to me, and I noticed that his cheek was flushed, and that he grasped the handle of his sword with an anger which took not away the sweetness of his countenance, but gave it an amiable sort of fierceness. Then, as if unable to restrain himself, he burst forth,

"Nan, an order is come for his grace to be forthwith removed to the Tower, and I'll warrant that was the cause he was suffered to see us yesterday. God send it prove not a final parting!"

"Is his grace gone?" cried the countess, starting to her feet, and clasping her hands with a sorrowful gesture.

"He goes even now," answered the earl; and both went to the window, whence they could see the coach in which the duke was for the third time carried from his home to the last lodging he was to have on this earth. Oh, what a sorrowful sight it was for those young eyes which gazed on the sad removal of the sole parent both had left! How her tears did flow silently like a stream from a deep fount, and his with wild bursts of grief, like the gushings of a torrent over rocks! His head fell on her shoulder, and as she threw her arms round him, her tears wetted his hair. Methought then that in the pensive tenderness of her downcast face there was somewhat of motherly as well as of wifely affection. She put her arm in his, and led him from the room; and I remained alone for a short time entertaining myself with sad thoughts anent these two young noble creatures, who at so early an age had become acquainted with so much sorrow, and hoping that the darkness which did beset the morning of their lives might prove but as the clouds which at times deface the sky before a brilliant sunshine doth take possession of it, and dislodge these deceitful harbingers, which do but heighten in the end by contrast the resplendency they did threaten to obscure.

[TO BE CONTINUED. Page 482]

{369}

From Temple Bar.

FRENCH COCHIN CHINA.

Between India and the Chinese empire lies the peninsula of Indo-China, jutting out far into the Indian Ocean. The south-eastern portion of this peninsula is occupied by the empire of Anam, of which the chief maritime province is known to Europeans as Cochin China, but to the natives as Dang-trong, or the outer kingdom. It is in lower Cochin China that the French have succeeded in recently establishing a military settlement. In extent these new territorial acquisitions of our somewhat ambitious neighbors may be compared to Brittany, though in no other respect can any resemblance be detected. The country is, in fact, a strictly alluvial formation. Not only is it watered by the Dong-nai and Saigon rivers, but it also embraces the delta of the Mekong, at the mouth of which noble stream the Portuguese poet Camoens was ship-wrecked in the year 1556, swimming to the shore with his left hand, while in his right he held above the waters his manuscript copy of the Lusiad. It is almost needless to add that a level plain spreads far and wide, except quite in the north, and that fevers and dysentery prevail throughout the greater part of the year. The climate is certainly not a healthy one for Europeans. The rainy season lasts from April to December, during which the inhabitants live in a vapor-bath. The consequence is, that the French soldiers die off with such frightful rapidity that it has been urgently recommended that every regiment should be relieved after two years' service. The authorities, however, have lost no time in improving the sanitary condition of the new settlement. By means of native labor large tracts of marsh-land have been drained, and good roads made in lieu of the shallow tidal canals which previously constituted the sole channels of traffic and mutual intercourse. Formerly every villager owned a small boat, in which he moved about from place to place, taking with him his small merchandise, or conveying home to his family the proceeds of his marketing. The town of Saigon itself is estimated to contain one hundred thousand inhabitants. The houses are exceedingly mean, being constructed either of wood or of palm-leaves fastened together. Though situated seventy miles inland, Ghia-din, as it is called by the natives, is a very flourishing port, and exhibits a very active movement at all seasons of the year. It is frequented by a large number of Chinese vessels, and is now rising into importance as the head of the French possessions in the East. So far back, indeed, as the ninth century Saigon was noted for its muslin manufactures, the fineness of which was such that an entire dress could be drawn through the circumference of a signet-ring. Owing to the comparative absence of noxious insects it is regarded by Europeans as a not altogether unpleasant residence.

The population of the empire of Anam has been estimated at thirty millions; but on this point there are not sufficient data to form a very accurate opinion. But whatever may be their exact number, the inhabitants are derived from three sources. The Anamites proper—that is, the Cochin Chinese and the Tonkinese—are of a Chinese origin; while the people of Camboge are descended from Hindoo ancestors; and those in the interior—such as the Lao, Moi, and others—claim to be the sons of the soil, with Malay blood flowing in their veins. Of the early history of the Anamites few authentic details have reached us, nor {370} are these of a nature to interest the general reader. Although from an early date European missionaries appear to have labored in their self-denying task of converting these disciples of Buddhism to the purer tenets of Christianity, it was not until the latter part of the eighteenth century that their influence was sensibly appreciated. Even then they were indebted to an accident for the increased importance they have since continued to possess. Fleeing from a formidable and partially successful insurrection, the only survivor of the royal family and heir to the throne—afterward the celebrated Ghia-loung—took refuge in the house of Father Pigneau, a French missionary of unblemished life and reputation. That worthy man bravely afforded shelter not only to the fugitive, but also to his wife, his sister, and his son, and even encouraged him to make a strenuous effort to recover his rights. Foiled, however, for a time by the superior forces of the rebels, the prince and his faithful counsellor were compelled to flee for their lives to a small island in the Gulf of Siam. Yielding to the advice of the missionary, Ghia-loung now resolved to despatch an embassy to France, in the hope of obtaining sufficient assistance to place himself on the throne of his ancestors. Accordingly, in the year 1787, Father Pigneau, accompanied by the youthful son of the unfortunate prince, proceeded to Versailles, and actually prevailed upon Louis XVI. to conclude an alliance, offensive and defensive, with his royal client. The terms of this treaty are so far curious that they illustrate the practical and realistic notion of an "idea" which characterized the old French monarchy quite as much as it does the second Napoleonic empire. Convinced of the justice of the Anamite prince's claim to the crown, and moved by a desire to afford him a signal mark of his friendship, as well as of his love of justice, his most Christian majesty agreed to despatch immediately to the coasts of Cochin China a squadron consisting of four frigates, conveying a land force of 1,200 foot-soldiers, 200 artillerymen, and 250 Caffres, thoroughly equipped for service, and supported by an efficient field-battery. In return for—or rather in expectation of receiving—this succor, the king of Cochin China surrendered the absolute ownership and sovereignty of the islands of Hoi-nan and Pulo Condor, together with a half-share in the port of Touron, where the French were authorized to establish whatever works and factories they might deem requisite for their safety and commercial advantage. They were further to enjoy the exclusive privilege of trading with the Cochin Chinese, and of introducing their merchandise free of all charges and imposts. Neither was any trading vessel or ship of war to be permitted to enter any port on the Cochin China coast save only under the French flag. And in the event of his most Christian majesty becoming involved in hostilities with any other power, whether Asiatic or European, his faithful ally undertook to fit out at his own expense both naval and land forces to co-operate with the French troops anywhere in the Indian seas, but not beyond the Moluccas or the Straits of Malacca. In consideration of his services in negotiating this treaty, the ratifications of which were to be exchanged within twelve months at the latest, Father Pigneau was raised to the dignity of Bishop of Adran, and appointed ambassador extraordinary from the court of Versailles to that of Cochin China. The next step was to select a commander for the projected expedition; and on the new prelate's urgent solicitation the king consented, though with marked reluctance, to confer that distinction upon the Count de Conway, at that time governor of the French establishments in India. The selection proved an unfortunate one. Bishop Pigneau had omitted one very important element from his calculation. He had made no allowance for the disturbing influences of an improper {371} connection with a "lovely woman." He may even have been ignorant of M. de Conway's misplaced devotion to Mdme. de Vienne. Be this as it may, on his arrival at Pondicherry he refused to wait upon that all-potent lady, and offered her such slights that she became his avowed and bitter enemy. It was through her, indeed, that the expedition was never organized, and that the king of Cochin China was left to his own resources to bring about his restoration. This he at length accomplished, and in some small degree by the aid of a handful of volunteers whom the Bishop of Adran had induced to accompany him to Saigon. A sincere friendship appears to have existed between the French prelate and the Anamite prince, which terminated only with the death of the former in the last year of the eighteenth century. But though Ghia-loung was fully sensible of the advantages to be derived from maintaining a friendly intercourse with European nations, he was not blind to the inconveniences likely to arise from allowing the subjects of a foreign power to form independent settlements within his dominions. Feeling that his end was at hand, the aged monarch emphatically warned his son not to allow the French to possess a single inch of land in his territories; but at the same time advised him to cultivate amicable relations with that people. His successor obeyed the paternal counsels only in part. He took care, indeed, to prevent the French from settling permanently in his country; but he went very much further, for he actively persecuted the Christian converts, and exerted himself to the utmost to oppose the introduction of western ideas and civilization. In the year 1825 Miñ-mâng—for so was this emperor called—refused even to receive a letter and presents forwarded by Louis XVIII., and expressed his determination to keep aloof from all intercourse with European powers.

As Captain de Bougainville was provided neither with instructions how to act under such circumstances, nor "with a sufficient force to compel the acceptance of what was declined to be taken with a good grace"—we quote from M. Leon de Rosny's Tableau de Cochinchine, to which we are indebted for the matter of this article he formed the wise resolution of withdrawing from those inhospitable shores. But before he did so, he succeeded in landing Father Régéreau, a French priest who had devoted himself to the work of making Christians of the Anamites, whether they would or not. No sooner did this unwelcome news reach the ears of the monarch, than it caused an edict to appear enjoining the mandarins to exercise the utmost vigilance in preventing the ingress of the teachers of "the perverse religion of the Europeans," which is described as prejudicial to the rectitude and right-mindedness of mankind. The doctrine of the missionaries was further represented, in a petition said to have been inspired by the emperor himself, as of a nature to corrupt and seduce the common people by abusing their credulity. They employ, it was said, the fear of hell and eternal punishment to terrify the timid; while, to attract individuals of a different temperament, they promise the enjoyment of heavenly bliss as the reward of virtue. By degrees the ill-feeling entertained by the emperor toward the missionaries grew in intensity, until they became the object of his bitter aversion; and as his subordinates, according to custom, were anxious to recommend themselves to favor by their demonstrative zeal, it was not long before "the church of Cochin China was enriched by the crown of numerous martyrs." The first of these martyrs was the Abbe Gagelin, who was strangled on the 17th October, 1833; but then his offence was twofold, for he had not only preached the forbidden doctrines, but, in contravention of the king's commands, had quitted the town of Dong-nai to do so. A very naive letter from a missionary named Jacquard conveyed to the abbe the tidings of his forthcoming martyrdom. "Your sentence," {372} he wrote, "has been irrevocably pronounced. As soon as you have undergone the punishment of the cord, your head will be cut off and sent into the provinces in which you have preached Christianity. Behold you, then, a martyr! How fortunate you are!" To this pious effusion the abbe replied in a similar strain: "The news you announce of my being irrevocably condemned to death penetrates my very heart's core with joy. No; I do not hesitate to avow it, never did any news give me so much pleasure."

In the following year another missionary was tortured to death, not merely as a teacher of the new religion, but because he was found in the company of some rebels who had seized upon a fort. No other martyrdom occurred after this until 1837, in which year the Abbé Cornay was beheaded and quartered, after being imprisoned for three months; and, in 1838, M. Jacquard himself escaped by strangulation from the insults and outrages to which he had been for some time subjected. Nor was it the missionaries alone who shared the fate and emulated the calm heroism of the early apostles. The native neophytes were not a whit less zealous to suffer in their Master's cause, and to bear witness to the truth, in death as in life. The common people eagerly flocked to behold their execution, not indeed to taunt and revile the patient victims, but to secure some relic, however trifling or otherwise disgusting, and to dip their garments in the still-flowing blood. Pagans and Christians alike yielded to this superstition or veneration, while the soldiers on duty drove a lucrative trade in selling to the scrambling crowd fragments of the dress and person of the yet-quivering martyr. Even the executioners are reported to have affirmed that at the moment the head was severed from the body a certain perfume exhaled from the gushing blood, as if anticipating glorification in heaven. M. de Rosny, however, frankly admits that Miñ-mâng was chiefly moved by political considerations to persecute the followers of the new religion, whom he believed to be in league with his worst enemies, especially after the capture of a missionary in one of the rebel forts. His policy, whatever may have been its real springs, was adopted by his son Thieou-tri, one of whose first public acts was to command the governors of provinces to track out the Christians to their most secret asylums. These orders were only too faithfully obeyed. The French missionaries were ferreted out of their lurking-places, thrown into prison, and otherwise ill-treated, throughout this reign, which did not terminate before the end of 1847.

The new monarch, commonly known as Tu-Duk, walked in the footsteps of his father. An edict was issued almost immediately after his accession to the throne, commanding that every European missionary found in Anam should be thrown into the sea with a rope round his neck. And when the mandarins hesitated to execute such sanguinary orders, a second edict appeared enjoining that whosoever concealed in his house a propagator of the Christian faith should be cut in two and thrown into the river. The fiendish work then began in earnest. The sword of the executioner was again called into request, and several most estimable men suffered death on the scaffold. At last even a bishop, Monseigneur Diaz, experienced the fate of his humbler brethren, on the 20th July, 1857; and as this prelate happened to be a Spaniard, his death was avenged by an allied Franco-Spanish expedition, which resulted in the conquest of Lower Cochin China, and the cession of the provinces of Saigon, Bien-hoa, and Myt-ho to the French. Let us now see what manner of men were these Anamites whom the French, failing to convert, were compelled, by their sense of spiritual duty, to conquer and subjugate. M. de Rosny shall continue to be our guide.

The people of Anam Proper are evidently of Mongol extraction. Their complexion is of a dark sallow hue, varying from a dirty white to a yellowish {373} olive color. In stature they are short, but thickset, and remarkably active. Their features are by no means beautiful according to the European idea of beauty. They have short square noses, prominent cheek-bones, thin lips, an small black eyes—the eyeball being rather yellow than white. Their teeth, which are naturally of a pure white, are stained almost black and otherwise disfigured by the excessive use of betel-nut. Their countenances are chiefly marked by the breadth and height of the cheek-bones, and are nearly of the shape of a lozenge. The women are better-looking, and decidedly more graceful, than the men, even in the lower classes, but both sexes are particularly cheerful and vivacious. The upper classes, however, affect the solemn air and grave deportment of the Chinese, and are consequently much less agreeable to strangers than are the less-dignified orders. Corpulence is considered a great beauty—a fat face and a protuberant stomach constituting the ideal of an Adonis. Both men and women wear their hair long, but gathered up at the back of the head in a knot. It is never cut save in early youth, when it is all shaved off with the exception of a small tuft on the top of the crown. A close-cropped head of hair, indeed, is looked upon as a badge of infamy, and is one of the distinguishing marks of a convicted criminal. The beard is allowed to grow naturally, but consists of little more than a few scattered hairs at the end of the chin; the upper lip being as scantily furnished. The nails should be very long, thin, and sharp-pointed, and by the women are usually stained of a red color.

The Anamites dress themselves in silk or cotton according to their means; but whatever the material, the form of their garb is always the same. In addition to wide trousers fastened round the waist by a silken girdle, they wear a robe descending to the knees, and occasionally a shorter one over that; both equally opening on the right side, but closed by five or six buttons. The men's sleeves are very wide, and so long that they descend considerably lower than the ends of the fingers. The women, however, who in other respects dress precisely as do the men, have their sleeves somewhat shorter, in order to display their metal or pearl bracelets. The under-garment is generally made of country cotton, but the upper one, as worn by the higher classes, is invariably of silk or flowered muslin, of Chinese manufacture. Cotton trousers are often dyed brown, but even the laboring population make use of silk as much as possible. For mourning garments cotton alone is employed, white being the funereal color.

Out of doors men and women alike wear varnished straw hats, upward of two feet in diameter, fastened under the chin, and very useful as a protection against sun and rain, though somewhat grotesque in appearance. Within doors the women go bareheaded, not unfrequently allowing their fine black tresses to hang loose down their backs almost to the ground. Ear-rings, bracelets, and rings on their fingers are favorite objects of female vanity; but a modest demeanor is a thing unknown; a bold, dashing manner being most admired by the men. They are certainly not good-looking; but their natural gaiety and liveliness amply compensate for the absence of personal charms.

Old men and persons of distinction alone wear sandals, the people generally preferring to go barefooted. A pair of silken purses, or bags, to carry betel, money, and tobacco, may be seen in the hand, or hanging over the shoulder, of every man and woman not actually employed in hard labor. They are, for the most part, of blue satin, and sometimes richly embroidered. Like their neighbors the Chinese, the Anamites are scrupulous observers of the distinctive insignia of rank, but pay no regard to personal cleanliness. Notwithstanding their frequent ablutions, their clothes, their hair, their fingers and nails, are disgustingly filthy. Even wealthy persons wear dirty cotton dresses within doors, over which {374} they throw their smart silken robes when they go out.

Taste is proverbially a matter beyond dispute; but it would be very hard for any European to agree with an Anamite as to what constituted a delicacy and what an abomination. A Cochin Chinese epicure delights, for instance, in rotten eggs, and is especially fond of them after they have been under a hen for ten or twelve days. From stale fish, again, he extracts his choicest sauce, and feasts greedily upon meat in a state of putrefaction. Vermin of all sorts is highly appreciated. Crocodile's flesh is also greatly prized; though boiled rice and a little fish fresh,—smoked, or salted—are the ordinary food of the poor. Among delicacies may be mentioned silk-worms fried in fat, ants and ants' eggs, bees, insects, swallows'-nests, and a large white worm found in decayed wood; but no dainty is more dearly relished than a still-born calf served up whole in its skin and almost raw. In the way of pastry the women greatly affect beignets made of herbs, sugar, and clay. Among the rich the dishes are placed on low tables a foot or two in height, round which the diners seat themselves on the ground in the attitude of tailors. Forks and spoons are equally unknown, but chop-sticks are used after the Chinese fashion. The dinner usually begins, instead of ending, with fruit and pastry. During the meal nothing liquid is taken, but before sitting down it is customary to take a gulp or two of strong spirits distilled from fermented rice, and after dinner several small cups of tea are drunk by those who can afford to do so. Cold or unadulterated water is thought unwholesome, and is therefore never taken by itself. Betel-nut mixed with quicklime is constantly chewed by both men and women, and of late years the use of opium has partially crept in.

The houses of the Anamites are only one story high, and very low in the roof. They are, in fact, mere halls, the roof of which is usually supported on bamboo pillars, on which are pasted strips of many-colored paper inscribed with Chinese proverbs. The roof slopes rather sharply, and consists of reed or straw. Neither windows nor chimneys are seen. The smoke escapes and the light enters by the door. The walls are made of palm leaves, though rich people often employ wood for that purpose. In either case they are filthily dirty and swarm with insects. At the further end of the house is a raised platform, which serves as a bed for the entire family. The floor is of earth, not unfrequently traversed by channels hollowed out by the rain which descends through the roof. In every household one member remains awake all night, to give the alarm in case of thieves attempting to come in.

It is usual for the men to marry as soon as they have the means to purchase a wife. The price of such an article varies, according to circumstances, from two to ten shillings, though rich people will give as much as twice or three times that sum for anything out of the common run. Polygamy is permitted by the laws; but practically it is a luxury confined to the wealthy, and even with them the first wife reigns supreme over the household. The privilege of divorce is reserved exclusively for the husbands, who can put away a disagreeable partner by breaking in twain a copper coin or a piece of wood, in the presence of a witness. Parents cannot dispose of their daughters in marriage without their free consent. Previous to marriage the Cochin Chinese are perfectly unrestrained; but as chastity is nothing thought of, this is not a matter of much moment. Infanticide is punished as a crime, but not so abortion. Adultery is a capital offense. The guilty woman is trampled to death under the feet of an elephant, while her lover is strangled or beheaded; but these sentences are frequently commuted into exile. Wives are not locked up as in Mohammedan countries, but with that exception they are quite as badly treated, being altogether at the mercy of their husbands. They are, in truth, little better than slaves or {375} beasts of burden. It is they who build the houses, who cultivate the ground, who manufacture the clothes, who prepare the food, who, in short, do everything. They have nine lives, say their ungrateful husbands, and can afford to lose one without being the worse for it. They are described as being less timid than the men, more intelligent, more gay, and quite ready to adapt themselves to the manners and customs of their French rulers. The men, though by no means destitute of strength and courage, are lazy, indolent, and averse to bodily exercise, and chiefly at home in the petty intrigues of an almost retail commerce.

Great importance is attached to the funeral ceremonies. The dead are interred—not burnt, according to the custom of neighboring nations— and much taste is displayed in their burial-places. There is no more acceptable present than a coffin, and thus it usually happens that one is provided years before it can be turned to a proper account. The deceased is clothed in his choicest apparel, and in his coffin is placed an abundant supply of whatever he is likely to want in the new life upon which he has entered through the portals of death. The obsequies are generally deferred for six months, or for even a whole year, in order to give more time for the necessary preparations. On such occasions friends and relatives flock from afar to the "funeral baked meats;" for a handsome banquet forms an essential part of the otherwise melancholy details. From twenty to thirty bearers convey the corpse to its last abode, amid the deafening discord of drums, cymbals, and tom-toms. The procession moves with slow and measured step, and on the coffin is placed a shell filled with water, which enables the master of the ceremonies to ascertain that the coffin is borne with becoming steadiness. Mourning is worn for twenty-seven months for a father, mother, or husband; but only twelve months for a wife. During this period it is forbidden to be present at any spectacle, to attend any meeting, or to marry. At various intervals after the interment, offerings of eatables are presented to the dead, but which are scrupulously consumed by the offerers themselves. Respect, bordering on reverence, is shown to old age; but then old people are a rarity, few individuals attaining to half a century. Sickness of all kinds is rife, including "the whole cohort of fevers." The want of cleanliness is undoubtedly at the bottom of most of the complaints from which the natives suffer. The system of medicine most in vogue is borrowed from the Chinese. Every well-to-do family maintains its own physician, who physics all its members to their heart's content. Doctors, however, agree no more in Cochin China than in any other region of the globe. There are two schools of medicine—the one employing nothing but stimulants, the other adhering solely to refrigerants, and both citing in favor of their respective systems the most astounding and well-nigh miraculous cures.

The rules of politeness and etiquette are distinctly drawn and rigidly observed. An inferior meeting a superior prostrates himself at full length upon the ground, and repeats the act again and again according to the amount of deference he wishes to exhibit. To address one by the title of great-grand-father is to show the highest possible respect, while grandfather, father, uncle, and elder brother mark the downward gradations from that supreme point. There is, in truth, somewhat too much of veneering visible in all that pertains to the private life and character of the Anamites. Their moral code, based on the precepts of Confucius, is irreproachable, but they seldom pause to regulate their conduct after its wholesome doctrines. Pleasure, indeed, is more thought of than morality, and gambling is a raging passion with all classes. Cock-fighting, and even the combats of red-fishes, fill them with especial delight; and when thoroughly excited they will stake on any chance their wives and children, and even {376} themselves. Music, dancing, and theatrical exhibitions are likewise much to their taste, though the dancers are invariably women hired for the purpose.

The laws and police regulations are for the most part wise and sensible, but are more frequently neglected than observed. Here, as in other Asiatic countries, a gift in the hand perverteth the wisdom of the wise, and thus only the poor and the stingy need suffer for their sins. For most offences the bastinado is inflicted, but for heinous crimes capital punishments are enforced. There is a sufficient variety in the modes of execution. Sometimes the criminal is sentenced to be strangled; at other time's he is decapitated, or trampled to death by an elephant, or even hacked to pieces if his crime has been in any way extraordinary. For minor delinquencies recourse is had to transportation in irons to a distant province, or to hard labor, such as cutting grass for the emperor's elephants.

Society is divided into two classes—the people and the mandarins. Nobility is hereditary, but the son of a mandarin of the first order ranks only with the second until he has done something to merit promotion to his father's rank. In like manner the son of a second-class mandarin belongs to the third rank, and so on to the lowest grade; and there are nine of these—the highest two sitting in the imperial council. But the most exalted honors are open to the most humble. No man is so low born as to despair of becoming one of the pillars of the empire. The competition system prevails here in its full vigor. Everything depends upon the passing certain examinations; but for all that the mandarins are described as oppressors of the poor, evil advisers of the sovereign, addicted to fraud, given up to their appetites, wasting their time in sensual and frivolous pursuits, corrupt and venal in the administration of justice.

The patrimony is distributed equally among all the sons, whether legitimate or otherwise, except that the eldest receives one-tenth of the entire property in addition to his own share; in return for which he is expected to guard the interests of the family, and above all to look after his sisters, who cannot marry without his consent. The daughters have no part in the inheritance save in the absence of male heirs, but in that case they are treated as if they were sons. Through extreme poverty children are often sold as slaves by their parents. An insolvent debtor likewise becomes the bondsman of his creditor; and as the legal rate of interest is thirty per cent., a debt rapidly accumulates.

An Anamite hour is twice the length of a European one, and the night is divided into five watches. A year consists of twelve lunar months; so that every two or three years it becomes necessary to add another month: in nineteen years there are seventeen of these intercalated months. The lapse of time is marked by periods of twelve years, five of which constitute a "grand cycle;" but in historical narratives the dates are calculated from the accession of the reigning monarch. The year begins with the month of February. The decimal system of enumeration is the one adopted by the Cochin Chinese.

The religion of the people is a superstitious Buddhism; that of the lettered classes a dormant belief in the moral teachings of Confucius. Whatever temples there are, are of a mean order, and are served by an ignorant and ill-paid priesthood. The malignant spirits are propitiated by offerings of burnt paper inscribed with prayers, of bundles of sweet-scented wood, and of other articles of trifling value; the good spirits are mostly neglected. Sincere veneration, however, is shown to the manes of deceased ancestors. The priests take a vow of celibacy, to which they occasionally adhere. They abstain entirely from animal food, and affect a yellow or red hue in their apparel. After death their bodies are burned, and not buried as is the case with the laity.

{377}

The inhabitants of Cochin China are naturally industrious, and possess considerable skill as carpenters and upholsterers. They also work in iron with some success, and display no mean taste in their pottery. Their cotton and silk manufactures are, however, coarse and greatly inferior to the Chinese. Their lackered boxes are famous throughout the world, nor are their filigree ornaments unworthy of admiration. But though skilful and intelligent as artisans, and abundantly endowed with the faculty of imitation, they are wretchedly deficient in imagination, and have no idea of invention. This defect is perhaps of less consequence now that they have the benefit of receiving their impulses from the most inventive nation in the world. Without doubt, their material prosperity will be largely augmented by the French domination, nor have they anything to lose in moral and social respects. The conquest of Cochin China may therefore be regarded as an advantage to the people themselves; but how far it is likely to yield any profit to the French is altogether another question, and one which at present we are not called upon to discuss. Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.

From The Dublin Review.

CONSALVI'S MEMOIRS.

Memoires du Cardinal Consalvi, Secrétaire d'État du Pape Pie VII., avec une Introduction et des Notes. Par J. CRÉTINEAU-JOLY. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris: Plon. 1864.

M. Crétineau-Joly is a Vendéan, and there seems to be in his blood something of that pugnacious and warlike quality which so distinguished his forefathers. Each of his former publications betrays this combative propensity, and the introduction which accompanies Cardinal Consalvi's Memoirs is worthy of its predecessors. M. Crétineau-Joly is well known on the continent by his "History of the Jesuits"—a work containing a considerable amount of valuable information concerning that celebrated and much maligned order; but, at the same time, it may be considered in the light of an Armstrong gun, which batters and reduces to dust the bastions of an enemy. Indeed, it was ushered forth at the very height of the warfare which raged against the Church in France, a few years previous to the downfall of Louis Philippe. In 1858 the same writer produced a brochure bearing the following title, "The Church versus the Revolution," another broadside fired against crowned revolutionists, no less than against the sectarian hordes of a Mazzini and a Garibaldi. Hardly a year had elapsed when the French emperor invaded Lombardy, with what result the whole world is aware. So M. Crétineau-Joly had taken time by the forelock. And now, again, he comes forth with these highly interesting and authentic memoirs, written by the cardinal and prime minister of Pius VII. In every respect they may be proclaimed the most important, if not the most voluminous, of the editor's publications. No one, at the same time, will fail to perceive that between the actual situation of the Holy See and that which marked its history in the eventful years between 1799 and 1811, there underlies a startling similarity. Singularly enough, the second half of the nineteenth {378} century begins with the same picture of violence, the same hypocrisy, the same contempt of right by might, that characterized the dawn of the present age. On the one side, an all-powerful ruler, intoxicated by success, backed by a host of servile demagogues, and hardly less servile, though royal infidels; on the other, a weak old man, backed by a calm, deliberate, truly Christian genius—both wielding no other weapons but faith, hope, and charity—both torn from their home and judgment-seat by the iron hand of revolutionary despotism—and yet both riding triumphant over the seething waves, whilst the grim corpses of their enemies are washed to the shore, or startle the traveller as he comes suddenly upon them in his wanderings through Russian wilds. Ay, there she goes, that tiny ship of Peter's, with a Pius at her helm; now, as in bygone days, with an Antonelli as a commander—much about the same man as a Consalvi.

  "Blow fair, thou breeze! She anchors ere the dark.
  Already doubled is the cape—our bay
  Receives that prow which proudly spurns the spray.
  How gloriously her gallant course she goes!
  Her white wings flying—never from her foes—
  She walks the waters like a thing of life,
  And seems to dare the elements to strife."

Setting aside metaphors and poetry, these memoirs are certainly one of the most remarkable instances of calm self-possession and confidence in a just cause that are to be met with in any time or country. Here is a man, and prime minister of a captive sovereign, himself a prisoner, who undertakes to write the history of the important events in which he had played a most conspicuous part. He is closely watched, and consequently obliged to write by fits and starts; he is deprived of every source of documentary information, and consequently must trust to his own memory. Will these hasty yet truthful sheets escape his jailer's eye? He cannot tell. Will he ever recover his liberty, be restored to his dear master's bosom and confidence? He cannot tell: but nevertheless the great cardinal—for great he was universally acknowledged—goes on bringing forth certain facts, known to himself alone, and which throw more light on the true character of the first Napoleon than the ponderous and garbled evidence of a Thiers, or even the more trustworthy pages of M. Artaud, in his "Life of Pius VII." Indeed, there are few comparisons of higher interest than to open those two works at the parts which refer to the events narrated in these memoirs. A labor of this kind, first originating in a spirit of fair play, soon becomes a labor of love, so strong is the contrast between the worldly, scheming, truckling, infidel historian of the first empire, and the unassuming and conscientious, though bold and resolute cardinal. One may safely say, that M. Thiers would have never dreamt of bearding the headstrong Bonaparte, as Consalvi did on a memorable occasion, which reminds us of those legates of old, who daunted by their steady looks and unruffled patience the burly violence of a Richard, or unveiled the cunning of a Frederic Hohenstaufen.

At the very outset of these memoirs, the cardinal gives us their true and solemn character. His last will, which accompanies them, and may be considered as a sort of preface, contains the following lines:

"My heir and trustee, as well as those who may hereafter take charge of my inheritance, are bound to bestow the greatest care on my personal writings relative to the conclave held at Venice in 1799 and 1800; to the concordat of 1801; to the marriage of the Emperor Napoleon with the Archduchess Maria Louisa of Austria; and, lastly, to the papers on different periods of my life and ministry. These five papers, some of which are nearly finished, and the others in course of preparation, are not to be published before the death of those eminent personages who are mentioned therein. In this way many disputes may be avoided, for, though utterly unfounded, as my own writings rest on truth alone, still {379} they might injure that very truth, and the interests of the Holy See, to which I am desirous of leaving the means of repelling any false attack published hereafter on these matters. These memoirs on the conclave, the concordat of 1801, the marriage, and the ministry, belonging more especially to the Holy Sec, and to the pontifical government, my heir and trustee shall present them to the reigning pontiff, and beseech the Holy Father to preserve them carefully within the archives of the Vatican. They may be of use to the Holy See on many occasions, but more particularly if any future history be published of the events which form the object of the present writings, or if it should become necessary to refute any false statement. In regard to the memoirs concerning the different periods of my own life, as the extinction of my family will leave behind me no one directly interested in the following pages, they are to remain in the hands of my heir and trustee, or in those of the successive administrators of my fortune; or, again, they may be likewise handed over to the archives of the Vatican, if they be deemed worthy of preservation. My only desire is, that in case of the biography of the cardinals being continued, my heir and executors shall cause these memoirs to be known, so that nothing may be published contrary to truth about myself; for I am ambitious of maintaining immaculate my own reputation—a wish grounded on the prescriptions of Scripture. As for the truth of the facts brought forward in my writings, I may make bold to say, Deus scit quia non mentior."

Cardinal Consalvi was born at Rome, of a noble family, in 1757, and was the eldest of five children, two of whom died at an early age. His father bore the title of marquess, and his mother, the Marchioness Claudia Carandini, was of Modenese origin.

The family itself, on the father's side, had sprung up in Tuscany at Pisa, though not under the same name; but emigrated about a century and a half ago to the Roman States, where it expanded, and gradually grew into political, or rather ecclesiastical importance. Consalvi's forefathers still, however, held in Tuscany some property, to which he would have been entitled had he felt disposed to dispute the equity of certain Leopoldine laws concerning trustees. But, with characteristic disinterestedness the future cardinal never gave the matter a second thought.

"I never felt (says he) a passion for riches; beside, my resources, though far from opulent, were sufficient for a modest way of living, thanks to the income arising out of the different offices which I held successively. And thus being lifted, by Divine Providence, above vanity and ambition, I never was tempted to prove that I was descended from the Brunaccis and not from the Consalvis, whenever envy or ignorance represented me as belonging to a stock unblessed with old nobility. It would have been an easy matter to dispel these imputations or errors. Being fully convinced that the best nobility springs from the heart and from good deeds; knowing, likewise, that I was a genuine Brunacci and not a Consalvi, I despised all such rumors. … Nor did I alter my views when the high position which I afterward attained afforded so many opportunities for putting an end to those idle reports."

In the above passage we have already the whole man. During his long and chequered life he never once exposed himself to the charge of making his own fortune out of the numerous and even honorable occasions which would have tempted a less exalted soul. It would be useless to follow the young Consalvi through his course of studies, which were brilliant, and partly gone through under the eye of Cardinal York, the last of a fated race, who entertained for the future minister an affectionate friendship that never cooled until his death.

Hercules Consalvi had hardly finished his academical curriculum at {380} Rome when he was called to the prelature, in 1783, as reporter to the tribunal of the Curia. His talents and deep knowledge, though so young, in canon and civil law, soon made him conspicuous among his competitors. In 1786, the Pope Pius VI. appointed him Ponente del buono govemo, a board, or congregation, charged with giving its opinion on all municipal questions. This promotion was due to his merit, but the cardinal himself confesses that it was a tardy one, not on account of any neglect on the part of the pontifical government, but merely because he did not avail himself of favorable opportunities. "On the one hand," observes he, "my own disposition never inclined to ask for favor, and still less to court the patronage of those placed in high positions; whilst, on the other hand, I had before my eyes, in such respects, the fine example of my own guardian, the Cardinal Negroni. … He was wont to say, 'We never ought to ask for anything; we must never flatter to obtain preferment; but manage in such a way as to overcome every obstacle, through a most punctual fulfilment of our duties, and the enjoyment of a sound reputation.' To this piece of advice I strictly adhered through life." To those who are so prone to malign the pomp and splendor of the Roman prelature, it will be a matter of surprise to learn that at this very time the only benefice conferred upon Consalvi amounted to the paltry stipend of £12 a year.

The Pope, however, who seems to have been an excellent judge of true merit, soon placed the young prelate at the head of the hospital of San Michele, the largest and most important in Rome. The establishment required a thorough reform; and Consalvi soon worked wonders, being led on by his own innate ardor, and by a strong predilection for the management of charitable institutions. But he had hardly realized his intended labor of reformation, when he was superseded by another prelate. Pius VI., in fact, did not wish Consalvi to wear out his energies in the routine of administrative bureaucracy. The incident which led to his promotion is so truly characteristic of both personages, that we cannot refrain from a copious quotation:

"The sudden death of one of the votanti di segnatura, or Supreme Court of Cassation, made a vacancy in that court. All my friends engaged me not to lose a moment in applying for it. I did not yield to their entreaties, nor, indeed, did the Pope allow me time for that purpose. The above death had taken place on Maunday Thursday. The very next morning, though it was Good Friday, and the sacred services of the day were about to be solemnized; though all the public offices were closed, according to custom, the Pope sent to the Secretary of State an order to forward my immediate appointment as votanti di segnatura. As soon as it arrived, I hastened to the Pope to thank him. His Holiness was not in the habit of receiving any one merely for the sake of hearing expressions of gratitude; still less did I expect to be introduced on such a day, when the Pope, after attending at the holy function, had retired to his apartments, with a view of coming back for Tenebra, and was in the very act of reciting Complin, which was to be followed by his dinner.

"On learning that I was in the antechamber, where he had previously given orders that I should not be sent away in case I should come, he admitted me at once. After finishing Complin in my presence, he addressed me so kindly that I shall remember his words as long as I live. 'My dear Monsignor,' said he, 'you are well aware that we receive no one merely to hear thanksgivings; and yet we have gone against our usual custom, notwithstanding this busy day, and though our dinner has just been served up, in order that we may have the pleasure of making you the present communication. If you were not included in the last promotion, it was {381} because we were obliged to hand over to another the post really destined to yourself; and in doing so we felt as much aggrieved as we are now delighted to offer you immediately the vacant charge of votanti di segnatura. We do it to show you the satisfaction which you afford us by your conduct, We took you away from an administrative station merely to place you on higher ground.'

"The Holy Father then added a few words concerning the opinion which his kindness, and by no means my own merit, suggested to him relatively to my future career. Indeed, the knowledge which I have of myself would not allow me to transcribe those words. He then continued as follows: 'What we now bestow upon you is really not worth much, but I have nothing else for the present. Take it, however, as a positive pledge of what I am disposed to do as soon as an opportunity offers.'

"It is easy to understand that after such a speech, uttered in that easy, affable, and yet majestic manner so peculiar to Pius VI., I was at a loss for expressions to answer him. I could hardly stammer out, that after the language he had just used about my promotion—language showing that I had not incurred his disapproval by my conduct at San Michele—my mind was quite at ease as to the future. Indeed, I had no other ambition but to please him, and to fulfil my duty in any station he might think fit to confer upon me.

"Here I was interrupted. 'I am satisfied—nay, highly satisfied'—said the Pope, 'by your behavior at San Michele; but I again say that I destine you to other purposes. What I promised formerly was sincere, but still it was but empty words. This is something matter of fact; not much, indeed, but yet better than words. So don't refuse it; and now be off, for, you see, our dinner is getting cold, and we must soon go back to chapel.'"

It would be doubtless congenial to our feelings to dwell upon these touching details; but we are already in the year 1790, and the knell of the old French monarchy is tolling. Let us plunge, therefore, at once in medias res, and skip over the eight intervening years between the time which saw Rome invaded by a revolutionary army, the Pope torn from his throne, and led a prisoner, first to Florence, then to Valence, where he was to die a martyr. On reading this part of the memoirs, one is particularly struck with the similarity which it presents with the history of Piedmontese invasion—the same hypocrisy, the same attempts at provoking to insurrection the inhabitants at Rome, and, these failing, the same recourse to violence. The accidental death of General Duphot at last appears in its true colors, but of course it supplied the Directory with a pretence for seizing the Papal States, an act of spoliation it had been long preparing. [Footnote 77] Thanks to the energy of Consalvi, to whom had been entrusted the maintenance of public order, previous to the entry of the French troops into the capital, no insurrection took place; but for that very reason he was obnoxious to the government of the invaders. After the Pope's departure he was thrown into prison, with the prospect of being transported, together with many Roman ecclesiastical and pontifical officers, to the fatal colony of Cayenne. {382} To the honor of the French commander it must be said, that he did all in his power to defend the energetic prelate against his contemptible enemies, and to alleviate his captivity. The Paris Directory had first banished him to Civita Vecchia, and then altered his destination to Naples. But the Roman demagogues were determined upon wreaking their vengeance on Consalvi:

[Footnote 77: As a proof of this, we may produce the secret instructions forwarded, two months and a half before the general's death and the Roman insurrection, by the French government to Joseph Bonaparte, their plenipotentiary at Rome: "You have two things to bear in mind: (1) To prevent the King of Naples from coming to Rome; (2) To help, instead of opposing, the favorable dispositions of those who believe that it is time for the Papal dominion to come to an end. In short, you must encourage the impulse toward freedom by which the people of Rome seems to be animated." Instructions like these (observes, very justly, M. Crétineau-Joly) could have no other object but to lay a diplomatical snare, or to provoke an insurrection. The fact is so clear that Cacault, who succeeded to Joseph Bonaparte at Rome, wrote in 1801 to the First Consul—"You know, quite as well as I do, the details of this melancholy event. Nobody in Rome ordered either to fire or to kill any one. General Duphot was imprudent; nay, more—let us out with the word—he was guilty. There is a law of nations at Rome not a whit less than elsewhere." The admission does credit to the honest man who contributed so largely to bring about the concordat of 1801.]

"I had been detained (says he) about four or five and twenty days, when I was visited in my prison by my dear brother Andrea, as well as by my two friends, the Princes Chigi and Teano. This piece of good fortune I owed to the kind commander of the fortress. They informed me that they were bearers of both good and bad news. I was at last to be transported, not, indeed, to Tuscany, but to Naples, so that I might not join the Pope. At the same time, it had been ordained that I was to ride through the streets of the city mounted on an ass, escorted by policemen, and lashed all along with a horsewhip. Many a window under which I was to pass by was already hired; and our Jacobins, as well as the wives of our consuls, promised themselves much pleasure at the sight of this execution. My friends were quite amazed at my indifference on receiving this last piece of news, which, indeed, caused me but little pain; for I really considered it rather as a source of triumph and glory. On the contrary, I was deeply vexed at not being able to proceed to Tuscany, where I was so desirous of meeting the Pope."

The humanity of the French general prevented the Roman demagogues from carrying into execution the latter part of the sentence; but he remained inflexible as to Consalvi's removal to Naples. The latter had, therefore, but to obey; and started for his destination, in company with a band of eighteen convicts, and several political prisoners like himself. After many difficulties, arising out of Acton's tortuous policy, he succeeded at length in reaching Leghorn, where he had to encounter obstacles of a different nature. His very first step was to proceed to Florence, in hopes that the Duke of Tuscany would facilitate his access to the captive Pontiff, who was detained in a neighboring Carthusian monastery. But the jealous watchfulness of the French plenipotentiary struck terror into the heart of the Tuscan minister, who peremptorily refused to have anything to do with the matter. Consalvi was not, however, to be daunted when on the path of duty; he consequently set out on foot for the Chartreuse, situated at about three miles from Florence, and contrived his visit so secretly that he baffled detection. On approaching the foot of the hill, the faithful servant could hardly repress his emotions. But let us hear him in his own words:

"Every step which brought me nearer to the Holy Father increased the strong feelings that welled up from my soul. The poverty and solitude of the place, the sight of the two or three unfortunates who attended him, brought tears to my eyes. At last I was introduced into his presence. O God! what were my emotions at that moment; my heart throbbed almost to breaking!

"Pius VI. was seated before a table, a posture which concealed his weakness, for he had almost lost the use of his legs, and he could not move without the help of two strong men. The beauty and majesty of his features were still the same as at Rome; he still inspired a deep veneration and a most ardent attachment. I fell prostrate at his feet, which I bathed with my tears; I told him the difficulties I had to encounter, and how ardently I desired to remain with him, in order to serve him, assist him—in fact, share his fate. I promised not to spare any effort for the furtherance of this object."

A full hour quickly fled in thus communing with each other, and Consalvi was obliged to take his leave. The aged Pope foresaw that this prop of {383} his declining and martyred life would not be allowed him; but still he clung fondly to the idea, and when his faithful adherent, on a second and last visit, admitted that he had failed in every endeavor to gain his end, and had even been ordered out of the country, Pius evinced a strong feeling of regret, though no surprise. This farewell visit is related in terms no less touching than the former:

"During this audience, which lasted also a full hour, he bestowed upon me the greatest marks of kindness, exhorting me successively to practise resignation, wisdom, and those acts of firmness of which his own life and his whole demeanor set such a fine example. He appeared to me quite as great, and even far greater, than when he reigned at Rome. I besought him to give me his blessing. He laid his hands on my head, and, like the most venerable among the patriarchs of old, raising his eyes toward heaven, he prayed unto the Lord, and blessed me, with an attitude so resigned, so august, so holy, so full of real tenderness, that to the last day of my life the remembrance will remain graven on my heart in indelible characters.

"When I retired, my eyes were swimming with tears; I was beside myself with grief; and yet I felt both encouraged and re-assured by the inexpressible calmness of my sovereign, and the sweet serenity of his features. It was indeed the greatness of a good man struggling against misfortune."

Four-and-twenty hours afterward, Consalvi was obliged to leave Florence for Venice; the Pope was hurried through Alpine snows to Valence, in Dauphine, where he died of his sufferings on the 29th of August, 1799.

And what a time for the election of a new pope! Italy overrun by the French revolutionary armies, Rome in their possession, and ruled by a horde of incendiary demagogues; the Russians, headed by Suwarow, pouring into the Peninsula to oppose the French; whilst Austria, governed by a Thugut, was watching her opportunity to get hold of the new Pope—if there should be a Pope—and make him the pliant tool of her ambition. Nor let us forget that Bonaparte was on his way back from Egypt, preparing to swoop down, eagle-like, on those very Austrian possessions wherein the conclave was to meet. And yet the conclave did meet at Venice, on an island of that famous republic, which had so often defied the bans and interdicts of the Roman pontiffs;—the cardinals hurried from their neighboring cities or secret abodes, though with views and intentions not perhaps exactly in accordance with the solemnity and urgency of the occasion. It is, indeed, a curious picture of human passions, though blended with higher motives and purposes,—that truthful memoir drawn up by Consalvi on the conclave of 1800, wherein he was unanimously elected secretary to the assembly. The election lasted more than three long months, on account of the two contending factions, headed by Cardinal Herzan, on the part of Austria, and by the celebrated Maury, then Bishop of Montefiascone in the Papal States. Consalvi, notwithstanding his wonted moderation, boldly proclaims these divisions to have been scandalous in such circumstances, and animadverts severely on the intrigues of the imperial court. And yet he cannot help observing that, on such occasions, the Sacred College seem led on, little by little, as it were, by some higher power, to sacrifice their own private views and interests to the common weal of Christendom. So it was, indeed, in the present juncture, thanks to the extraordinary ability, to the self-renouncement, prudence, and true Catholic spirit displayed throughout by the youthful secretary. The votes were gradually won over to Cardinal Chiaramonti, so well known afterward by the name of Pius VII. Consalvi had truly displayed a master-mind; and the new pontiff immediately showed how highly he appreciated his merit, by appointing him Secretary of State. We can easily believe the surprise and {384} alarm of the new minister; for doubtless his was no easy task. The Austrians possessed nearly all the Papal States, whilst the King of Naples held Rome itself. The court of Vienna, intent upon keeping at least the three legations, which had recently been wrested from the French, offered at the same time to restore to the Pope the remaining parts of his dominions. To such a proposal the latter could but oppose a flat denial, accompanied by a firm resolution to return to Rome without delay. The imperial negotiator, Ghislieri, then reduced his demands to the two legations of Bologna and Ferrara; but he met with no better success. The spoliation of the Holy See, as the reader may now perceive, is after all an old story. The Pope, indeed, went so far as to write to the emperor a letter, in which he formally demanded the restitution of all his provinces. No notice whatsoever was taken of the Papal missive. At last, utterly worn out by Austrian duplicity, Pius one day addressed Ghislieri in the following terms: "Since the emperor refuses obstinately a restitution, which both religion and equity require, I really do not see what new argument I can produce to convince him. Let his majesty take care, however, not to lay by in his wardrobe any clothes belonging, not to himself, but to the Church. For not only will his majesty be unable to wear them, but most probably they will pester with the grub his own hereditary dominions, which may be worm-eaten in a short time."

The Marquess Ghislieri hurried out of the Papal presence in a rage, which found vent when he met Consalvi. "The new Pope," he exclaimed, "has hardly donned his own clothes; he is not yet accustomed to his own craft, and he talks of the Austrian wardrobe being worm-eaten! He knows but little of our power; it would require thousands of moths to nibble it to dust." Two months after, the battle of Marengo had been fought and won: the legations, Lombardy, Venetia, the hereditary German states, the capital itself, had fallen a prey to the Corsican conqueror! Pius VII. had scarcely set his foot on the shore of his own dominions when the news of the famous defeat arrived: "Ah!" exclaimed Ghislieri, a religious man, after all, "I now see fulfilled the Pope's prediction: our wardrobe has truly been worm-eaten to tatters."

Pius VII. had but just returned to Rome, in the midst of a delighted and grateful population, when he received the astounding news that the conqueror of the Austrians was desirous of negotiating with the Holy See for the restoration of religion in France. Whilst at Vercelli, Bonaparte had met with Cardinal Martiniana, who was returning from the conclave at Venice; and he expressed himself so clearly, so pointedly, as to his future plans, that both Consalvi and the Pope were taken by surprise. Their approbation was immediately given, and the Pope himself wrote to Martiniana: "You may tell the First Consul that we will readily enter into a negotiation tending to an object so truly honorable, so congenial to our apostolical administration, and so thoroughly conformable to our own views."

The history of this celebrated treaty, on which so much hangs in France even in our own time, has been often related, and yet many a detail of the intricate negotiations which preceded its conclusion had remained secret until the publication of the present memoirs. Three personages stand out in strong relief on that occasion, each with his individual character: Cacault, the French ambassador at Rome, Bonaparte, and Consalvi himself. Of the second, little need be said; but M. Cacault is, we believe, hardly known in England. He was a Breton by birth, and, as such, had imbibed those religious feelings which stamp so strongly the most western province of France. As a republican representative of the Directory, he did all in his power to avert from the Papal See those evils and that invasion which {385} ended in the captivity of Pius VI. When Napoleon's star was in the ascendant, M. Cacault quickly discovered the depth and extent of his genius, and thenceforward abetted his plans. At the same time, he was by no means a flatterer, but ever plain-spoken to bluntness. A time came, indeed, when the greatest conqueror of modern times found the noble-hearted Breton rather too sincere, and consigned him to the peaceful life of a seat in his new-fangled senate. But that day was yet to come. In 1801, M. Cacault enjoyed the whole confidence of the First Consul.

On leaving Bonaparte, the ambassador heard him utter those famous words, which have been so often quoted: "Mind you treat the Pope as if he had 200,000 men at his back. Remember, also, that in October, 1796, I wrote to you how much I wished to save the Holy See, not to overthrow it, and that both you and I entertained the same feelings in this respect." With credentials like these, M. Cacault should have found it an easy matter to negotiate with Rome; but, singularly enough, the conservative government of Austria threw many an obstacle in the way. The very idea of a reconciliation between revolutionary France and the Papacy seems to have disquieted M. de Thugut, and he did all in his power to breed a feeling of distrust, on the part of Rome at least. The court of Naples was animated by the same policy; and even Bonaparte himself, at one time, appeared to waver between the impulse of his own good sense and the suggestions of his infidel advisers. In the eyes of M. Cacault, the Pope stood too much on theological tenets and opinions, when dealing with a victorious adventurer. At any rate, matters soon grew from bad to worse. In a fit of impatience, the consul ordered his ambassador to leave Rome in five days, if the concordat sent from Paris was not signed at the expiration of that short time.

At this critical juncture, the Breton came to a determination so truly characteristic of the man, that we must allow him to speak for himself. We borrow the following narrative from his secretary, M. Artaud:

"We are bound to obey our government," said he, addressing himself to me; "but then a government must be guided by a head capable of understanding negotiations, by ministers capable of advising him properly, and lastly, all must agree together. Every government ought to have a plan, a will, an aim of its own. But this is no easy matter with a new government. Now, though in a secondary station, I am really master of this business; but if we go on in Rome as they are going on in Paris, nothing can come out of it but a sort of chaos. … It is fully understood that the head of the state wished for a concordat; he wished for it so far back as Tolentino, and even before, when he called himself the best friend of the Pope.… In fact, he has sent me here to negotiate a concordat, and for that purpose has given me in yourself the prop I myself desired. But then his ministers probably don't wish for a concordat, and they have constant access to his ear. Now the character most easy to irritate and to deceive, is that of a warrior, who as yet understands nothing about politics, and is ever returning to military orders and to the sword.… Shall we, like two fools, leave Rome in this way because the despatch orders us to do so, and give up France to irreligiosity—a word no less barbarous than the thing itself? Shall we leave her to a sort of spurious Catholicism, or that hybrid system which advises the establishment of a patriarch? God knows, then, that the future destinies of the First Consul will probably never be fulfilled.…

"I am fond of Bonaparte, fond of the general; but this patch-work name of a First Consul is in itself ridiculous; he borrowed it from Rome, where he has never set his foot. But in my eyes he is still nothing more than an {386} Italian general. As for the fate of this terrible general, it is now in my hands more than in his own; he is turning into a sort of Henry the Eighth, flattering and scaring the Holy See by turns; but how many sources of true glory will be dried up for him, if he merely mimics Henry the Eighth! The measure is full; nations now-a-days will not allow their rulers to dispose of them in regard to religious matters. With concordats, on the contrary, miracles may be wrought, more especially by him, or if not by him, supposing him to be unwise, by France herself. Be sure, my dear sir, that great deeds brought about at the proper moment, and bearing fruitful results, no matter by what genius they are accomplished, are a wealthy dowry for any country. In case of embarrassments, that country may ward off many an attack by pointing to its history. France, with all her faults, requires true grandeur. Our consul jeopardizes all by this pistol-shot fired in time of peace, merely for the sake of pleasing his generals whom he loves, but whose soldierlike jokes he fears, because he himself now and then gives way to them. He thus breaks off a negotiation which he wishes to succeed, and goes on casting rotten seed. What can really be a religious concordat, that most solemn of all human undertakings, if it is to be signed in five days? It reminds one of the twelve hours granted by a general to a besieged town, which can hope for no succor."

The result of the above conversation on the part of M. Cacault was a determination to quit Rome, but to leave his secretary in that city, whilst Consalvi himself was to set out immediately for Paris, as the only means of preventing a positive rupture between the two courts, for Bonaparte had already both a court and courtiers. The French minister was by no means blind to the consequences of his boldness in undertaking to correct the false steps of his own government; but, to his credit be it said, the fear of those consequences did not make him swerve one minute from his purpose. His very first step was, therefore, to request an interview with Consalvi, and an audience from the Pope. On meeting the cardinal, he began by reading in extenso the angry despatch which he had received, not even omitting the epithets "turbulent and guilty priest" which the Consul applied to his eminence. M. Cacault then resumed as follows:

"There must be some misunderstanding; the First Consul is unacquainted with your person, and still more with your talents, your ability, your precedents, your adroitness, and your anxiety to terminate this business. So you must start for Paris." "When?" "To-morrow: you will please him; you are fit to understand each other; he will then learn to know a statesmanlike cardinal, and you will draw up the concordat together. But if you don't go to Paris, I shall be obliged to break off all intercourse with you; and there are yonder certain ministers, who advised the Directory to transport Pius VI. to Guyana.…

"I again repeat it, you must go to Paris, you will draw up the concordat yourself—nay more, you will dictate a part of it, obtaining at the same time far better conditions than I could ever do, fettered as I am by so many shackles.… One word more: In a place like this, where there is so much gossipping, I can't allow you to bear alone the responsibility of this action. I consider it as something truly grand; but as it may turn out a false step, to-morrow I must see the Pope, and take the whole upon my shoulders. I shall not bore the Pope, having but a few words to tell him, in order to fulfil the Consul's former instructions."

Consalvi, fired at the boldness of the plan, hurried to the Pope, rather to prepare him for this unforeseen separation than to ask for permission. When, on the other hand, the French diplomatist was admitted to his presence, {387} he showed so much candor, such a true spirit of Christian feeling, such a total forgetfulness of self, that the pontiff could not refrain from shedding tears, and ended by breaking out into these words: "Indeed, indeed, you are a true friend, and we love you as we loved our own mother. At this very moment, we will retire to our oratory, in order to implore God's blessing on this journey, as well as for the successful issue of an undertaking, which may afford us some consolation in the midst of so much affliction."

It was indeed a bereavement for the Pope, who, having hardly ascended the throne, was accustomed to consider Consalvi as his main prop and right hand in every affair of any importance. He, however, readily consented to the separation, and on the following day the cardinal left Rome, accompanied by M. Cacault, in an open carriage, to show the gossipping Romans that no real coolness existed between the two governments. This, in fact, strengthened the hands of the Papal administration, as reports were already rife that a French army was about to march once more into Rome, with a view of restoring the republic.

At the distance of more than half a century Consalvi's determination scarcely seems an act of daring; but, at that period, it was considered in a different light. We must remember that France had been for ten long years the scene of anarchy and bloodshed within, while she had proved the terror of Europe on the field of battle. She was but just emerging from that anarchy, thanks to the iron grasp of a fortunate soldier, who might yet, for aught the world knew, turn out to be a bloody tyrant quite as well as a sagacious ruler. For a priest, and still more for a cardinal, to venture alone of his own accord into the lair of those beasts of prey, as they were then termed, certainly showed an extraordinary degree of moral courage, however M. Thiers may taunt Consalvi with his fears. Those fears the Papal minister did really entertain, as is proved by a few unwary lines which he addressed before his departure to Acton at Naples, and which were betrayed to Bonaparte in Paris. But then the cardinal, prompted by a strong feeling of duty, overcame these apprehensions, which is more perhaps than M. Thiers would vouch to have done on a similar occasion, if we may judge from the infidel spirit and intriguing disposition that are conspicuous alike throughout his own career and writings. Success, not principle, ever appears to be his leading star.

Once in Paris, Consalvi was not long in conquering that position which the keenness of his friend Cacault foresaw that he was destined to assume. Bonaparte approved in every respect the conduct of his ambassador at Rome, appeared even flattered at being feared, at first received the cardinal with affected coolness, but little by little yielded to better feelings, and ended by turning into ridicule "that fool Acton, who thought that he could stop the rush of a torrent with cobwebs." To these friendly dispositions soon succeeded on both sides a sincere confidence, and on one occasion the First Consul laughingly inquired of Consalvi whether he was not considered as a priest-eater in Italy; and then suddenly launched into one of those splendid expositions of his future plans, by which he endeavored to fascinate and charm those he aimed at winning over to his own views. In this sparkling conversation the concordat held a foremost place. Napoleon developed, just as he pleased, opinions half Protestant, half Jansenist—in other words, exactly what he wanted the concordat to be, and exactly what Consalvi could not allow. The contest between those two rival spirits may well detain us a few moments longer. And why not say at once that by degrees the master-genius of the age was obliged to modify his own views, yielding, nolens volens, as he himself admitted, to the graceful bearing and sound good sense of the man whose countrymen had named him the Roman Syren?

{388}

We may gather from M. Thiers' work that Consalvi had undertaken a most arduous task. Paris itself must have offered a strange sight to a Roman cardinal in the very first year of the present century. The churches were still shut, and bore upon their porches such inscriptions as savored more of heathenism than of Christianity. Wherever the legate's eye fell he was sure to meet with a temple of plenty, of fraternity, of liberty, of trade, of abundance, and so forth. And then when he went to court he found a ruler disposed to break out into the most violent fits of anger if his will was disputed, whilst on every hand he had to encounter a host of scoffers and infidels, belonging to every hue and grade. The army, the bench, the schools, the savants, and the very clergy, all vied in showing off Rome as the hotbed of an obsolete superstition which it was high time to do away with altogether. And when we mention the clergy, we mean the remains of that schismatic body which had hailed the civil constitution so formally condemned by the Holy See in 1791. They were active, intriguing, influential, and had the ear of Bonaparte himself. He was intent upon distributing among them a portion of the new sees about to be erected, and it required all the firmness of Consalvi to ward off this impending danger. If we may believe M. Thiers, many among them were by no means of dissolute lives; yet he cannot disguise the fact that they were ambitious, servile, and disposed to bend to every caprice of the ruling power. But that power was fully aware that the French population had no confidence whatever in their ministrations; the non-jurors, or priests who had unflinchingly remained faithful to their duty, were, on the contrary, sought out and held in high esteem. In this strange society the functions of Catholicism and the rites of our religion were openly resumed by believers, who attended them in back streets, in by-ways, in dark warehouses, whither some aged priest repaired at dawn, after escaping but shortly before from the dungeons of the Directory or the scaffolds of the Revolutionary Committee. The writer of these lines has known more than one man who was baptized at that period in a miserable garret by some ecclesiastic disguised as a common laborer, before the eyes of his parents, though without any sponsors, for fear of detection. That such men should turn round in the streets of Paris and stare with wonder at the sight of a cardinal publicly making for the Tuileries in one of the Consul's carriages is by no means surprising; but the fact increases our admiration for the two eminent statesmen who both cast such a firm glance into the depths of futurity.

Consalvi had only been a few hours in Paris when he was summoned before the First Consul, who sent him word that "he was to show off as much of a cardinal as possible." The able diplomatist was, however, not in the least disposed to "show off," and contented himself with wearing the indispensable insignia of his dignity. It will be well to remember that, at the time we are speaking of, no priest would have ventured to put on the clerical costume in the French capital. This first audience took place in public, in the midst of all the high functionaries of the state. On the cardinal approaching, Bonaparte rose and said abruptly: "I am aware of the object of your journey to France. My will is, that the conferences shall begin immediately. I give you five days for the purpose, and tell you beforehand that, if on the fifth day the negotiations have not come to a conclusion, you may return to Rome; for, within my own mind, I have come to a determination should such an event take place."

"By sending his prime minister to Paris (replied coolly the cardinal) His Holiness proves at any rate the interest he takes in the conclusion of a concordat with the French government, and I fully hope to terminate this business in the time you have marked." {389} Apparently satisfied with this answer, Bonaparte immediately broke forth into one of those eloquent displays for which he was remarkable—the concordat, the Holy See, the interests of religion, the articles which had been rejected by the Pope, all became, on his part, the subject of a most vehement and exhaustive speech, which was silently listened to by the surrounding audience.

One of the most amusing and almost ludicrous instances of the Consul's ignorance in regard to religious matters took place on this occasion. He bore a bitter hatred to the Jesuits, and was constantly harping on the subject. "I am quite astounded and scandalized (said he all of a sudden) that the Pope should be allied to a non-Catholic power like Russia, as is evident by the restoration of the Jesuits in that country. Such a union ought surely to wound and irritate a Catholic sovereign, since it contributes to please a schismatical monarch."

"I must answer candidly (resumed the cardinal) that your informations are incorrect on this matter. Doubtless the Pope has deemed it advisable not to refuse the request of the Russian emperor for the restoration of the Jesuits in his own states, but, at the same time, His Holiness has shown no less fatherly affection and deference for the King of Spain, since an interval of several months has elapsed between Paul's request and the bull, which was not sent before the court of Spain had expressly stated that it would in no way complain of the act."

When Bonaparte had fixed such a short term for the conclusion of the concordat, he fully intended that not a single jot of his own plan should be rejected by Rome. That plan, as we have already observed, was half schismatic, and would have bound over the French Church to the supreme will and power of the ruling government. But Consalvi showed himself equally firm as to essentials, whilst he gracefully yielded to every demand of minor importance. As to the wisdom of this conduct, the present circumstances bear ample testimony; for, had the cardinal been less firm, what might not be in 1865 the painful situation of the French episcopacy? But the negotiations, instead of ending in five days, were prolonged for more than three weeks, during which the Abbé Bernier, who represented his government, was constantly starting new difficulties, and threatening Consalvi with some new outbreak of violence on the part of the First Consul.

At last, toward the middle of July, every difficulty being overcome, and Bonaparte having formally promised to accept every article of the concordat as it had been agreed to at Rome, nothing remained but to copy and sign that famous treaty. The First Consul was to give a grand dinner on the 14th of July to foreigners of distinction, and to men of high standing in the country. His intention was to inform publicly his guests of this happy event, and on the 13th the Moniteur published the following laconic piece of news: "Cardinal Consalvi has succeeded in the object which brought him to Paris." Bonaparte had selected his brother Joseph, a councillor of state, and Bernier to sign the deed, whilst on the other side were Consalvi, Monsignor Spina, and a theologian named Father Caselli. But at the last moment there occurred one of the most astounding incidents contained in the history of diplomacy. As it has never been mentioned in any memoirs or documents of those times, we cannot do better than let the cardinal relate it in his own words:

"Toward four o'clock in the afternoon, Bernier arrived with a roll of paper, which he did not unfold, but stated to be a copy of the concordat that we were about to sign. We took our own with us, and set out all together for the house of citizen Joseph, as was the slang of the day, the brother to the First Consul. He received me with the utmost politeness. Though he had been ambassador at Rome, I had not been introduced to him, being yet but {390} a prelate. During the few days I passed in Paris, I had not met him on a formal visit which I paid him, for he often resided in the country. This was, therefore, the first time we saw each other. After the usual compliments, he bade us to sit down round a table, adding: 'We shall have soon done, having but to sign the compact, as all is concluded.'

"On being seated round the table, the question arose who should sign first. Joseph Bonaparte claimed the right as brother to the head of the government. I observed with great mildness and firmness, that both as a cardinal and a legate of the Holy See, I could not consent to assume the second rank in signing; beside, under the old régime in France, as well as everywhere else, the cardinals enjoyed a right of precedence, which I could not give up, not indeed from any personal motive, but on account of the dignity with which I was invested. It is but due to Joseph to state, that after a momentary hesitation, he yielded with very good grace, and begged of me to sign first. He himself was to come after, followed by the prelate Spina, Councillor Cretet, Father Caselli, and the Abbé Bernier.

"We set to work at once, and I had taken up the pen, when to my great surprise the Abbé Bernier presented to me his copy, with the view of making me sign it without examining its contents. On casting my eyes upon it in order to ascertain its identity with my own copy, I perceived that this ecclesiastical treaty was not the one agreed to by the respective commissioners, not the one adopted by the First Consul himself, but another totally different! The difference existing at the very first outset induced me to examine the whole with the most scrupulous attention, and I soon found out that this copy contained the draught which the Pope had refused to accept without his correction, the very refusal that had provoked an order to the French agent to leave Rome; nay more, that this self-same draught was modified in many respects by the insertion of certain clauses, previously declared to be inacceptable even before it had been sent to Rome.

"A proceeding of this character, so truly incredible, and yet so real, which I shall not venture to qualify—for the fact speaks sufficiently for itself—a proceeding of this kind literally paralyzed my hand. I expressed my astonishment, declaring positively that on no condition could I give my approval to such a deed. The First Consul's brother did not appear less surprised than myself, pretending not to understand the matter. The First Consul, he added, had assured him that, everything being agreed to, nothing remained but to sign. As for himself, he had just come up from the country, where he was busy with Count Cobenzel about the affairs of Austria, being called upon merely for the formality of signing the treaty. Concerning the matter itself, he absolutely knew nothing about it."

Cardinal Consalvi, even when writing the above lines, does not seem to doubt Joseph's sincerity, nor that of Councillor Cretet, who affirmed his own innocence in terms equally strong. The latter could hardly believe his own eyes, when the legate pointed out to him the glaring discrepancies between both copies. The Pope's minister then turning suddenly to Bernier: "Nobody better than yourself," said he, "can attest the truth of what I affirm; I am highly astonished at the studied silence which you maintain, and I must therefore call upon you positively to communicate to us what you must know so pertinently."

"Then, with an air of confusion and an embarrassed countenance, he faltered out that doubtless my language was but too true, and that he would not deny the difference of the documents now proposed for our signatures. 'But the First Consul has so ordained,' continued he, 'telling me that as long as no signature has been given, one is always at liberty to make any alteration. So he requires these alterations, {391} after duly considering the whole matter, he is not satisfied with the previous stipulations.'"

The doctrine was so contrary to all precedents, that Consalvi had no difficulty in convincing his auditors of its futility. He moreover maintained his ground steadfastly, and refused to make any further concession contrary to his duties. They cajoled him, they threatened him with the violence and "fury" of the omnipotent Consul; he remained unshaken. Joseph entreated him at least to go over the same ground once more, following the Papal copy, and to this the cardinal consented, firmly resolved not to give up one single point of importance, but to modify such expressions as might induce Bonaparte to accept the original treaty. So these six men sat down again at five o'clock in the afternoon to discuss the whole question. The discussion was laborious, precise, searching, and heated on both sides. It lasted nineteen long hours, without interruption, without rest, without food, without even sending away the servants or the carriages, as will often happen when people hope to conclude at every minute some important business. On one article alone they could never agree, and it was specially reserved to the Pope's own decision. It was twelve o'clock the next day before they came to a conclusion. But would the First Consul adopt this plan? Would he not break all bounds, on finding his duplicity discovered, and himself balked by the cardinal's firmness? Joseph hurried to the Tuileries, in order to lay the whole before his imperious brother, and in less than one hour came back, his features evidently showing the grief of his soul. Says Consalvi:

"He told us that the First Consul had broken forth into the greatest fury on being apprised of what had taken place. In his fit of anger he had torn to pieces the concordat we had drawn up among us; but at last, yielding to Joseph's entreaties and arguments, he had promised, though with the most extreme repugnance, to accept every article we had agreed to, except the one we had reserved, and about which he was no less inflexible than irritated. The First Consul, added Joseph, had closed the interview by telling him to inform me that he (Bonaparte) was decided upon maintaining this article as it was expressed in Bernier's copy:—consequently I had but two ways before me: either to adopt this article just as it was in the concordat, or to give up the negotiations. As for him, he had made up his mind to announce either the signature or the rupture of the affair at the grand dinner he was to give on that day.

"The reader will easily imagine our consternation at this message. We had yet three hours until five o'clock, the time appointed for the dinner, at which we were all to attend. I really am unable to repeat all the Consul's brother and the two other commissioners said, to conquer my resistance. The picture of the consequences likely to ensue upon the rupture was indeed of the darkest color; they gave me to understand that I alone should become responsible for those evils in the face of France and Europe, as well as to my own sovereign and Rome. I should be accused of an unreasonable stiffness, and of having brought on the results of such a refusal. I felt a death-like anguish, on conjuring up before my eyes the realization of these prophecies, and I was—if I may be allowed such words—like unto the man of sorrow. But my duty won the victory: thanks to heaven, I did not betray it. I persisted in my refusal during the two hours of this contest, and the negotiation was broken off.

"Such was the ending of this sad debate, which had lasted four-and-twenty hours, having begun at four o'clock on the preceding day, and closed toward the same hour of this unfortunate one. Our bodily sufferings were doubtless very great, but they were nothing when compared to our moral anxiety, which rose to such a pitch that one must really have undergone {392} such tortures to form an idea of them.

"I was condemned—and this was indeed a most cruel circumstance at such a moment—to appear in an hour after at the famous banquet. I was bound to front in public the very first shock of that headstrong anger which the General Bonaparte would feel on being apprised by his brother of the rupture.

"We hastened back to our hotel, in order to make a few rapid preparations, and then hurried all three to the Tuileries. We had hardly entered the saloon where the First Consul was standing—a saloon filled with a crowd of magistrates, officers, state grandees, ministers, ambassadors, and illustrious foreigners, who had been invited to the dinner—when we were greeted in a way which may easily be imagined, as he had already seen his brother. As soon as he perceived me, he exclaimed, his face flushed with anger, and in a loud and indignant tone:

"'Well, Monsieur le Cardinal, you have had your fling; you have broken off: be it so! I don't stand in need of Rome. I will act for myself. I don't stand in need of the Pope. If Henry the Eighth, who had not one-twentieth part of my power, was enabled to change the religion of his country, and to succeed in his plans, far better shall I know how to do it, and to will it. By changing the religion in France, I shall change it throughout the best part of Europe—everywhere, in fact, where my power is felt. Rome will soon perceive her own faults; she will rue them, but it will then be too late. You may take your leave; it is the best thing you can do. You have willed a rupture: be it so! When do you intend setting out?'

"'After dinner, general,' replied I, with the greatest calmness.

"These few words acted as an electric shock on the First Consul. He stared at me for a few minutes; and, taking advantage of his surprise, I replied to his vehement outbreak, that I neither could nor would go beyond my instructions on matters which were positively opposed to the maxims of the Holy See."

Here the Consul interrupted Consalvi, though in a milder tone, to tell him that he insisted upon having the concordat signed according to his own views, or not at all. "Well, then," retorted the cardinal, "in that form I neither shall nor will ever subscribe to it; no—never." "And that is the very reason," cried out Bonaparte, "why I tell you that you are bent upon breaking off, and why Rome will shed tears of blood on this rupture."

What a scene! and how finely the bold, calm demeanor of the Pope's legate shows in strong relief against that dark, passionate, and ominous, though intelligent face of Napoleon Bonaparte! What a splendid subject for a painter, and how it calls up at once to our mind those barbaric chieftains of old, fit enough to wield the sword—fit enough even to lay the snares of a savage, but unable to cope with the spiritual strength of a Christian bishop, and utterly cowed by the meek sedateness of some missionary monk, just wafted over from the shores of Ireland! Write the seventh, or the thirteenth, instead of the nineteenth century, and say if the incident would be clothed in different colors; for, in fact, what was Bonaparte himself but the Hohenstaufen of his age—a strange mixture of real grandeur, of seething passions, and of mean, crafty, fox-like cunning?

The French editor of these memoirs very justly observes that some vestige of the above scene must still exist in the documents of the Imperial archives, and expresses the wish that the charge of duplicity so terribly brought home to the first Bonaparte may be properly sifted and repelled. Of the existence of such information we have scarcely any doubt, but we hardly believe that the select committee, headed by Prince Napoleon, who have already so unscrupulously tampered with {393} the correspondence of the great founder of the present dynasty, will ever rebut the accusation, or even take notice of the narrative. And yet it bears the stamp of truth in every line, so prone was Napoleon to those fits of anger, which he sometimes used, Thiers himself admits it, as tools for his policy, and to serve his end.

After all, the First Consul was glad to escape from the consequences of his own violence, since, on the personal interference of the Austrian ambassador, he again consented that the conferences should be renewed. The two cardinal points on which, in the eyes of Rome, the whole fabric of the concordat rested, were the freedom and publicity of the Catholic worship. Without these two essential conditions, the Pope and his ministers deemed that the Church obtained no compensation for the numerous sacrifices which she consented to undergo in other respects. The French government, on the contrary, admitted that freedom and publicity, only so far as they were allowed to other forms of worship, and saddled the article with the following rider: "The public worship shall be free, as long as it conforms to the police regulations." Such was the final difficulty against which Consalvi maintained a most obstinate opposition, and it must be admitted that his grounds were of a very serious nature. Taught by the experience of other times and countries, he considered the obnoxious condition as a bold attempt to enslave the Church by subjecting her to the secular power. On the flimsy pretext of acting as the protector and defender of the Church, a government was enabled to lord it over her, and cripple her best endeavors for the fulfilment of her divine mission. If such had been the case, even under the old French monarchy, notwithstanding the strong Catholic dispositions of the Bourbon sovereigns in general, as well as in the times of a Joseph II. and a Leopold of Tuscany, what greater changes were to be feared on the part of the revolutionary powers, which now swayed over France? The cardinal readily admitted that, in the present state of the country, it might be proper for the government to restrict on certain occasions the publicity of the Catholic worship, for the very sake of protecting its followers against the outbreaks of popular frenzy; but why lay down such a sweeping and such an elastic rule? "With a clause of this kind," said the legate, "the police, or rather the government, will be enabled to lay their hands on everything, and may subject all to their own will and discretion, whilst the Church, constantly fettered by the words, 'As long as it conforms,' will have no right even to complain." To these arguments the Consul constantly replied, "Well, if the Pope can't accept such an indefinite and mild restriction, let him omit the article, and give up publicity of worship altogether." As a curious specimen of sincerity and candor, we must observe that Consalvi was not even allowed to consult with his own court, nor to send a courier, the French government refusing to supply him with the necessary passports. So much for the international privileges of ambassadors. Who can be astonished that the Papal minister should feel but little confidence in the good faith of those he had to deal with?

Their attitude, indeed, seems to have strengthened his own unbending firmness. In the course of these everlasting debates, he clenched the subject in the following terms: "Either you are sincere in maintaining that the government is obliged to impose a restriction upon the publicity of the religious worship, being impelled thereunto by the necessity of upholding the public peace and order, and in that case the government cannot and ought not to hesitate as to asserting the fact in the article itself; or the government does not wish it to be so expressed; and in that case they show their bad faith, as also that the only object of the aforesaid restriction is {394} the enslavement of the Church to their own will."

The commissioners found nothing to reply to this dilemma; for, in fact, Consalvi only asked that the reserve itself should be laid down as a temporary restriction. At last they yielded, despairing of ever overcoming, on this subject, their unflinching and powerful antagonist. The concordat, duly signed and authenticated, was sent up for approval to the First Consul, who, after another fit of anger, gave his consent; but, as Consalvi himself presumes, from that hour he resolved to annul the intrinsic and most beneficial effects of the concordat by those celebrated organic articles which are even at this moment a bone of contention between the French clergy and the Imperial government.

It is, indeed, a most remarkable fact that the same man who imperiously prescribed that the concordat should be drawn up and signed in the course of five days, allowed a full year to elapse before he published it and sent the official ratifications to Rome. When he did fulfil these formalities, he coupled them with the promulgation of those famous laws which, in reality, tended to cut off all free communication between the Holy See and the Gallican clergy, and to spread throughout Europe the false belief that the Pope himself had concurred in the adoption of these obnoxious measures. In vain did Pius VII. protest against them—in vain, at a later period, was he induced to crown the emperor in Paris, in hopes of obtaining the fulfilment of his own promises. Napoleon turned a deaf ear to the most touching importunities. On considering the whole of his conduct, it is hardly possible to refrain from concluding that Bonaparte ever looked upon the Pope's supremacy and power as an appendage and satellite of his own paramount omnipotence. Viewed by this light, many of his acts in latter years will appear at least consistent, though by no means justifiable on any principle whatsoever. Is there not often a certain consistency in madness? And if so in ordinary life, why not in the freaks and starts of despotism? And again, is not despotism itself madness in disguise?

But why indulge in our own speculations and surmises, when we have before us positive evidence that in 1801, as well as ten years afterward, Napoleon entertained and maintained a plan for arrogating to himself both the spiritual and temporal power? The examples set by Henry VIII., Albert of Brandenburg, and Peter I. of Russia, were ever before his eyes, blinding his own innate good sense, and exerting a sort of ominous fascination over his best impulses. The reader has doubtless heard of, if not perused, those wonderful pages in which the fallen giant whiled away his tedious hours at St. Helena, pretending to write his own history, but in reality veiling truth under fiction, and endeavoring to palm upon the world certain far-fetched views of benevolence or civilization, which he never dreamt of whilst he was on the throne. Still, that strange Memorial of St. Helena often contains many a startling proof of candor, as if the mask suddenly fell, and revealed to our astonished gaze the inner man. Among such passages, none perhaps are so remarkable as those referring to the concordat and to the religious difficulties of later years. One day Napoleon dictated to General Montholon these lines, which so strongly justify Consalvi's fears and opposition:

"When I seized the helm, I already held the most precise and definite ideas on all those principles which cement together the social body. I fully weighed the importance of religion—on that head I was convinced—and had resolved to restore it. But one can hardly realize the difficulties I had to contend with when about to bring back Catholicism. I should have been readily supported had I unfurled the Protestant standard. This feeling went so far that, in the {395} council of state, where I met with the strongest opposition against the concordat, many a man tacitly determined to plot its destruction. 'Well,' used they to say, 'let us turn Protestants at once, and then we may wash our hands of the business.' It is, indeed, quite true that, in the midst of so much confusion and so many errors, I was at liberty to choose between Catholicism and Protestantism; and still truer that everything favored the latter. But, beside my own personal bias inclining toward my national religion, I had most weighty reasons to decide otherwise. I should thus have created in France two great parties of equal strength, though I was determined to do away with every party whatsoever; I should have conjured up all the frenzy of religious warfare, whilst the enlightenment of the age and my own will aimed at crushing it altogether. By their mutual strife these two parties would have torn France asunder, and made her a slave to Europe, whilst my ambition was to make her its mistress. Through Catholicism I was far surer of attaining all my great objects. At home, the majority absorbed the minority, which I was disposed to treat with so much equity that any difference between both would soon disappear; abroad, Catholicism kept me on good terms with the Pope. Beside, thanks to my own influence and to our forces in Italy, I did not despair, sooner or later, by some means or other, to obtain the direction and guidance of the Pope; and then what a new source of influence! what a lever to act upon public opinion, and to govern the world!"

A few moments after the emperor resumed:

"Francis I. had a capital opportunity to embrace Protestantism, and to become its acknowledged head throughout Europe. His rival, Charles V., resolutely sided with Rome, because he considered this the best way to subject Europe. This alone should have induced Francis to defend European independence. Instead of that, he left a reality to run after a shadow, following up his pitiful quarrels in Italy, allying himself with the Pope, and burning the reformers in Paris.

"Had Francis I. embraced Lutheranism, which is so favorable to the royal supremacy, he would have spared France those dreadful convulsions which were afterward brought on by the Calvinists, whose republican organization was so near ruining both the throne and our fine monarchy. Unfortunately, Francis was unable to understand anything of the kind. As to his scruples, they are quite out of the question, since this self-same man made an alliance with the Turks, whom he introduced among us. Oh, those stupid times! Oh, that feudal intellect! After all, Francis I. was but a tilting king—a drawing-room dandy—a would-be giant, but a real pigmy."

It is scarce necessary to add, that at the time Napoleon is speaking of he was an unbeliever, though a lurking respect for his national religion still lingered at the bottom of his heart. But then, how fully does he admit that religion was but a tool of his ambition! How openly does he confess his plan to get hold of the Pope by some means or other! How glaringly true must now appear in our eyes that narrative of Consalvi's in which he exposes the mean trick that Napoleon endeavored to play upon his vigilance! Lastly, how faithfully does the emperor adhere to the plans secretly laid within the dark mind of the First Consul! For, as if to leave no doubt as to the fulfilment of those plans, he related to Montholon the most minute details of what took place during the Pope's captivity at Fontainebleau:

"The English," said Napoleon, "plotted an escape for him from Savona; the very thing I could have wished for. I had him brought to Fontainebleau, where his misfortunes were to end, and his splendor to be restored. All my grand views had been thus fulfilled under disguise and in secrecy. I had so managed that {396} success was infallible, even without an effort. Indeed, the Pope adopted the famous concordat of Fontainebleau, notwithstanding my reverses in Russia. But how far different had I returned triumphant and victorious! So at last I had obtained the long-wished-for separation of the spiritual and temporal powers; whilst their confusion is so fatal to the former, by causing trouble and disorder within society in the name of him who ought to become a centre of union and harmony. Henceforward I intended to place the Pope on a pinnacle; we would not even have regretted his temporal power, for I would have made an idol of him, and he would have dwelt close to me. Paris should have become the capital of the Christian world, and I would have governed the spiritual as well as the political world. By this means I should have been enabled to strengthen the federative portions of the empire, and to maintain peace in such parts as were beyond its limits. I should have had my religious sessions, just the same as my legislative sessions: my councils would have represented, all Christendom, and the popes would have merely acted as their presidents. I should myself have opened their assemblies, approved and promulgated their decrees, as was the case under Constantine and Charlemagne. In fact, if the emperors lost this kind of supremacy, it was because they allowed the spiritual ruler to reside at a distance from them; and those rulers took advantage of this act of weakness, or this result of the times, to escape from the prince's government, and even to overrule it."

What words of ours could add to the bold significance of these? How the proud spirit of the despot towers even within his prison! and how little had he profited by the bitter lessons of experience! Never before, do we believe, since the advent of Christianity, did any king or conqueror profess such a barefaced contempt for the deepest feelings of a Christian soul—the freedom of his spiritual being! This pretended liberation from the court of Rome, this religious government concentrated within the hands of the sovereign, became, indeed, at one time, the constant object of Napoleon's thoughts and meditations:

"England, Russia, Sweden, a large part of Germany (was he wont to say), are in possession of it; Venice and Naples enjoyed it in former times. Indeed, there is no doing without it, for otherwise a nation is ever and anon wounded in its peace, in its dignity, in its independence. But then such an undertaking is most arduous; at every attempt I was beset with new dangers; and, once thoroughly embarked in it, the nation would have abandoned me. More than once I tried to awaken public opinion; but all was in vain, and I was obliged to acknowledge that the people would not follow me."

On reading these last words, who will not remember Cacault's apothegm, uttered in 1801: "Nations now-a-days will not allow their rulers to dispose of them in regard to religious matters."

We hope that the reader will not accuse us of prolixity for having related rather fully the negotiations which proceeded the concordat of 1801. Hitherto the main facts of this important event have been gleaned from French sources of information. No voice had been raised, we believe, on the part of Rome, and no one, it must be admitted, had a better right to speak of that celebrated treaty than the man who contributed so largely, so exclusively, we might almost say, to its final adoption. And then, throughout the whole of his simple and unpretending, yet clear and spirited memoirs, the great cardinal reads us a grand lesson, which may be felt and understood by every human soul. During the perusal of these two volumes, we have ever before our eyes the struggle of right against might, of duty against tyranny, of a true Christian soul against the truckling, shuffling, intriguing spirit of the world. Ever {397} and anon, this able, firm, and yet amiable diplomatist allows some expression to escape him which shows that his heart and soul are elsewhere, that his beacon is on high, and that he views everything and all things in this nether world from the light of the gospel. And this, perhaps, is the very reason why, throughout a long career of such numerous difficulties and dangers, he moved serene, undaunted, unblemished in his honor, proclaimed wisest amongst the wise, until kings, princes, warriors, and statesmen, Protestants and Catholics, counted his friendship and esteem of priceless value.

From Once a Week.

HYMN BY MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS.

  O Domine Deus, speravi in te!
  O care mi Jesu, nunc libera me!
  In dura catena, in misera pcena,
  Desidero te;
  Languendo, gemendo et genuflectendo,
  Adoro, imploro, ut liberes me!

(TRANSLATION.)

  O Lord, O my God, I have hoped but in thee;
  Jesu, my dearest, now liberate me:
  In hard chains, in fierce pains,
  I am longing for thee:
  Languishing, groaning and bending the knee,
  I adore, I implore thou wouldst liberate me!

      ASTLEY H. BALDWIN.

{398}

From The Lamp.

MANY YEARS AGO AT UPFIELD.

In the last decade of the last century, Upfield was a very healthy, pretty, prosperous town in Suffolk. Its centre was a green; undulating, irregular, and from four to five acres in area. Round it were laborers' cottages, a forge, the inn, the veterinary surgeon's house, the doctor's, the vicarage, and the Grey House, each with land proportioned to its character. A little, very little way off, was the church; belonging anciently to a Carthusian monastery, of which some ruins still existed; and beyond that, but within a quarter of a mile of Upfield, was Edward's Hall, the fine baronial residence of the Scharderlowes, who had owned it since the reign of Henry IV., and never forsaken the Catholic faith. Upfield was eloquent about the past, as well as actually charming. The church, early English, was little injured exteriorly. Inside it reminded one of a nun compelled to wear a masquerade dress. The beautiful arches and lofty roof had defied time and the vulgar rage of vicious fanaticism; so had the pavement, rich in slabs imploring humbly prayers for the repose of the dead who lay under it; but devotion and taste mourned over the changed use of the sacred building, and the characteristics thereof; for instance, a singing-gallery in the western end, with the royal arms done in red and gilded plaster, fastened to it; high deal pews for the mass of the congregation, and the squire's praying-made-comfortable one within the carved oak screen in the south transept, where had been the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament.

The Grey House was low, rambling, picturesque; the beau-ideal of a happy, hospitable old English home. It had been built by instalments, at distant intervals; and had derived its name from a Lord Grey, of Codnoure, who had formerly possessed lands in the neighborhood. At the time whence this story starts, it had been for a hundred years or more in the family of the Wickhams, who claimed to be descended collaterally from William of Wykeham—whether they were or not, had never been discussed, and therefore never formally established; nor did any one in the neighborhood, except Mr. Scharderlowe and his family, know that a former Wickham had bartered his religion for a wealthy Protestant wife, and allowed her to bring up their children in her own way. In January, 1790, George Wickham, the head of the family, died at the Grey House, of inflammation of the lungs, in his forty-second year, and no one was ever more regretted. A kinder-hearted man had never breathed. His attachments had been warm and numerous; he had helped every one whom he could help, been peculiarly gentle to the poor and his dependents, hated nothing but wickedness, and believed in that only when it was impossible to be blind to it. "Poor dear Mr. Wickham," said Mrs. Scharderlowe, when her husband told her the news; "I'm heartily sorry. I always thought he would become a Catholic—he was so liberal in all his feelings; only the last time we met, conversation taking that turn—I forget why—he said it was too bad that we could not worship God as we pleased, without suffering for it; and that he was ashamed of Englishmen who forgot that their noblest laws were made, and their most glorious victories won, in Catholic times. What a loss he will be to Upfield and his family!" "Yes," returned her husband, "that poor pretty little widow is about as helpless and ignorant of the world as possible; she never had occasion to think of anything but how to make {399} home happy, which I believe she did; they were a particularly united family. I hope he made a will; but I think it is likely he did not; his illness was short and painful, and previously to it no one ever had a fairer prospect of long life than he had."

Mr. Wickham's funeral was talked of in Upfield and the neighborhood many years afterward. Mr. Scharderlowe sent his carriage; the county member, and persons of every class, attended. The clergyman from an adjacent parish, who had been requested to perform the burial-service, because the vicar, Mr. Wickham's nephew, felt unequal to it, burst into tears, and had to pause some minutes to recover himself. The widow fainted; and her eldest son Robert, a youth in his nineteenth year, tried to jump into the vault when his father's coffin was lowered.

There was a will, made during Mr. Wickham's last illness, and the vicar was sole executor and trustee, with a legacy of £500. There was ample provision for the younger children; and Robert was, when of age, to succeed to a brewery, which his father had started many years previously, and which was the most lucrative in the county. He was to learn its management from James Deane, the confidential clerk, whose salary was to be raised, and to whom £100 was left in token of Mr. Wickham's appreciation of his services. The Grey House, and everything in it, with £200 a year, was to be Mrs. Wickham's, and at her disposal at death.

The brewery was half a mile from Upfield; Mr. Wickham had built it where it would not injure the prospect, and Deane had a pretty cottage attached to it, where he, a widower, lived with his sister and only child, a daughter. He was a Catholic, son of a former steward of Mr. Scharderlowe's, and extremely attached to Mr. Wickham, who had taken him when a boy into the brewery, and advanced him steadily. He was a well-principled, intelligent man, who had improved himself by taking lessons in geography, grammar, and algebra, as the opportunities offered; and he was, from his position, well-known in the neighborhood. He told his sister that he feared that Mr. Wickham's death was only the beginning of trouble for his family; for he distrusted Mr. William, the vicar. "It isn't that he's a dishonorable man, Lizzy; but it isn't likely that a crack shot, a bold rider after the hounds, a gentleman who is as fond of a ball as anyone, and who takes no trouble about his own affairs, will do justice to a dead man's, though I don't doubt he means it now."

"But what harm can he do, James?"

"Why, he can ruin the younger children. Everything except the brewery and what is left to Mrs. Wickham is as much in his power as it was in his uncle's. I doubt if the poor dear gentleman wouldn't have arranged differently if he'd had longer time: it's an awful lesson to be always prepared for death; I'm sure I thought Mr. Wickham might live to be a hundred. No doubt pain and sorrow confused his mind, and anyhow it was natural that he should trust his own relations."

"He had better have trusted you, James."

"That was not to be expected, Lizzy, and I mightn't have been fit for it. There's plenty on my hands. It is a large, increasing business, and I have to teach it to Mr. Robert; and one can't tell how he'll take to it; I've been afraid he would be unsteady, but he has taken his father's death to heart uncommonly, and I hope he'll try to be as good a man."

About this time people had begun to remark that Polly Deane, then in her fifteenth year, was growing up a remarkably pretty girl; she was an old established pet of the Wickhams; her mother had been the daughter of a tenant, and so great a favorite that when she married Deane, the wedding was celebrated at the Grey House. When, two years later, she was dying of fever, Mr. and Mrs. Wickham promised to watch over her child. All that {400} they undertook they carried out generously, and Polly lived as much with them as with Aunt Lizzie, who did her part toward her well—loving her fondly, keeping her fresh, healthy, and merry, checking her quick temper, teaching her her prayers, and taking her often to Mr. Scharderlowe's, to get his chaplain's—Father Armand's—blessing; and when she was old enough, to mass and the sacraments. The fact of the Wickhams having no daughter increased their tenderness for her, and her father was delighted and flattered by Mrs. Wickham's watchfulness over her dress and manner, and Mr. Wickham's care for her education; it was the best that could be had in Upfield, and good enough to make her as charming as she need be. She did plain sewing extremely well, and some quaint embroidery of hideous designs in wool and floss silks; she had worked a cat in tent-stitch, and a parrot of unknown species in cross; her sampler was believed to be the finest in the county; she could read aloud very pleasantly, spell wonderfully, write a clear, stiff hand, which one might decipher without glasses at eighty; she could not have gone up for honors in grammar, but she talked very prettily; she had never had occasion to write a letter; as to geography, she believed that the world was round, for her father and Mr. Wickham said so, and she had heard that Captain Cook had been round it; but only that she was ashamed, she would have liked to ask some one how it could be, and how it was found out; it was such a contradiction of observation, if only because of the sea; she had never seen the sea, but she believed in it, and could understand water remaining on level ground; there was the horse-pond, for instance, but that thousands of miles of roaring, angry, deep water should hold on to a round world was too much for her. You could not puzzle her in the multiplication table, but she did not take kindly to weights and measures. She had learned no history, her father could not get a Catholic to teach her, and would trust no one else, but she had picked up a few facts and notions; for instance, she had heard of Alfred the Great and his lanterns; of St. Edward the Confessor, and that he made good laws; of King Charles I., and those wicked men—she fancied Guy Fawkes was one of them—had cut his head off; when he lived she was not sure, and she hoped Mr. Wickham would never ask her, for she should not like to say that she did not know, and she was sometimes afraid that he would when he talked of Carlo's being a King Charles spaniel. It was puzzling, because she remembered Carlo a puppy, and she was sure that the king's name had been George ever since she was born. She had an exquisite ear for music, and a voice of great promise. Mr. Wickham was passionately fond of music, and therefore, appreciating peculiarly this talent of Polly's, had engaged a good master from the county-town to teach her to play on the piano. She had profited well by his instructions, and only a few days before Mr. Wickham was taken ill, she had played the accompaniment when he sang "From the white-blossomed thorn my dear Chloe requested," "O lady fair," and "Oh life is a river, and man is the boat;" and he had patted her head and kissed her, and asked her for the "Slow movement in Artaxerxes" and "The harmonious Blacksmith," and—she was so glad—she had played them without one mistake. Of course she danced, and made cakes and pastry, beauty-washes, elder-wine, and various preserves and salves; knitted her father's stockings and her aunt's mittens, and read a romance whenever she could get one, but that was very rarely.

The vicar made, at any rate, a good start, fulfilling his uncle's instructions exactly; apprenticed his second son, Alfred, to the College of Surgeons—that was the most liberal way in those days of entering the medical profession—and placed him {401} to board with an old family friend, an opulent practitioner. The third son was articled to an eminent attorney; the others were sent to school. The void made by the death of those even most important and most fondly loved is soon filled up externally; how otherwise could justice be done to the living? The widow acquiesced in the separation from her children; it was her husband's plan, and for their advantage. She was sure she could not long survive him; she might even be sinful enough to wish to die, but for her sons' sakes, she was so utterly lonely. They loved her truly, the darlings; but they could not understand her, never would, unless—which God in his great mercy forbid—they ever came to suffer as she suffered. To lose such a husband! so manly, yet so tender and thoughtful. She had always looked forward to his nursing her in her last illness, and receiving her last breath. He would have grieved for her truly, she was sure of that; but he could have borne it better; he would have been of more use to the boys. Thus she mused often, weeping plentifully; but she never denied that she had many consolations. No one could have suited her better than Polly, and she was never more than a day or two absent from her. They were alike in character—simple, self-sacrificing, and affectionate in an uncommon degree. Polly's caresses seldom failed to arouse her; the gentle girl felt how much more she could have done had Mrs. Wickham been accessible to the comfort in which her own, the dear old faith, abounded; and prayed daily that it might soon be hers, and did her best. She never attempted direct consolation, but interested the mourner in some trifle, or coaxed her into conversation or employment. Sometimes she really could not arrange some obstinate flowers; sometimes her work was all wrong, and no one but Mrs. Wickham could show her how to put it right, and Mary Hodge's baby ought to have the garment that evening. Once, when all her ingenuity failed, she was actually delighted by Betty's running in with her darling kitten, wet to the skin, just saved out of the water-butt; Mrs. Wickham dried her eyes, and pitied it, and watched Polly wiping it, and arranging a cushion inside the fender for it; and at last smiled at the endearing nonsense she talked, and told her she was more than a mother to it.

Robert was quite steady; regular at the brewery, pleasant at home. Of course it would have been dull for him without Polly: her youth, beauty, and sisterly at-homeness made a glow in the dear old house. Did he or his mother ever calculate on what was likely to come of that near companionship? No: their actual life engrossed them. He first drew his mother to look on while he and Polly played cribbage or backgammon, and then to play herself a little. He took in the Gentleman's Magazine, and showed her the curious old prints, and read the odds and ends of news aloud. Music was unendurable to her for some months; but she conquered herself by degrees, and came to enjoy it. Then Robert and Polly sang every evening, she playing the accompaniments. Summer brought the boys home for holidays, and that did good. When the anniversary of the father's death came round, its melancholy associations pressed evidently on the widow, and she spent the greater portion of the day in her room; but she was resigned, and better than those who watched her lovingly expected her to be.

The great feature of those Christmas holidays was Alfred's return in an altered character. He had left Upfield a lout—the despair of his mother and the maids; who were the more provoked, because he was undeniably the handsomest of the family. To keep him clean, or make him put on his clothes properly, had been impossible. He had credit for talent; for, when sufficiently excited, he wrote what were deemed wonderfully pretty {402} verses, and he was quick at repartee and sarcasm; but he had been in perpetual disgrace at school, and silent and awkward—sulky as a bear, his brothers called him at home. He made a great sensation on the first evening of his return from London: he was fluent in conversation, perfectly well dressed, and—chief marvel—had clean, carefully-shaped nails. Polly smiled, wondered, and said to herself that he was really very handsome, and sang beautifully. All the Wickhams sang, but none of them, she thought, could be compared to him. The change was not agreeable to Robert, and he showed it; grumbled in an undertone about fops; and asked his brother if he could play cricket or quoits, or skate, or take a five-barred gate, or shoot snipe.

Alfred yawned, and replied:

"My dear Bob, don't you remember that I was never fond of trouble? Those rough amusements are very well for country gentlemen and farmers; and I give them up to them with all my heart. As to skating, you none of you know anything about it; you should see the gentlemen, and elegant ladies too, cutting out flowers, and other complicated figures, on the Serpentine."

Then addressing himself to his mother and Polly—Robert's countenance lowering as he observed the innocent girl's natural interest in such-topics—he talked about the last drawing-room and the fashionable plays. He had seen The School for Scandal and The Haunted Tower, at Drury Lane; Othello and The Conscious Lovers, at Covent Garden, and he recited—really well—some of the tender passages in Othello. Next he described the lying-in-state of the Duke of Cumberland; the trial and execution of Jobbins and Lowe for arson; the recent storms, which had not touched Upfield, but had been terrible elsewhere—chimneys killing people in their beds, the lightning flowing like a stream of fluid from a glasshouse. And no one interrupted him, till Robert said, savagely:

"That fellow will talk us all deaf."

"Not this time, Bob: you and I will sing 'Love in thine eyes' now. I know Polly will play for us."

They did it; Alfred directing the sentiment to her, so as to make her feel shy and uncomfortable, and his brother vowing inwardly that "he'd give that puppy a good thrashing before he went back to London, if he didn't mind what he was about."

Alfred had seen a good deal of what country folk call "finery" in London; but he declared that breakfast at home was unrivalled, particularly in winter. There was the superb fire of coal and oak blocks, throwing a glow on the massive family plate and fine, spotless damask: such a silver urn and teapot were not often seen. Further, the young gentleman inherited a family predilection for an abundant show of viands; liked to see—as was usual at an everyday breakfast there—a ham just cut, a cold turkey, round of beef, and delicate clear honey, with other sweet things, for which his mother's housekeeping was famed. This was not all. The room formed one side of a light angle in the picturesque old house, and from two sides of the table one could see a magnificent pyrocanthus, the contrast between its scarlet berries and the table-cloth positively delicious.

Robert and Alfred lingered one morning after the rest of the family had left this room. Alfred was considering that it might be possible to enjoy life in the country; Robert was watching him, half-curiously, half-jealously: he did not believe that his brother was handsomer than himself; but he detested the ease of manner and ready wit that gave him ascendancy disproportioned to his years. He threw himself back in a large armchair, stretched his legs, and said: "I'm not sure that I don't envy you, Bob, after all."

"Your condescension is great certainly. Have you been all this time finding out that it is a good thing to be George Wickham's eldest son?"

{403}

"Ah, yes!—eldest son. Well, it's a comfort for the younger ones that there's no superior merit in being born first. But I'm not going to philosophize; it's too much trouble, and not your line. But, really, to breakfast here every morning in all this splendid comfort, the prettiest and gentlest of mothers pressing you to eat and drink more than is good for you; and that lovely fairy, Polly—that perfect Hebe —flitting about—is more than even an eldest son ought to enjoy. How sorry you will be next year, when you come of age, unless"—and he looked searchingly, through half-closed eyes, at Bob.

"Why, pray? And unless what?"

"Only that I conclude you will then set up a house of your own, unless— as it is evident my mother could not part from pretty Polly—unless you arrange to live here, and marry our pet."

Strange flushings and palenesses passed over Robert's face, and he had to master a choking in his throat and heaving of his chest before he spoke. He had never had his hidden feelings put into words before—he had not even any definite intention about the young girl whom his eye followed stealthily every where, and whose voice, the rustling of whose dress even, was music to him. He only knew that he should throttle any one who laid a finger on her. He had not guessed that any one connected him with her, even in thought; and now here was all that was most secret and sacred in his heart dragged out, and held mockingly before him by a boy two years younger than himself. It seemed to him hours instead of seconds before he spoke, and his voice had the passionate tremulousness which betrays great interior tumult; he was sure that he should say something he would rather not say, but conscious every moment's delay gave an advantage to his abhorred tormentor. Without raising his eyes, he said hoarsely, "The Wickhams are proud—they don't make low marriages."

"Upon my word, Bob," returned his brother patronizingly, "I respect you; I did not give you credit for so much good sense. The girl's a perfect beauty, no doubt. What a sensation she'd make in London! But, after all, she's our servant's daughter, and old Molly Brown's grandchild. Then, again, that unlucky religion of hers! The Scharderlowes throw a respectability over it here, for they are well-born and wealthy, but anywhere else it would be extremely awkward for you. I confess I had a motive for sounding you. Farmer Briggs's eldest son hinted to me yesterday that he should be happy to lay West Hill at Polly's feet."

"He 's an insolent rascal!" said Robert furiously.

"My dearest Bob, why? The poor fellow has eyes, and uses them; and one would not wish our Hebe to be an old maid."

"I say," reiterated Robert, deadly pale, and stamping, "he's an insolent rascal; and if I catch him coming to this house I'll tell him so. A rustic boor like that to hint at marrying a girl who has always been my parents' pet, and is my mother's favorite companion—"

He stopped abruptly; and his brother, who was a perfect mimic, continued in precisely his tone, "And is so dear to Robert Wickham, that he will not hear her name coupled with another man's—"

He had gone too far; Robert's indignation boiled over—he sprang at him—and before he had time to stir, struck him a blow between the eyes, which brought sparks from them, and blood from his nose. A crash and struggle followed, which Polly heard. She ran to the room, anticipating nothing more than that some of the large dogs, privileged to roam about the house, were quarrelling over the cold meat. Amazed, beyond all power of words, she stood silent and very pale. Then, feeling, young as she was, instinctive womanly power over the disgraced young men, and holding herself {404} so erect that she looked a head taller than usual, she said, coldly and firmly, "I am ashamed of you!"

By that time they were ashamed of themselves. Alfred, covering his disfigured face with his handkerchief, left the room slowly. Robert, who had received no visible hurt, threw up a sash, jumped out, and when he turned to shut the window, looked earnestly and sadly at Polly, so as to bring a strange unwelcome sensation to her heart.

There was an awkwardness at dinner that day. Polly had removed the traces of the fray, and kept her counsel; but Alfred's features defied concealment. He stayed in his room with raw beef on them, and mutton-broth and barley-water for his regimen. His mother and Betty could get nothing out of him but that Bob was a fool, and had licked him for teasing him. He was by no means given to repentance; but his bruises, and a message from the vicar, desiring to see him early next morning, led him to the conclusion that he had better have "kept his tongue within his teeth." He was sufficiently humbled to receive silently unusually severe reproofs from his guardian, who had informed him that he had sent for him in order to avoid the risk of paining his excellent mother. It was not only that he knew all that Betty could tell of "the row" between the brothers, and that he denounced the "ruffianliness" of "brawling in a widowed mother's house," but that Mr. Kemp, in whose house in London he lived, had inclosed bills of disgraceful amount, in a letter complaining that Alfred's taste for pleasure threatened to be his ruin; and regretting that justice to his own family compelled him to decline retaining him as an inmate after the approaching midsummer. The young man's unusual power of pleasing, he said, made his example peculiarly dangerous.

"And now," said the vicar, "I ask you if your heart is not touched by the thought of the pain that this letter would give your dead father, were he living; and if you could bear your mother to know it? It is only for her sake that I spare you. I will beg Mr. Kemp to retract his resolution to dismiss you, if you become steadier, and I shall charge him to let it be known that I will not pay any bills that exceed the limit of your very handsome allowance: and I warn you that my natural easiness and indolence shall not prevent my being severe if you require it. As to the affair yesterday, I shall not inquire into it; but I warn you that the recurrence of anything so disgraceful shall prevent your spending your vacations at home; and I am sorry to say to one of my good uncle's sons, that I am glad he must return to town the day after to-morrow."

Alfred was surprised and alarmed, and made professions of penitence, and promises of amendment.

There was a visible change thenceforward in Robert. He became more manly in his bearing; and variable in his manner to Polly, saying even at times very sharp things to her. The sweet-tempered girl gave no provocation, and felt no resentment; but hid sometimes a tear. She did not like to displease any one whom Mrs. Wickham loved. Robert attended to business, took his proper place in society, and was popular; and she felt it a relief when he was out, and she had not to play for him. It was within three months of his twenty-first birthday, when, on one of the frequent occasions of his dining with the vicar, that gentleman asked him what were his plans. He replied that he hadn't any.

"But, my dear boy, my authority over you is near its end, and so is your enforced residence with your mother. It is time to think where you will live."

"I don't think my mother will turn me out."

"No; but as her allowance for you ceases with your minority, you must, in fairness to her, either contribute to {405} the household income, or get a home of your own."

"I don't anticipate any difficulty about it."

"Merton Paddocks is to be let," continued William. "It is a nice little place, and suitable to you in many ways. If you let it slip, you may regret it. Your marrying is to be calculated on, and in that event your living with your mother might not be agreeable to all parties."

"I don't think of marrying."

"Oh, nonsense! every man's turn comes; and why should you escape?"

"As you escaped, perhaps." "Me!—one old bachelor in a family is enough in two generations; and my case may not be obstinate. I'm not actually too old."

"May I ask whom you think of elevating to the vicarage?" asked Robert, laughing; but there was a pause which, he could not imagine why, made him uncomfortable, before his cousin said:

"I have thought of Polly—do you forbid the banns?"

The room seemed turning round with Robert; but he swallowed a glass of wine hastily, and said, as carelessly as he could, "That child!"

"Child! I don't know—she's seventeen, and I'm thirty-two—the difference there was between your parents' ages when they married; and Polly is two years older than your mother was then."

"Perhaps I'm no judge of the matter, William, but as you have broached the subject, excuse me if I ask if you have any notion that Polly is attached to you."

"None whatever; but any man can marry any woman provided he have a fair field and no favor. What has really kept me doubtful has been a distinct difficulty about pretty Polly's birth. It is awkward; and the Wickhams have always been sensitive on such points; but I've nearly resolved to sacrifice pride to Polly's charms. Her beauty and grace would adorn any position; and as soon as my guardianship, and consequent business relations with her father, ceases, I shall probably ask my aunt's consent and blessing. It will be great promotion for her pet, and insure her having her near her for life. Meanwhile, Bob, I rely on your silence."

"Certainly."

Poor Robert! Here was one of his own family seeing no difficulty about marrying the girl of whom he had spoken as beneath himself! another man talking with assurance of being Polly's husband as soon as he thought fit! while he, who had been domesticated with her from her infancy—had never dared to give her a playful kiss since they had ceased to be children—had never ventured on the least demonstration of the fondness that tormented him for expression. He made an excuse to go home early; walked in the shrubbery, wretched and irresolute, till midnight; went to his room, threw himself undressed on the bed, had some uneasy sleep, rose early, walked again, and appeared at breakfast haggard and irritable. His mother observed it, and was distressed. He had sat up too late, he said; and, for once, William's wine was bad. He would not go to the brewery that day; but, if she liked, he would drive her and Polly in the phaeton to Larchton, and they could give Betty a treat by taking her. She was always glad to visit her native place, and he knew she had not been there for a long time. His mother was willing. Larchton was a two hours' drive; and they put up the horses there.

Mrs. Wickham and Betty went to see some old people; and Robert proposed to Polly to take a walk. She remembered afterward that she had had an unusual feeling about that walk. They had often walked together before, as a brother and sister might.

For the first time, however, Robert said, "Take my arm, Polly."

She took it; and they proceeded in silence in the fields for some minutes.

Then he said abruptly, "Do you {406} ever think of getting married, Polly?"

"No," she replied with an innocent laugh; "what would Mrs. Wickham do without me?"

"And do you expect never to love any one better than my mother?"

"I really don't think it would be possible."

"But, Polly, you're not a child. You know there's a different—love the love my father had for my mother."

"I have never thought about it," she said carelessly.

Her manner gave him courage; it was so easy and unconscious. Taking the little hand that was on his arm, and holding it so firmly that he could not feel her effort to withdraw it, he went on: "Polly, I made an excuse to come here that I might talk to you without interruption. The love that my father had for my mother, I have for you. I cannot tell when it began; but I first knew how strong it was when Alfred came home first from London. I was madly jealous of him because he was forward and I was bashful. Do you remember the morning you found us fighting in the breakfast-parlor? He had provoked me so much by something that he said about you, that I could not help striking him. I don't know what I might have done if you hadn't come in then; and I've never been happy since. I've been irritable, and sometimes, I know, cross and disagreeable. Something occurred last night which I can't tell you now—I may another time—which made me wretched; and I made up my mind this morning to put myself out of suspense, and ask you, Polly, to be my wife."

He had been too full of his story to look at her while he was speaking, but he looked then eagerly for her answer. He could not read the lovely countenance which new and various feelings made different from anything he had ever seen. The soft eyelids down, the lashes moist, the lips trembling, the flush so deep that it would have spoiled a less delicate skin. She was surprised to find how much he loved her; grateful to him; sorry she had made him unhappy, and believed him ill-tempered. Then came a rapid thought of how handsome he was; but, sweeping everything away, perplexity followed. What would Mrs. Wickham and her father wish her to do? What would Father Armand say?

Robert could not guess all this; and there was almost agony in his voice as he said, "Oh, Polly, Polly, do speak to me!"

She made a great effort, and replied, "I don't know what to say, or what I ought to do!"

"Say, at any rate, that you don't dislike me."

"Oh, no!" she said readily, almost laughing to think that he could suppose that possible.

"One thing more, Polly; do you prefer any one else?"

She hesitated a minute, for her quick wit told her that the question involved a great deal; but she answered firmly, though shyly, "No; I do not."

Distrustful as he had been of his power to please her, this was enough for the time to make him almost beside himself with delight.

He said "God bless you!" heartily; and was silent awhile because he could not command his voice. He resumed, "As to your 'ought to do,' don't say anything to any one till I've spoken to my mother. We'll go and look for her now." He talked a great deal of nonsense on the way, and Polly said very little then, or during the drive. She was ashamed to look at Mrs. Wickham, and was glad that her attention was drawn from her to Robert. He "touched up" the young horses so wildly, that she declared he should never drive her again, if he did not behave better. Directly they got home, he told her that he wanted to speak to her that moment alone; and he poured out his story. Such an old, old story! So like what her own dead and buried George had told her long, long ago. She stand in the way of an innocent love, and between two of the creatures dearest to her on earth! She would be very glad {407} to have Polly as a daughter—she loved her as one. As to pride and such nonsense, people who had loved and lost, as she had, knew all its profound folly. Polly's beauty and goodness might make any husband proud, any home happy. As to William, there was no injustice done him. In the first place, she was sure that Polly could never be brought to think of him as a husband. She looked on him as quite an old man—he was getting very bald; and in the next place, if he had had any real love for her, he could not have spoken so coolly and confidently of winning her. Robert said that the last observation was corroborated by his own experience, and that his mother was a remarkably sensible woman. Thereupon she smiled, and kissed and blessed him, and advised him to go directly and tell the simple truth to the vicar.

Polly, meanwhile, sat alone in her pretty bedroom—her face buried in her hands, her rich golden hair unbound and falling loosely over her shoulders, dreading to go down to dinner. Not that she was ashamed of dear, dear Mrs. Wickham. No; she could throw her arms around her neck and hide her face there, and make her a confidante without any fear of being repulsed; but how could she look at Robert, much less speak to him? and of course the servant would see and understand all about it. She wished she might stay in her room. If she had but a headache! but she was really perfectly well; and false excuses she never dreamed of making. Robert would be talking to her again as he had talked in the fields. Really, really she did not know what to say to him. Indeed she had never thought of getting married. She had looked forward to living between the Grey House and her father's, beloved and welcome in both; adding to his and Mrs. Wickham's happiness more and more as they grew older and wanted greater care. Why could not this go on, with only the difference that Robert should never be displeased with her? That had made her unhappy. She did like him very much; better than any one, next to her father and Mrs. Wickham; better than good old Aunt Lizzy. He was very handsome, and sang well, and so attentive to his mother; and ever since his father's death he had been quite fond of home. How could he ever have supposed that she preferred any one else? But as to being his wife—he was a Protestant. How she should feel his never going to mass with her, his thinking confession useless, his not believing in the dear Lord in the Blessed Sacrament! She had often felt it hard that conversation about these things must be avoided in the dear Grey House, and that her friends there, fond as they were of her, wished her religion different. If she married Robert, it would be worse, for she should love him better than any one on earth then; her anxiety about his salvation would be so great as to make her quite wretched, and he might not like her to talk to him about it. From her earliest childhood, she prayed for the conversion of the Wickhams. She began by saying one Hail Mary daily for the intention; and since she had been older, she had said many novenas, and offered many communions for it. She really did not think her father would give his consent; and Father Armand would at any rate look grave and sad. She had heard him tell pitiful stories of the unhappiness that had come of mixed marriages among persons whom he knew. She did feel truly unhappy. She walked to her window; she could see thence dear venerable Edward's Hall, and knew exactly where the chapel was. She knelt down, fixing her eyes there, and her heart on her divine Lord in the tabernacle, and asked him that, for the love of his blessed mother, he would help and direct her, and convert her friends.

Robert had not expected to feel it formidable to tell his story to his cousin, and he was equally grieved and surprised by the way in which he received it. He changed countenance so that he looked ten years older; walked rapidly up and down the room; {408} threw himself into a great chair, and buried his face in his hands; asked Robert to ring; ordered sherry, and drank several glasses. Robert, utterly mystified, was trying to say something soothing, when he interrupted him.

"My dear fellow, I'm not simply love-sick; but circumstances, which I will explain another time, do make this a terrible shock to me. I have been such a fool! To any one but myself, your falling in love with Polly would have seemed the most natural thing in the world; but I was blinded, stultified, as men who have—never mind now—go away—I'm not fit to talk—I will call or write to you tomorrow. Blame you! Certainly not. Give my love to your mother and Polly. God bless you all!"

Next morning early came a note stating that he was going from home for a few days; and that if he did not return, he would explain himself fully in the following week.

Worthy of a peerage as Polly Deane seemed to Robert, he could not be ignorant that to marry him was great promotion for her; and though delicacy in her regard, and real respect for her father, made him ask his consent with the utmost deference, he felt that this was a mere matter of good manners.

Mr. Deane was visibly gratified; said that he could never have expected a proposal so complimentary to his child, though he might be pardoned for saying that he thought any one might be proud of her. His obligations to the Wickham family were of many years' standing; in fact, he owed everything to Mr. Wickham. He could never, making all due allowance for Polly's beauty and goodness, express how honored he felt himself and her on that occasion; but—and he made a long pause in evident difficulty how to express himself; and Robert was mute with surprise and alarm.

"But is it possible, Mr. Robert, that Mrs. Wickham and you don't see one very great objection?"

"In the name of heaven, what is it?" gasped Robert.

"Why, surely, sir, the dear child's religion."

"Now is it possible, Deane, that you think we would ever interfere with that? Have we ever done so by word, or look, or deed, in all the years we've known you? Have not you, ever since you came into this business, been free to observe your holy days in your own way? Have we not always been ready—even when my mother's spirits were at the lowest—to spare Polly to go to mass or confession? I am really hurt, and feel that we don't deserve this?"

"It is all true, Mr. Robert, and the Lord reward you, as he will; but don't you see it might be different—I don't say that it would; but I'm bound to do my best for my girl's soul no less than her body—if she was your wife, and so completely in your power? There's no doubt that a young man in love will promise anything, and mean to keep his word too; but ours is a despised religion (God be praised for it!'); it is one among many signs that it is the true one; and you might come to be ashamed that one so near and dear to you belonged to it, and that would breed great unhappiness. Then, again, you might have children, and I should not dare give my consent to their being reared Protestants. Perhaps, if some ancestor of yours had been firm in such a case as this, you and yours might be still of the old faith."

"I'm sure, as far as I'm concerned, Deane, I wish we were. No one will go to heaven, if Polly doesn't; and the religion that would take her there can't be bad for any one. She might make a Catholic of me."

"God grant it, sir; but don't you see that I must not act on chance? If the child was breaking her heart for you, and"—smiling—"it's not come to that yet, I could not let her risk her soul, and perhaps her children's souls."

"Look here, Mr. Deane: I'm quite ready to give you a written promise {409} that I will never interfere in any way with Polly's practising her religion, and that all her children—boys as well as girls—shall be brought up in it; and I'm sure my mother will make no difficulty."

"You cannot say more, Mr. Robert; but still, if you please, I will take a week to think the matter over, and talk about it to Father Armand and Polly, and for that time I think she'd better come home. She must feel awkward in the same house with you under present circumstances. Will you give my respects to Mrs. Wickham, and say that I will call for the child this evening?"

Numerous, and all wide of the truth, were Mrs. Wickham's and Robert's conjectures respecting the vicar. They began even to consider whether he had ever shown any symptoms of insanity, and were thankful to know that it was not hereditary in the family.

The week stipulated for by Mr. Deane passed; and after consulting Father Armand and Mr. Scharderlowe, he agreed to give his consent to Polly's marrying Robert at the end of a year, if he were then equally willing to bind himself by a written promise to respect her faith, and have his children brought up in it. They said they thought that the kind, liberal, honorable character of the Wickhams being considered, and having been proved in all their conduct to the Deanes, and the difficulty of Catholic marrying Catholic (which was far, far greater in England then than it is now) being weighed, the case was as hopeful as a mixed marriage could be.

Robert grumbled about the delay, every one else approved of it. His mother thought a man young to even at twenty-two; and the time seemed to Polly none too long for becoming accustomed to new feelings and new prospects.

Two days after all this was arranged came the vicar's anxiously-expected letter, dated Scarborough. It said:

"MY DEAR ROBERT,—The punishment of my youthful sins and follies, which has been pursuing me for years, has at last fallen so heavily upon me, that I feel inclined to cry out, like Cain, that it is greater than I can bear. Try to believe, as you read my humiliating confession, that the bitterest portion of my suffering is the fact that I have injured my uncle's family; and that I shall regret my pangs less if they prove a useful warning to you and your brothers. I can hardly remember when I was not in debt. Before I was eight years old I owed pence continually for fruits, sweets, toys. I suffered torture for fear of detection while these trifles were owing, but directly they were paid, I began a fresh score. At school I borrowed money of every one who would lend it, and had a bill at every shop to which a boy would be attracted. The misery I continued to endure while I could not pay was always forgotten directly I had paid; and I was in the same difficulty over and over again. I must own, moreover, that I was absolutely without excuse. I had as much money and indulgence of every kind as any boy of my age and position. I went to the university. My allowance was liberal, but my debts became tremendous. I gave endless wine-parties; drove to London frequently; entered into all its pleasures, made expensive presents, bought horses, and betted; and was of course done; finally, I got into the hands of Jews. It is singular that my father never suspected my delinquencies, and that I was wonderfully helped by circumstances. I was young when I succeeded to the living and a large amount of ready money. All was swallowed up in the dreadful gulf that my unprincipled extravagance had made. Year after year the greater portion of my income has gone in payment of exorbitant interest. Your dear father's legacy went that way; and my infamous creditors, having ascertained that his will placed a great deal in my power, threatened me with exposure—which would have {410} been fatal to a man in my position—till I had pacified them with thousands not my own—with, in fact, a considerable portion of your brothers' inheritance.

"At first I stifled my conscience by representing to myself that being released from pressure which had worried me for years, I should have a clear head for business; and recover, by judicious speculation, the sums that I had appropriated—as I hoped—but for a time. I have speculated unfortunately, and made matters infinitely worse; for whereas my previous creditors were rapacious rascals to whom, in justice, nothing was due, my present ones are the helpless children of my warm-hearted, trustful, dead uncle.

"By this time old Smith is, I suppose, dead, and you are aware of his will—as singular as all we know of his life—but he is necessary to my story. A day or two before I told you that I thought of marrying Polly he sent for me, said that he felt himself breaking, and wished me to witness his will, and be aware of its purport, that it might not be said, when he was gone, that he had acted at the priest's instigation. He said that at that moment no one knew he was a Catholic, that he had led a godless life for years, but he meant to make his peace with God before he died. He had no relations who had any claim on him; he had left £100 to Mr. Armand for religious uses, and the rest of his money—nearly £20,000—to Polly. I thought the man mad, and humored him. He understood me, and said so; told me that existence had ceased to be more than endurable when, twenty years ago, he entered Upfield a stranger; and that therefore he had confined himself to the necessaries of life, and been glad to be believed poor. That he had thought of leaving his money to a hospital; but that Polly had become so like the only woman he had ever loved—and whom he had lost by death—that he had grown to feel very fatherly toward her; and his intention to make her his heiress had been decided by a little fact very characteristic of Polly. She was walking with your mother one very windy day, when he was out for nearly the last time, and his hat blew off. He was too infirm to follow it, and every one but Polly was too lazy or too much amused to do so. She ran for it, and brought it to him with a kindness which seems to have thoroughly melted him. If he be still living, this must not be mentioned; but, as I said before, I think it is impossible. It is an old saying that 'drowning men catch at straws.' Oppressed as I was by hopeless remorse, I caught at the notion that I would marry Polly. Her father, I thought, would be pleased with her elevation. I did not anticipate any difficulty in making such a gentle creature love me. I intended to do my utmost to make her life happy; and I knew that she would give up anything to do good to your family. I calculated that, living moderately, my income would be ample, and that I could appropriate Polly's fortune to repaying what I had misused, and still without wronging her—for that, as my wife, she would have advantages far beyond her father's expectations. How all this scheming is defeated, you know. The only reparation now in my power, I make willingly. Deducting a curate's stipend and eighty pounds a year for myself, I will furnish you with full powers to receive the residue of my income, and apply it to your brothers' use. I will appoint Deane guardian in my stead, and furnish him with all necessary documents. If I live—and I pray that I may live for that object—your brothers will not suffer ultimately. I have made my will, and left them whatever property I may possess when I die. I have, you know, expectations from the Heathcotes.

"There is, I hope, some guarantee for my reform in the willingness with which I accept my punishment. I am glad that, with luxurious tastes, I must exist on very narrow means for years; {411} that with sturdy English prejudices I must live among foreigners. I had not courage to make my shameful confession verbally, or to see any of you afterward. I cross hence to Hamburg to-morrow. My further course is undecided, but I will write to you; and Hangham and Hunt, Fleet street, will forward letters to me. Think of all I have lost, of all I have suffered secretly, for years, of my dreary prospects, and try to be merciful to your miserable cousin,—WILLIAM WICKHAM."

Polly had returned to the Grey House. Mrs. Wickham fretted, and Robert—to be candid—was disagreeable in her absence. Shy and conscious though she felt, she was quite willing to go back. Her father was never at home till the evening—not always then. Aunt Lizzie wanted no help or cheering up, and Polly's happiness depended mainly on her being necessary to some one. There is, moreover, no denying that, differently educated as she had been, her aunt's habits and notions were not hers; and I could not say positively that she did not miss Robert, and admit to herself that it was pleasant to expect him at certain times, and to spend a good deal of time in his society. When the vicar's letter arrived, she was at the breakfast-table, doing the duties of president deftly and satisfactorily, as she did everything—housewifely genius as she was.

"What a long affair!" exclaimed Robert, as he glanced at the letter. "What can he have to say? I can't wait to read it now; I must be off to the brewery. Here, my mother, you take it, and tell me all about it when I come back."

She put it in her pocket, remembering that Polly was concerned in it, and not liking to read it before her without mentioning its purport. The thoughtful, methodical damsel soon departed for an hour's duty among birds and flowers, and then the thunderbolt fell on poor Mrs. Wickham. Her darling younger sons were not only fatherless, but almost dependent on their brother. She was no woman of business; but she guessed that there would not be more than £300 a year to come from the vicar, when the deductions he mentioned had been made. She could of course spare £100. What did she want with money? This would meet all the expenses of education, supposing the vicar lived—and if he died! In any case there was no capital to start her sons in their professions; and, unluckily, Alfred, who would want it first, had never been a favorite of Robert's. His assumption of superiority and his sarcasm had nettled him extremely; and he dropped expressions occasionally which showed he had not forgiven him. But Robert would be very well able to help. Even supposing that—as she hoped he would— he did marry Polly, and have a family, his brothers would be off his hands before his children became expensive. If the story about poor old Mr. Smith proved true, he would be a rich man. Polly would of course do something handsome for her father and aunt, and yet have a large fortune. That incident about the hat Mrs. Wickham remembered perfectly; the poor old man looked enraptured when, lovelier even than usual, glowing from her running and good-nature, she gave it to him. It was, however, very wonderful. How much had happened in quiet Upfield during the last two years! Then she began to pity the vicar heartily; to make excuses for him, and forgive him. The sacrifices he made proved the sincerity of his repentance: how miserable he would be for years, poor and lonely in a foreign land! In those days anywhere "abroad" seemed to simple inland folk something terrible. He might get yellow fever, or the plague. She believed them to be imminent anywhere out of the British Isles. She must talk to Polly, and have her for a staunch ally before Robert came home. He had not his father's noble impulsiveness, but he was just and honorable, and she and Polly could do a great deal with him. Of {412} course she should omit telling her about the vicar's having thought of marrying her, and the story about old Smith. One fact would be painful to her; the other might be untrue.

The two guileless creatures agreed fully that Robert must be worked upon to forgive his cousin, and do all that was necessary for his brothers. They were so radiant with hope and charity that their countenances struck Robert peculiarly when he returned, and he said he saw plainly that they had good news to tell him. It was an awkward beginning: his mother feared that the contrary character of her intelligence would displease him the more, and said timidly, "You had really better read William's letter yourself, my dear boy; he tells his story much better than I can."

The rush of events at Upfield seemed, for a few days, overpowering to those whom it concerned; and those whom it concerned not were very much excited. There was the vicar gone—no one knew wherefore or whither, or for how long; and a curate with a wife and seven children had taken possession of his trim bachelor's hall. Then there was Mr. Smith, not very old, probably not more than fifty, dead. And he had turned out to be a rich man! why who could have guessed it? He had appeared one day at the inn, as suddenly as if he had dropped from the clouds—had evidently come a long way afoot—had no luggage but a valise; and was altogether so equivocal-looking that Mr. Mogg, the veterinary surgeon, would not take him as a lodger without his paying six months' rent in advance. He had paid his way regularly, certainly; but no one could have supposed that he had anything to spare. He would never talk of his affairs except to say that he had out-lived all his near relations, and been a great deal in foreign parts. People had suggested that he might be an escaped felon, a man resuscitated after hanging, a deserter, a Jew. On the strength of the last notion Mr. Mogg tested him with roast pig; and he liked it.

Then he never went to church. To be sure he was not the only person in Upfield of whom that might be said; but no one guessed that he was a papist. They had, at last, no proof that he was; but it was understood, though not formally acknowledged, that the librarian at Edward's Hall was a Catholic priest, and that persons of his communion could and did benefit by his ministrations. Such things were winked at, in spite of penal enactments, in the case of some Catholics of high social standing, like Mr. Scharderlowe.

Now this librarian, Mr. Armand, had been sent for by Mr. Smith when he was taken ill, had visited him frequently, and been with him when he died. No doubt he was a papist. That might be the reason he left his money to Polly Deane. Well, well! what luck some people had! Upfield wouldn't be surprised if Robert Wickham married her; and the neighborhood supposed it must call upon her, whether he did or not. It wondered if Mr. and Mrs. Wickham had known all along of Mr. Smith's intention; it wouldn't be surprised; there was something odd in the way they had educated the girl, and taken her out of her sphere. But, after all, Mrs. Pogram said, she mightn't like Robert Wickham; and with such a fortune as hers, she could afford to please herself. Mrs. Pogram's own sons were decidedly finer young men, had more dash, and were in the army—every one knew that girls liked red coats. Lancaster would be coming home soon, on leave. She would call at once; let others do as they pleased. Deane was a highly-respectable man, and no one could be ashamed of his daughter.

A year later there was a large family-gathering at the Grey House at dinner, and Mrs. Wickham presided. Her grief had settled into a placid, subdued character, which, with the weeds, gave a kind of moonlight tone to her appearance, and became her so {413} well that no one could wish to see her ever otherwise.

Robert and Polly, man and wife, had returned that day from a bridal excursion to the English lakes. The younger brothers were assembled to meet them. Aunt Heathcote was there with her ear-trumpet; and queer-tempered Mrs. Trumball, all smiles. Mr. Deane, of the firm of Wickham and Deane, urbane in shorts, black-silk stockings, and silver knee and shoe buckles, was a father of whom the lovely bride felt proud, as she did too of Aunt Lizzie; who looked as if she had worn silks and laces, and kept her soft white large hands in mittens all her life. Deep in every one's heart was the memory of warm-hearted, generous George Wickham, gone for ever from those whose meeting there, and in their mutual relations, he would have made more joyous; but no one named him, for no one could have done it then and there in a voice which would not have been thick with emotion. Tears must have followed any mention of him; and who would have caused their flow at such a happy gathering? Every one knew what every one was feeling and what a long pause meant, which Robert broke by saying with a sigh, "Well, I do wish that poor dear William were here; I am so happy that I wish every one else was; and I hate to think of him, hospitable, affectionate creature, dragging out his days among fat phlegmatic Dutch boors, without a single soul to speak to." Polly, at his side, contrived to give him, under the table, a little squeeze expressive of the fullest approbation.

"I'm glad you have forgiven him, Bob," said his mother.

"Well, really, mother, it was but natural that I should be savage at first. Men can't be quite as tender-hearted as women, I suppose; and they see the consequences of pecuniary frailties more clearly, and suffer more from them, than they do; but I must be a brute if, happy as I am, I didn't wish well to everybody, especially to that good fellow. Now don't cry, Polly."

Her father observed that there were great excuses for the vicar, and that every one must admit that he had done his utmost to make reparation.

"Yes," said Alfred, with mock gravity. It was his delight to puzzle Aunt Lizzie; she never could make out whether he were joking or oracular. "I have learned wisdom through the rudiments of a painful experience; and, steady reformed man of mature years as I find myself, I pronounce that William might have done much worse."

"Shall I write and urge him to come back?" asked Robert.

"Do! do! do!" resounded in various voices all around the table.

"Very well; I'm more than willing. Polly told me confidentially a few days ago that she had no turn for extravagance; and I feel so domestic and moderate, that I fancy we may manage to provide for the fine young family that William's indiscretions have thrown on our hands, though he will be able to give less help than if he remained at Rotterdam."

"Mr. Ridlem's stipend would be saved, you know, Bob."

"Not exactly, mother. William couldn't live at home as he lives now; that would be painful to us and impossible for him."

"True; I forgot that."

"It is difficult for me to put in a word," said Alfred, "because I've been a great expense to Bob, and he hasn't done with me yet; in fact I've no right to make a suggestion; but it is my full intention to reimburse him one of these days. I shouldn't have said so, only the chance of helping to bring William back—"

"You're a good fellow, Alfred; I believe you; and must confess that I have found you less trouble than I expected."

The result of the consultation was a letter to the vicar, signed by every one present, entreating him to return forthwith; a letter over which he cried like {414} a girl. It brought him back speedily, a wiser and not a sadder man. He said indeed that, though down among the dykes, he had never been so happy as since he made all square with his conscience.

To follow the affairs of Upfield and the Wickhams further would involve a series of stories. It must suffice to say that Robert's marriage turned out really well; and that from the day of her betrothal, the dearest wish of Polly's heart was gratified; for he, unasked, joined her and the other stragglers who—the laws notwithstanding—made their way on Sundays and holidays to a side-entrance in venerable old Edward's Hall, and were admitted to mass in the little well-loved chapel; Mr. Armand the librarian, identical with Father Armand the priest, thanking God devoutly for the addition to the fold.

From The Month.

A LOST CHAPTER OF CHURCH HISTORY RECOVERED.

BY JAMES SPENCER NORTHCOTE, D.D.

If we set before a skilful professor of comparative anatomy a few bones dug out of the bowels of the earth, he will re-construct for us the whole form of the animal to which they belonged; and it sometimes happens that these theoretical constructions are singularly justified by later discoveries. It is the province of an archaeologian to attempt something of the same kind. A historian transcribes for our use annals more or less fully composed and faithfully transmitted by his predecessors. He may have to gather his materials from various sources; he must distinguish the true from the false; and he gives shape, consistency, and life to the whole; but, for the most part at least, he has little to supply that is new from any resources of his own. The archaeologian, on the contrary, if he be really a man of learning and science, and not a mere collector of old curiosities, aims at discovering and restoring annals that are lost, by means of a careful and intelligent use of every fragment of most heterogeneous materials that happens to come across him. And there is certainly nobody in the present age whose talent and industry in this branch of learning, so far at least as Christian archaeology is concerned, can at all compare with that of Cavaliere G. B. de Rossi. For more than twenty years he has devoted himself to the study of the Roman catacombs, and at length we begin to enter upon the fruit of his labors. He has just published (by order of the Pope, and at the expense, we believe, of the Commission of Sacred Archaeology, instituted by his Holiness in 1851) the first volume of Roma Sotteranea; a magnificent volume, splendidly illustrated, and full of new and varied information. An abstract of its contents would hardly be suitable to our pages; but none, we think, can fail to be interested in what we may venture to call the first chapter of the History of the Catacombs—a chapter that had certainly never before been written, even if it had been attempted.

All earlier authors upon subterranean Rome, so far as our experience goes, whilst describing fully, and it may be illustrating with considerable learning, the catacombs as they now exist, and all the monuments they {415} contain, have been content to pass over with a few words of apology and conjecture the question of their origin and early history. They have told us that the Jewish residents in Rome had burial-places of a similar character; and they have shown how natural and probable it was that the first Roman Christians, unwilling to burn their dead in pagan fashion, should have imitated the practices of the ancient people of God. When pressed to explain how so gigantic a work, as the Roman catacombs undoubtedly are, could have been carried on by the Christians under the very feet of their bitter persecutors, yet without their knowledge, they have pointed to the rare instance of a cemetery entered by a staircase hidden within the recesses of a sand-pit; they have guessed that here or there some Christian patrician, some senator or his wife, may have given up a garden or a vineyard for use as a burial-ground; and then they have passed on to the much easier task of enumerating the subterranean chapels, tracing the intricacies of the galleries, or describing the paintings, sculptures, and inscriptions. The work of De Rossi is of a very different character. It begins ab ovo, and proceeds scientifically. It shows not only how these wonderful cemeteries may have been made, but also—as far as is practicable, and a great deal further than nine-tenths even of the most learned archaeologians ever supposed to be practicable—how and when each cemetery really was made. From the few scattered bones, so to speak, which lay buried, and for the most part broken, partly in the depths of the catacombs themselves, partly in the Acts of the Martyrs, the Liber Pontificalis, and a few other records of ecclesiastical history, he has reconstructed with consummate skill the complete skeleton, if we should not rather say has reproduced the whole body, and set it full of life and vigor before us. Not that he has indulged in hasty conjectures, or given unlimited scope to a lively imagination; far from it. On the contrary, we fear many of his less learned readers will be disposed to find fault with the slow and deliberate, almost ponderous, method of his progress, and to grow impatient under the mass of minute criticisms with which some of his pages are filled, and by which he insists upon justifying each step that he takes. Indeed, we have some scruple at presenting our readers with the sum and substance of his argument, divested of all these pièces justificatives, as our neighbors would call them, lest they should suspect us of inventing rather than describing. However, we think it is too precious a page of Church history to be lost, and we therefore proceed to publish it, only premising that nobody must pretend to judge of its truth merely from the naked abstract of it which we propose to give, but that all who are really interested in the study should examine for themselves in detail the whole mass of evidence by which, in De Rossi's pages, it is supported, most of which is new, and all newly applied.

To tell our story correctly, it is necessary we should step back into pagan times, and first take a peep at their laws and usages in the matter of burials. No classical scholar need be told how strictly prohibited by old Roman law was all intra-mural interment. Indeed every traveller knows that all the great roads leading into Rome were once lined on either side with sepulchral monuments, many of which still remain; and the letters inscribed upon them tell us how many feet of frontage, and how many feet at the back (into the field), belonged to each monument, [IN. FR. P. so many. IN. AG. P. so many. In fronte, pedum—. In agro, pedum—.] M. de Rossi (the brother of our author) has published a very interesting plan of one of these monuments with all its dependencies, as represented on an ancient marble slab dug up on the Via Lavicana. On this slab, not only are the usual measurements of frontage and depth carefully recorded, but also the private or public roads which crossed the {416} property, the gardens and vineyards of which it consisted, the swampy land on which grew nothing but reeds (it is called Harundinetum), and the ditch by which, on one side at least, it was bounded. Unfortunately the slab is not perfect, so that we cannot tell the exact measurement of the whole. Enough, however, remains to show that the property altogether was not less than twelve Roman jugera, or nearly 350,000 square feet; and other inscriptions are extant, specifying an amount of property almost equal to this as belonging to a single monument (e.g. Huic monumento cedunt agri puri jugera decem). The necessity for so large an assignment of property to a single tomb was not so much the vastness of the mausoleum to be erected, as because certain funeral rites were to be celebrated there year by year, on the anniversary of the death, and at other times; sacrifices to be offered, feasts to be given, etc.; and for these purposes exedrae were provided, or semi-circular recesses, furnished with sofas and all things necessary for the convenience of guests. A house also (custodia) was often added, in which a person should always live to look after the monument, for whose support these gardens, vineyards, or other hereditaments were set apart as a perpetual endowment. It only remains to add, that upon all these ancient monuments may be found these letters, or something equivalent to them, H.M.H.EX.T.N.S. (Hoc monumentum haeredes ex testamento ne sequatur); in other words, "This tomb and all that belongs to it is sacred; henceforth it can neither be bought nor sold; it does not descend to my heirs with the rest of my property; but must ever be retained inviolate for the purpose to which I have destined it, viz., as a place of sepulchre for myself and my family," or certain specified members only of the family; or, in some rare instances, others also external to the family. The same sacred character which attached to the monuments themselves belonged also to the area in which they stood, the hypogeum or subterranean chamber, which not unfrequently was formed beneath them; but it is a question whether it extended to the houses or other possessions attached to them.

Nor were these monuments confined to the noblest and wealthiest citizens. Even in the absence of all direct evidence upon the subject, we should have found it hard to believe that any but the very meanest of the slaves were buried (or rather were thrown without any burial at all) into those open pits (puticoli) of which Horace and others have told us. And in fact, a multitude of testimonies have come down to us of the existence, both in republican and imperial Rome, of a number of colleges, as they were called, or corporations (clubs or confraternities, as we should more probably call them), whose members were associated, partly in honor of some particular deity, but far more with a view to mutual assistance for the performance of the just funeral rites. Inscriptions which are still extant testify to nearly fourscore of these collegia, each consisting of the members of a different trade or profession. There are the masons and carpenters, soldiers and sailors, bakers and cooks, corn-merchants and wine-merchants, hunters and fishermen, goldsmiths and blacksmiths, dealers in drugs and carders of wool, boatmen and divers, doctors and bankers, scribes and musicians—in a word, it would be hard to say what trade or employment is not here represented. Not, however, that this is the only bond of fellowship upon which such confraternities were built; sometimes, indeed generally, the members were united, as we have already said, in the worship of some deity; they were cultores Jovis, or Herculis, or Apollinis et Diana; sometimes they merely took the title of some deceased benefactor whose memory they desired to honor; e. g. cultores statuarum et clipeorum L. Abulli Dextri; and sometimes the only bond of union seems to have been service in the same house or family. A long {417} and curious inscription belonging to one of these colleges, consisting mainly of slaves, and erected in honor of Diana and Antinous, and for the burial of the dead, in the year 133 of our era, reveals a number of most interesting particulars as to its internal organization, which are worth repeating in this place. So much was to be paid at entrance, and a keg of good wine beside, and then so much a month afterward; for every member who has regularly paid up his contribution, so much to be allowed for his funeral, of which a certain proportion to be distributed amongst those who assist; if a member dies at a distance of more than twenty miles from Rome, three members are to be sent to fetch the body, and so much is to be allowed them for travelling expenses; if the master (of the slave) will not give up the body, he is nevertheless to receive all the funeral rites; he is to be buried in effigy; if any of the members, being a slave, receives his freedom, he owes the college an amphora of good wine; he who is elected president (magister), must inaugurate his accession to office by giving a supper to all the members; six times a year the members dine together in honor of Diana, Antinous, and the patron of the college, and the allowance of bread and of wine on these occasions is specified; so much to every mess of four; no complaints or disputed questions may be mooted at these festivals, "to the end that our feasts may be merry and glad;" finally, whoever wishes to enter this confraternity is requested to study all the rules first before he enters, lest he afterward grumble or leave a dispute as a legacy to his heir.

We are afraid we have gone into the details of this ancient burial club more than was strictly necessary for our purpose; but we have been insensibly drawn on by their extremely interesting character, reminding us (as the Count de Champagny, from whom we have taken them, most justly remarks) both of the ancient Christian Agapae, or love-feasts, and (we may add) the mediaeval guilds. This, however, suggests a train of thought which we must not be tempted to pursue. De Rossi has been more self-denying on the subject; he confines himself to a brief mention of the existence of the clubs, refers us to other authors for an account of them, and then calls our attention to this very singular, and for our purpose most important fact concerning them: viz., that at a time when institutions of this kind had been made a cover for political combinations and conspiracies, or at least when the emperors suspected and feared such an abuse of them, and therefore rigorously suppressed them, nevertheless an exception was expressly made in favor of those which consisted of "poorer members of society, who met together every month to make a small contribution toward the expenses of their funeral;" and then he puts side by side with this law the words of Tertullian in his Apology, written about the very same time, where he speaks of the Christians contributing every month, or when and as each can and chooses, a certain sum to be spent on feeding and burying the poor. The identity of language in the two passages, when thus brought into juxtaposition, is very striking; and we suppose that most of our readers will now recognize the bearing of all we have hitherto been saying upon the history of the Christian catacombs, from which we have seemed to be wandering so, far.

We have already said that one of the first questions which persons are inclined to ask when they either visit, or begin to study, the catacombs, is this: How was so vast a work ever accomplished without the knowledge and against the will of the local authorities? And we answer (in part at least), as the Royal Scientific Society should have answered King Charles the Second's famous question about the live fish and the dead fish in the tub of water, "Are you quite sure of your facts? Don't call upon us to {418} find the reason of a problem which, after all, only exists perhaps in your own imagination." And so in truth it is. The arguments of the Cavaliere de Rossi have satisfied us that the Christians of the first ages were under no necessity of having recourse to extraordinary means of secrecy with reference to the burial of their dead; it was quite possible for them to have cemeteries on every side of Rome, under the protection of the ordinary laws and practices of their pagan neighbors.

But is not this to revolutionize the whole history of these wonderful excavations? We cannot help it, if it be so; it is at least one of those revolutions which are generally accepted as justifiable, and certainly are approved in their consequences; for when it is complete, everything finds its proper place; books and grave-stones, the cemeteries and their ancient historians, every witness concerned gives its own independent testimony, all in harmony with one another, and with the presumed facts of the case. Let us see how the early history of the catacombs runs, when reconstructed according to this new theory. The first Christian cemeteries were made in ground given for that very purpose by some wealthier member of the community, and secured to it in perpetuity in accordance with the laws of the country. There was nothing to prevent the erection of a public monument in the area thus secured, and the excavation of chambers and galleries beneath. And history tells us of several of the most ancient catacombs that they had their origin from this very circumstance, that some pious Christian, generally a Roman matron of noble rank, buried the relics of some famous martyr on her own property (in praedio suo.)

The oldest memorial we have about the tomb of St. Peter himself is this, that Anacletus "memoriam construxit B. Petri, and places where the bishops (of Rome) should be buried;" and this language is far more intelligible and correct, if spoken of some public tomb, than of an obscure subterranean grave; memoria, or cella memoriae, being the classical designation of such tombs. How much more appropriate also does the language of Caius the presbyter, preserved to us by Eusebius, now appear, wherein he speaks (in the days of Zephyrinus) of the trophies of the apostles being to be seen at the Vatican and on the Ostian way? Tertullian, too, speaks of the bodies of the martyrs lying in mausoleums and monuments, awaiting the general resurrection. From the same writer we learn that the areae of the Christian burials were known to and were sacrilegiously attacked by the enraged heathens in the very first years of the third century; and quite recently there has reached us from this same writer's country a most valuable inscription, discovered among the ruins of a Roman building, not far from the walls of the ancient Caesarea of Mauritania, which runs in this wise: "Euelpius, a worshipper of the word (cultor Verbi; mark the word, and call to mind the cultores Jovis, etc.), has given this area for sepulchres, and has built a cella at his own cost. He left this memoria to the holy church. Hail, brethren: Euelpius, with a pure and simple heart, salutes you, born of the Holy Spirit." It is true that this inscription, as we now have it, is not the original stone; it is expressly added at the foot of the tablet, that Ecclesia fratrum has restored this titulus at a period subsequent to the persecution during which the original had been destroyed; but both the sense and the words forbid us to suppose that any change had been made in the language of the epitaph, to which we cannot assign a date later than the middle of the third century. But, finally, and above all, let us descend into the catacombs themselves, and put them to the question. Michael Stephen de Rossi, the constant companion of his brother's studies, having invented some new mechanical contrivance for taking plans of subterranean excavations, [Footnote 78] has made exact {419} plans of several catacombs, not only of each level (or floor, so to speak) within itself, but also in its relations to the superficial soil, and in the relations of the several floors one with another. A specimen of these is set before us by means of different colors or tints, representing the galleries of the different levels, in the map of the cemetery of St. Callixtus, which accompanies this volume; and a careful study of this map is sufficient to demonstrate that the vast net-work of paths in this famous cemetery originally consisted of several smaller cemeteries, confined each within strict and narrow limits, and that they were only united at some later, though still very ancient period. For it cannot have been without reason that the subterranean galleries should have doubled and re-doubled upon themselves within the limits of a certain well-defined area; that they should never have overstepped a certain boundary-line in this or that direction, though the nature of the soil and every other consideration would have seemed to invite them to proceed; that they should have been suddenly interrupted by a flight of steps, penetrating more deeply into the bowels of the earth, and there been reproduced exactly upon the same scale and within the same limits. These facts can only be fully appreciated by an actual examination of the map, where they speak for themselves; but even those who have not this advantage will scarcely call in question the conclusion that is drawn from them, when they call to mind how exactly it coincides with all the ancient testimonies we have already adduced on the subject, and when they learn the singular and most interesting fact, that the Cav. de Rossi has been able in more than one instance, by means of the sepulchral inscriptions, to identify the noble family by whom the site of the cemetery was originally granted.

[Footnote 78: It was highly commended and received a prize at the International Exhibition of 1862.]

It will be of course understood that we have been speaking of the earliest ages of the Church's history, and that we are far from denying that there were other periods during which secrecy was an essential condition of the Christian cemeteries; on the contrary, did our space allow, we could show what parts of the catacombs belonged to the one period, and what to the other, and what are the essential characteristics of each. We might unfold also, with considerable minuteness, the economy of these cemeteries, even during the ages of persecution; under whose management they were administered, whether they were parochial or otherwise, together with many other highly interesting particulars. But we have already exceeded the limits assigned us, and we hope that those of our readers who wish to know more on the subject will take care to possess themselves of the book from which we have drawn our information, that so funds may not be wanting for the completion of so useful a work. Nothing but a deficiency of funds, in the present condition of the pontifical treasury, hinders the immediate issue of other volumes of this and its kindred work, the Inscriptiones Christianae, by the same author. He announces his intention to bring out the volumes of Roma Sotterranea and of the Inscriptions alternately, for they mutually explain and illustrate one another, and are in fact parts of the same whole; and the public has been long impatient for the volume which is promised next, viz., the ancient inscriptions which illustrate Christian dogma.

{420}

MISCELLANY.

ART.

Domestic.—The fortieth annual exhibition of the National Academy of Design was opened to the public on the evening of April 27th, under circumstances which may well mark an era in the history of that institution. After drifting from place to place through forty long years, now deficient in funds, and now in danger of losing public sympathy or support, sometimes unable to carry out its specific purposes, and almost always cramped for space, or otherwise perplexed in the details of its public exhibitions, the Academy, like Noah's ark, long buffetted by waves and driven by tempests, finds a resting place, not on Mount Ararat, but at the corner of Fourth avenue and Twenty-third street. And as the "world's gray fathers," after their troubled voyage, regarded with infinite satisfaction terra firma and the blue sky, so doubtless the older of the academicians, those who have accompanied the institution in all its wanderings, are doubtless both pleased and amazed to find themselves arrived at a goodly haven with secure anchorage. To drop the figure, the Academy is now permanently established in an attractive and convenient building, well situated in a central locality, and bids fair to enter upon a career of usefulness far beyond the results of its previous experience.

The new building has been for so long a time completed externally, that its merits have been canvassed with every shade of opinion, from enthusiastic commendation to quite as decided disapprobation. The majority of critics, having their reputation at stake, are afraid to hazard an opinion, and prudently remain neutral, until some authoritative decision shall be made. As an architectural effort it may be called an experiment, on which account it presents perhaps as many claims to critical notice as the works of art which adorn its walls. The style, singularly enough, is assigned to no special era or country, but is described to be of "that revived Gothic, now the dominant style in England, which combines those features of the different schools of architecture of the Middle Ages which are most appropriate to our nineteenth-century buildings," which means probably that the building is of an eclectic Gothic pattern. All modern styles since the renaissance may be said to be eclectic, whether founded on antique or mediaeval models, and the building in question differs from other Gothic edifices, of more familiar aspect to us, chiefly in form, external decoration, and the arrangement of its component parts. In the American mind Gothic architecture is associated chiefly with ecclesiastical structures and is popularly supposed to be subject to no fixed laws, beyond an adherence to the irregular and picturesque. Given a cruciform ground-plan, a pointed spire, steep roof, narrow arched windows, buttresses, and pinnacles ad libitum, and you have as good a Gothic building as the public taste can appreciate. Here, however, is a nearly square building, covering an area of eighty by about a hundred feet, which is neither a church nor a college, and is without steep roof, spire, buttresses, or pinnacles. The public evidently do not fathom the mystery at present, and those whose praise of the new Academy borders on the extravagant, are perhaps as much astray in their adherence to the omne ignotum pro magnifico principle as those wiseacres who tell you knowingly that the architect has tried to palm off upon us a palpable imitation of the doge's palace in Venice. If the latter class of critics will refresh their memory a little, or consult any good print of Venetian architecture, they will find about as much resemblance between the two buildings as exists between the old Custom House in Wall street and the Parthenon. The plain fact is that we are so unused to Gothic architecture, applied to secular purposes, and to any other forms of it than the ecclesiastical, as to be without sufficient data to form a correct idea of the present edifice. And yet, such is the conceit of criticism, that thousands of persons pronounce their judgment upon it with as much confidence as they would upon a trivial matter perfectly {421} familiar to them. These may yet find that hasty opinions are dangerous.

The Academy, as has been hinted above, is of rectangular shape, having three stories, of which the first is devoted to the life school and the school of design, the second to the library, reception rooms, council room, and similar apartments, and the third to the exhibition galleries, five in number, with which at present we have specially to deal. The main entrance to the building is on Twenty-third street. Passing up a double flight of marble steps and through a magnificent Gothic portal into a vestibule, the visitor next enters the great hall, in the centre of which commences a broad stairway, consisting at first of a double flight of steps, and ultimately of a single flight, leading to the level of the exhibition floor. Running all around the open space on this story caused by the stairway is a corridor, two sides of which, parallel with the stairway, comprise a double arcade, supported on columns of variegated and polished marble, the capitals of which, of white marble, are hereafter to be sculptured in delicate leaf-and-flower work from nature. Opening from this corridor are the exhibition rooms, which also communicate with each other, and of which the largest is thirty by seventy-six feet, and the smallest, used as a gallery of sculpture, is twenty-one feet square. These are all lighted by sky-lights, and are intended for the purposes of the annual exhibitions. In the corridor surrounding the stairway are to be hung the works of art belonging to the Academy, although at present its walls are covered with pictures contributed to this year's exhibition. The several rooms described are well-lighted, and though smaller perhaps than the large outlay upon the building might have led the public to expect, seem excellently adapted for their purposes. The largest of them is a model exhibition gallery in respect to proportions and light, and all are tastefully finished and pannelled with walnut from floor to ceiling. Throughout the building the same costly and durable style prevails, the wood-work being of oak and walnut, and the vestibules floored with mosaic of tiles.

So much for the interior, against which no serious complaint has been uttered. Externally the walls of the basement story are of gray marble relieved by bands of graywacke, those of the story above of white marble with similar bands, while the uppermost story is of white marble with checker-work pattern of oblong gray blocks, laid stair-fashion. The whole is surmounted by a rich arcaded cornice of white marble. The double flight of white marble steps on Twenty-third street, leading to the main entrance, is, perhaps, the most marked feature of the building, at once graceful, rich, and substantial, and may fairly challenge comparison with any similar structure of like pattern in the country. Under the platform is a triple arcade, inclosing a drinking-fountain, and profusely decorated with sculpture, and from the upper landing springs the great arched Gothic portal, large enough almost for the entrance to a cathedral. On either side of this are two columns of red Vermont marble with white marble capitals and bases, on which rests a broad archivolt enriched with sculpture and varied by voussoirs, alternately white and gray. The tympanum above the door is to be filled with an elaborate mosaic of colored tile work. The basement windows, on Fourth avenue, are double, with segmental arches, each pair of which is supported in the middle on a clustered column with rich carved capital and base. All the other windows in the building have pointed arches, and the archivolts of those in the first story are decorated like that of the doorway. In the place of windows on the gallery floor are circular openings for ventilation, filled with elaborate tracery. The building was designed by Mr. P. B. Wight, and erected at a cost of over two hundred thousand dollars.

Without attempting to inquire whether this or that portion of the building is correctly designed, or even whether the whole is entirely satisfactory, or the reverse, we may say that in the opinion of most persons the external flight of steps and the entrance are too large and elaborate for the building, reminding one of those remarkable edifices for banking or other public purposes occasionally to be seen in this city, which are all portico, as if the main structure had walked away, or had not been considered of sufficient importance to be added to the entrance. It is partly owing to this defect, and partly to the insufficient area on which it is built, {422} that the Academy seems wanting in height and depth, and therefore devoid of just proportions—has in fact an unmistakable dumpy look. Many an architect before Mr. Wight has been prevented by want of space from effectively developing ideas intrinsically good, and perhaps the severest criticism that can be pronounced against him in the present instance is that ambition has led him to attempt what his better judgment might have taught him was impossible. "Cut your coat according to your cloth," is a maxim of which the applicability is not yet exhausted. Again, the obtrusive ugliness of the skylights, rising clear above the sculptured cornices, can hardly fail to offend the eye, and suggests the idea of an encumbered or even an overloaded roof. If to these defects be added the curious optical delusion by which the gray marble checker-work on the upper story appears uneven and awry, and which denotes a radical error in design, we believe we have mentioned the chief features of the building which even those who profess to admire it unite in condemning. The objection that the building is of unusual form and appearance, and out of keeping with the styles of architecture in vogue with us, is not worthy of serious consideration.

Having said so much in depreciation of the Academy, we must also say that it conveys on the whole an elegant, artistic, and even cheerful impression to the mind, relieving, with its beautiful contrasts of white and gray and slate, the sombre blocks of red or brown buildings which surround it, and actually lightening up the rather prosaic quarter in which it stands. Too much praise cannot be accorded to the architect for the combinations of color which he has infused into his design; and, granting that in this respect he has committed some errors of detail, they are trifling in comparison with the good effects which will probably result from the future employment of this means of embellishment. What if the idea, imperfectly embodied in this experimental building, should in the end compass the overthrow of that taste which leads us to build gloomy piles of brown houses, overlaid with tawdry ornamentation, and pronounce them beautiful? When such an innovation is attempted and finds even a moderate degree of favor, there is hope that the era of architectural coldness and poverty may yet pass away. The carving profusely distributed on both the exterior and interior of the building, and of which, we are told, "the flowers and leaves of our woods have furnished the models," is for the most part exquisite in design and execution. Here, at least, is naturalistic art, against which the sticklers for idealism can offer no objection, so beautiful and appropriate are the designs, and so suggestive of the necessity of going back to nature for inspiration. If the new Academy possessed no other merit than this, it would nevertheless subserve a useful purpose in the development of taste.

Having devoted so much space to the building, we can only allude generally to the contents of its galleries, of which we propose to speak more at length in a future notice. The exhibition, though inferior to those of some years in the number, exceeds them all in the quality of its pictures, and presents on the whole a creditable and encouraging view of the progress of American art. If the capacity of the galleries is not so great as was expected, there is on the other hand less danger that the eye will be offended by a long array of unsightly works, and we may probably bid good-bye to the monstrosities of composition and color which the Academy was formerly compelled to receive, in order to eke out its annual exhibitions. Such has been the increase in the number of our resident artists of late years, that but a limited number of pictures, and those consequently their best efforts, can henceforth be contributed by each. This fact alone will ensure a constantly increasing improvement to succeeding exhibitions. As usual, landscape predominates, with every variety of treatment and motive, from Academic generalization and pure naturalism down to Pre-Raphaelitism and hopeful though somewhat imperfect attempts at ideal sentiment. Portraiture and genre are also well represented, with a fair proportion of animal, flower, and still-life pieces, and of the numerous family of miscellaneous subjects which defy classification. History is even less affected than usual, the dramatic episodes of the great rebellion failing to suggest subjects to our painters other than those of an indirect or merely probable character. So far as the present exhibition may be supposed to afford an {423} indication, "high art," and particularly that branch of it which illustrates sacred history, is defunct among us—a circumstance which those who have witnessed previous efforts by contemporary American painters in that department will not perhaps regret. The pictures are generally hung with judgment, and in a spirit of fairness which ought to satisfy, though it will not probably in every instance, the demands of exhibitors. And it may be added that they appear to good effect, and are daily admired, using the word in its derived as well as its more common sense, by throngs of visitors.

Church, the landscape painter, has recently gone to the West Indies, with the intention of passing the summer in the mountain region of Jamaica, where he will doubtless find abundant materials for study. He leaves behind a large unfinished work of great promise, "The Rainbow in the Tropics," and some completed ones of less dimensions.

Augero, an Italian artist, has recently completed for a church in Boston a picture of St. Andrew bearing the cross, of which a contemporary says: "Mr. Augero has departed from the traditional types that have descended to him, and has treated the picture in a manner entirely his own. The head of the saint is finely handled, and, without being too much spiritualized, has sufficient of the ideal to give it value both as a church picture and a work of art. In general arrangement and color the work is especially to be admired." This artist is said to have received quite a number of commissions for ecclesiastical decoration.

Palmer is completing a bust of Washington Irving, which has been pronounced by the friends of the latter a successful likeness.

An essay on Gustave Doré, by B. P. G. Hamilton, will soon be published by Leypoldt of Philadelphia.

The spring exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts is now open in Philadelphia. The collections are said to be large and to represent all departments of painting.

Foreign.—The Exhibition of the Society of British Artists and the General Exhibition of Water Color Drawings opened in London in the latter part of April. The former contains more than a thousand pictures, few of which, it is said, rise above the most common average of picture-making, while the greater part fall below it. "There is something very depressing," says the Reader, "about such a large display of commonplace art. It is almost painful to have the fact forced upon one's mind, that the thought and labor represented in all these pictures is misapplied, if not wasted; for to this conclusion we must come, if we bring the display in Suffolk street to the test of comparison with any real work of art. A fine picture by Landseer or Millais would outweigh, in intrinsic value, the whole collection. Denude the Royal Academy exhibition of the works of Landseer, Millais, Philip, and other of its most accomplished contributors, and subtract from it at the same time the works of promise which lend to it so great an interest, and we should have a second Suffolk street exhibition, characterized by a similar dead level of mediocrity and insipidity; for neither highly accomplished work nor sign of promise is to be seen in this the forty-second annual exhibition of the Society of British Artists." From which it would appear that contemporary art in England gives no remarkable promise.

A large collection of the late John Leech's sketches, etc., was lately sold in London. It comprised the original designs for the political cartoons and pictures of life and character which have appeared in Punch during the last twenty years; the designs for the "Ingoldsby Legends," "Jorrock's Hunt," "Ask Mamma," "Mr. Facey Romford's Hounds," and other sporting novels, and several pictures in oil. The prices ran very high, the net result being £4,089.

The collection of paintings and water color drawings by the best modern British artists, formed by Mr. John Knowles, of Manchester, was recently disposed of in London at very handsome prices. The chief attraction was Rosa Bonheur's "Muleteers Crossing the Pyrenees," which brought 2,000 guineas. The collection realized £21,750.

Preparations are making to remove the cartoons of Raphael from Hampton Court to the new north fire-proof gallery in the South Kensington Museum, formerly occupied by the British pictures of the National Gallery.

The Great Pourtalès sale has closed {424} after lasting upward of a month and realizing a sum total of nearly three millions of francs. A Paris paper states that, considering the interest of the sums expended in forming the collection as money lost, the sale will give a profit on the outlay of a million and a half of francs, or about a hundred per cent.—a notable illustration of the mania for picture buying now prevailing in Europe. The owner died ten years ago, leaving directions that the collection should not be sold until 1864, for which his heirs and representatives are doubtless properly grateful. The following will give an idea of the prices fetched by the best pictures: Campagne, Ph. de: The Marriage of the Virgin, formerly the altar-piece of the chapel of the Palais Royal, sold for 43,500f. Hals, Francis: An unknown portrait of a man; his left hand leaning on his hip and touching the handle of his sword, 51,000f. Rembrandt: Portrait of a Burgomaster, 34,500f. By the same: Portrait of a veteran soldier seated at a table, 27,000f. Murillo: The Triumph of the Eucharist; with the words "In finem dilexit eos," 67,500f.; bought for the Louvre. By the same: The Virgin bending over the infant Christ, whom she presses to her bosom, 18,000f. By the same: St. Joseph holding the infant Christ by the hand, 15,000f. Velasquez: The Orlando Muerto, a bare-headed warrior, in a black cuirass, lying dead in a grotto strewn with human bones, his right hand on his breast, his left on the guard of his sword; from the roof of the grotto hangs a lamp, in which the flame is flickering, 37,000f. Albert Durer: A pen drawing, representing Samson, of colossal size, routing the Philistines with the jaw-bone of an ass, 4,500f. A portrait by Antonelli di Messina, bought years ago in Florence by Pourtalès for 1,500f., and appraised in his inventory at 20,000f., was sold to the Louvre, where it now hangs in the salon carré, for 113,000f.

Gustave Doré is announced to have undertaken to illustrate Shakespeare and the Bible.

The sale of the Due de Moray's gallery of paintings will take place in June. It contains six Meissoniers, which cost, at the utmost, not above 60,000 francs, but which will now probably fetch more than double that price.

A picture by Ribera, representing St. Luke taking the likeness of the Virgin, was sold recently in Paris for 21,000f.

French landscape art has lost one of its chief illustrators in the person of Constant Troyon, who died in the latter part of March, aged about fifty-two. He has been called the creator of the modern French school of landscape, and delighted in cheerful aspects of nature, which he rendered with masterly skill. Rural life, with its pleasing accessories of winding streams, picturesque low banks, groups of cattle, and shady hamlets, formed the favorite subjects of his pencil; and though his style was not always exact, he succeeded in infusing an unusual degree of physical life into his pictures, without ever degenerating into mere naturalism. As a colorist he excelled all contemporary animal and landscape painters, and used his brush with a freedom rivalling that of Delacroix. He died insane, and is said to have left a fortune of 1,200,000 francs. Some of his pictures are owned in New York.

A painting by Murillo, from the collection of the late Marquis Aguado, representing the death of Santa Clara, has been sold to the Royal Gallery of Madrid for 75,000 francs.

{425}

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

THE CORRELATION AND CONSERVATION OF FORCES: A SERIES OF EXPOSITIONS, by Prof. Grove, Prof. Helmholtz, Dr. Mayer, Dr. Faraday, Prof. Liebig, and Dr. Carpenter. With an Introduction and brief Biographical Notices of the chief Promoters of the new views. By Edward L. Youmans, M.D. 12mo., pp. xlii., 438. New York: D. Appleton & Company.

Religious writers have repeatedly deplored the materialistic tendency of modern scientific research, and in many cases, no doubt, the complaint is a just one. But we must not forget that the bad tendency is in the philosophical system which is sought to be built upon the facts of discovery, not in the facts themselves. Every development, of truth, every fresh unveiling of the mechanism of the universe, must of necessity redound to the greater glory of God. And it seems to us that no scientific theory which has been broached for many years speaks more gloriously of the disposing and over-ruling hand of an all-wise Creator than the one to which the volume now before us is devoted. If there could be any place for comparison in speaking of the exercise of omnipotence, we might say that the new view of the nature and mode of action of the physical forces represents creation as a far more marvellous act than the old one did.

We speak of the correlation and conservation of force as a "new" theory because it is only lately that it has attracted much attention beyond the higher scientific circles, and indeed it would perhaps be going too far to say that it is yet firmly established. It has been developing however for a number of years, and the most distinguished experts in physical science have for some time accepted it with remarkable unanimity. In the book whose title we have given above, Dr. Yournans has brought together eight of the most valuable essays in which the theory has been maintained or explained by its founders and chief supporters. He has made his selection with excellent judgment, and prefixed to the whole a clear and well-written introduction, by the aid of which any reader of ordinary education will be able to appreciate what follows. The longest and most important essay is that by Professor Grove on "The Correlation of Physical Forces."

Force is defined by Professor Grove as that active principle inseparable from matter which induces its various changes. In other words, it is the agent or producer of change or motion. The modifications of this general agent—heat, light, electricity, magnetism, chemical affinity, gravity, cohesive attraction, etc.—are called the physical forces. In many cases, where one of these is excited all the others are set in motion: thus when sulphuret of antimony is electrified, at the moment of electrization it becomes magnetic; at the same time it is heated; if the heat is raised to a certain intensity, light is produced; the compound is decomposed, and chemical action is thereby brought into play; and so on. Moreover, we cannot magnetize a body without electrizing it, and vice-versa. This necessary reciprocal production is what is understood by the term "correlation of forces"—or in other words, we may say that any one of the natural forces may be converted into another mode of force, and may be reproduced by the same force. A striking example of the conversion of heat into electricity is furnished by an experiment of Seebeck's. Two dissimilar metals are brought together and heated at the point of contact. A current of electricity flows through the metals, having a definite direction according to the metals employed; continues as long as an increasing temperature is pervading the metals; ceases when the temperature is stationary; and flows backward when the heat begins to decrease. The immediate convertibility of heat into light is not yet established beyond question, although these two forces exhibit many curious analogies with each other. But heat through the medium of electricity may easily be turned into light, chemical affinity, magnetism, etc. Electricity directly produces heat, as in the ignited wire, the electric spark, and the {426} voltaic arc. The last-named phenomenon—the flame which plays between the terminal points of a powerful voltaic battery produces the most intense heat with which we are acquainted; so intense, in fact, that it cannot be measured, as every sort of matter is dissipated by it. For instance, it actually distils or volatilizes iron, a metal which by ordinary means is fusible only at a very high temperature. The voltaic arc also produces the most intense light that we know of. Instances of the conversion of electricity into magnetism and chemical action are familiar to everybody. The reciprocal relations of light with other modes of force are thus far very imperfectly known. Professor Grove however describes an experiment by which light is made to produce simultaneously chemical action, electricity, magnetism, heat, and motion. The conversion of light into chemical force in photography is another exemplification of the law of correlation, and Bunsen and Roscoe have experimentally shown that certain rays of light are extinguished or absorbed in doing chemical work. A familiar example of the change of light into heat is seen in the phenomena of what is termed the absorption of light. Place different colored pieces of cloth on snow exposed to sunshine: black will absorb the most light, and will also develop the most heat, as may be seen by its sinking deepest in the snow; white, which absorbs little or no light, will not sink at all.

The evolution of one force or mode of force into another has naturally induced many to regard all the different natural agencies as reducible to unity, and much ingenuity has been expended on the question which force is the efficient cause of all the others. One says electricity, another chemical action, another gravity. Professor Grove believes that all are wrong: each mode of force may produce the others, and none can be produced except by some other as an anterior force. We can no more determine which is the efficient cause than we can determine whether the chicken is the cause of the egg, or the egg the cause of the chicken. The tendency of recent researches however is toward the conclusion that all the physical forces are simply modes of motion; that as, in the case of friction, the gross or palpable motion which is arrested by the contact of another body, is subdivided into molecular motions or vibrations (or as Helmholtz expresses it, peculiar shivering motions of the ultimate particles of bodies), which motions are only heat or electricity, as the case may be; so the other affections are only matter moved or molecularly agitated in certain definite directions. The identity of motion with heat was established in the last century by our countryman, Count Rumford, and has lately been beautifully illustrated by Professor Tyndall in his charming lectures on "Heat considered as a Mode of Motion." Dr. Mayer, of Heilbronn, and Mr. Joule, of Manchester, independently of each other, established the exact ratio between heat and motive power, showing that a quantity of heat sufficient to raise one pound of water one degree Fahrenheit in temperature is able to raise to the height of one foot a weight of 772 pounds; and conversely, that a weight of 772 pounds falling from a height of one foot evolves enough heat to raise the temperature of a pound of water one degree. That is, this quantity of force, expressed as 772 "foot-pounds," is to be regarded as the mechanical equivalent of 1° of temperature. Professor Grove considers at some length the identity of motion with other forms of force, especially electricity and magnetism, and alludes briefly to the inevitable consequence of this theory, that the different forces must bear an exact quantitative relation to each other. "The great problem which remains to be solved," he says, "in regard to the correlation of physical forces, is this establishment of their equivalents of power, or their measurable relation to a given standard."

The doctrine of the conservation or persistence of force seems to flow naturally from what has been said above. It means simply that force is never destroyed: when it ceases to exist in one form it only passes into another. Power or energy, like matter, is neither created nor annihilated: "Though ever changing form, its total quantity in the universe remains constant and unalterable. Every manifestation of force must have come from a pre-existing equivalent force, and must give rise to a subsequent and equal amount of some other force. When, therefore, a force or effect appears, we are not at liberty to assume that it was self-originated, or {427} came from nothing; when it disappears we are forbidden to conclude that it is annihilated: we must search and find whence it came and whither it has gone; that is, what produced it, and what effect it has itself produced." (Introduction, p. xiii.) This branch of the subject will be found clearly and concisely treated in Professor Faraday's paper on "The Conservation of Force" (pp. 359-383).

Dr. Carpenter carries the new theory into the higher realms of nature, and shows the applicability of the principle of correlation and conservation to the vital phenomena of growth and development. "These forces," he says, "are generated in living bodies by the transformation of the light, heat, and chemical action supplied by the world around, and are given back to it again, either during their life, or after its cessation, chiefly in motion and heat, but also, to a less degree, in light and electricity." Vital force is that power by virtue of which a germ endowed with life is developed into an organization of a type resembling that of its parents, and which subsequently maintains that organism in its integrity. The prevalent opinion until lately has been that this force is inherent in the germ, which has been supposed to derive from its parent not merely its material substance, but a germ-force, in virtue of which it develops and maintains itself, beside imparting a fraction of the same force to each of its descendants. In this view of the question, the aggregate of all the germ-forces appertaining to the descendants, however numerous, of a common parentage, must have existed in the original progenitors. Take the case of the successive viviparous broods of Aphides, which (it has been calculated) would amount in the tenth brood to the bulk of five hundred millions of stout men: a germ-force capable of organizing this vast mass of living structure must have been shut up in the single individual, weighing perhaps the 1-1000th of a grain, from which the first brood was evolved! So, too, in Adam must have been concentrated the germ-force of every individual of the human race, from the creation to the end of the world. This, says Dr. Carpenter, is a complete reductio ad absurdum. According to his theory, the germ supplies not the force, but the directive agency. The vital force of an animal or a plant is supplied by the same physical agencies which we have considered above.

Dr. Youmans in his introduction is disposed to push this part of the subject yet further, and to identify physical with intellectual force; but into this dangerous region it is unnecessary to follow him.

Some of the explanations of natural phenomena which are drawn as corollaries from the new theory of forces are in the highest degree curious and beautiful. Many of our readers will find Dr. Mayer's paper "On Celestial Dynamics" one of the most interesting portions of the book. He applies the principle of the convertibility of heat and motion to the question of the origin of the sun's heat, which he ascribes to the fall of asteroids upon the sun's surface. That an immense number of cosmical bodies are moving through the heavens and streaming toward the solar surface, is well known to all physicists. Now it is calculated that a single asteroid falling into the sun generates from 4,600 to 9,200 times as much heat as would be generated by the combustion of an equal mass of coal, and the mass of matter which in the form of asteroids falls into the sun every minute is from two to four hundred thousand billions of pounds! The enormous heat which must be evolved by such a bombardment is almost inconceivable.

REAL AND IDEAL. By John W. Montclair. 12mo., pp. 119. Philadelphia: Frederick Leypoldt. New York: Hurd & Houghton.

This is a dainty little volume of poems, partly translated from the German, partly the offspring of the native muse. They are simple, unpretending, and as a general thing melodious. The author probably has not aspired to a very high place in the temple of fame; without the ambition to produce anything very striking or very original, he has been satisfied with the endeavor which he pithily expresses in his "Prologue:"

  "Clearer to think what others thought before—
  Keenly to feel th' afflictions of our race—
  Better to say what others oft have said—"

and if he does not always think clearer and speak better than those in whose footsteps he treads, there is at all events that in his verse which promises better {428} things after more practice. His faults are chiefly those of carelessness and inexperience. His metaphors are superabundant, and sometimes incongruous. He has a good ear for rhythm; but we often find him tripping in his prosody. Often too the requirements of the metre lead him to eke out a line with expletives, or weaken it with unnecessary epithets.

But we can commend the book for its healthy tone. Mr. Montclair has no tendency toward the morbid psychological school of poetry. He delights rather in the contemplation of nature, and in moralizing on the life and aspirations of man. In neither does he discover much that is new; but the natural beauties which he sings are those of which we do not easily tire, and his moral reflections are just though they may not be profound. For the matter of his translations he has chosen some of the simplest and shortest of the German legendary ballads. Several of them are rendered with considerable neatness and delicacy. The following version of a ballad to which attention has been particularly called of late, is a favorable specimen of Mr. Montclair's powers:

    "LENORE.

  "Above the stars are twinkling—
  The moon is shining bright—
  And the dead they ride by night.

  "'My love, wilt ope thy window?
  I cannot long remain,
  And may not come again.

  "'The cock already crows—
  Tells of the dawning day,
  And warns me far away.

  "'My journey distant lies;
  Afar with thee, my bride,
  A hundred leagues we'll ride.

  "'In Hungary's fair land
  I've found a tranquil spot,
  A little garden plot.

  "'And there, within the green,
  A little cottage rests,
  Befitting bridal guests.'

  "'Oh, thou hast lingered long;
  Beloved, welcome here—
  Lead on, I'll never fear.'

  "'So, wrap my mantle 'round;
  The moon will be our guide,
  And quick by night we'll ride.'

  "'When will our journey end?
  For heavy grows my sight,
  And lonely is the night.'

  "'Yon gate leads to our home:
  Our bridal tour is done—
  My purpose now is won.

  "'Dismount we from our steed;
  Here lay thy aching head—
  This tomb's our bridal bed.

  "'Now art thou truly mine:
  I rode away thy breath—
  Thou art the bride of death!'"

FAITH, THE VICTORY; ON A COMPREHENSIVE VIEW OF THE PRINCIPAL DOCTRINES OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. By Rt. Rev. John McGill, D.D., Bishop of Richmond. 12mo., pp. viii., 336. Richmond: J. W. Randolph.

This work is a curiosity as a specimen of the literature of the late "Confederate States of America," and of course its typography and general execution are plain and unpretending. The work itself is the production of a prelate of high character and reputation for his thorough theological erudition and ability as a writer, and as a clear logical expounder of Catholic doctrine. It is written in a very systematic and exact manner; the style is terse, the treatment of topics brief but comprehensive; and yet, so lucid are the statements and so simple the language, that it is throughout intelligible to the ordinary reader, and in great part so to any one of good common sense who can read English and is able to understand a plain, simple treatise on religious doctrine. It may be characterized as an elementary treatise on theology for the laity, and as such is adapted to be very useful to Catholics, and also to those non-Catholics who retain the doctrine of the old orthodox Protestant tradition. The right reverend author is throughout careful to discriminate between the defined doctrine of the Church and the teaching of theologians, and is extremely cautious in expounding his opinion on those topics which are controverted between the different schools. The authority of the Catholic Church is established by the usual plain and irresistible deductions from the premises admitted by those who fully accept Christianity as a divine revelation and the Scripture as the infallible word of God. The dogmas of the {429} Catholic faith are stated in the plain ordinary language of the Church, with some account of the principal methods of explaining difficulties in vogue among theologians, and with proofs derived from Scriptures and tradition. The stress of the entire argument rests principally on the evidence that the Catholic dogmas have been revealed by God and clearly deduced by the infallible authority of the Church, consequently must be believed as certain truths. The line of fracture, where that fragment of Christianity called orthodox Protestantism was broken off from the integral system of Christian doctrine at the Reformation, is distinctly traced, and orthodox Protestants are shown that they are logically compelled to complete their own belief by becoming Catholics. The old Protestant tradition has a far more extensive sway in the southern states than among ourselves, and this excellent treatise will no doubt be the means of bringing numbers of those who are well-disposed, and need only to be taught what the revealed doctrines of Christianity really are, into the bosom of the Church. In this section of the United States, the greater portion of those who are willing to examine the evidences of the Catholic religion have floated far away from their old land-marks. In order to reach their minds, it is necessary to present the rational arguments which will solve their difficulties much more fully than is done in this treatise, and to interpret for them ecclesiastical and theological formulas in which divine truths are embodied in language which is intelligible to their intellect in its present state. They are either extreme rationalists or moderate rationalists; that is, they either reject the supernatural revelation entirely, or admit only so much of it as can be proved to them to be true on grounds of pure reason. Hence, we are obliged to begin with the intrinsic evidence of the truth and reasonableness of the Catholic faith, before we can bring the force of extrinsic revelation by the authority of the Church to bear upon their mind.

We welcome the present of this treatise from the Bishop of Richmond for another reason, as well as for its intrinsic value. It is a sign of the renewal of that ecclesiastical intercourse with our brethren of the southern states which has so long been interrupted.

And, in conclusion, we desire to call particular attention to the ensuing extract, as an evidence of the falsehood of the charge which our enemies are at present disposed to make against the Catholic Church of "sanctioning some of the worst enormities of slavery:"

"And here we would take occasion to deplore the conduct of the civil government in this country, regarding the matrimonial contract of slaves, which, though the rulers profess Christianity, is completely ignored even as a civil contract, and left entirely to the caprice of owners, who frequently without scruple or hesitation, and for the sake of interest or gain, part man and wife, separate parents from their children, and treat the matrimonial union among them as if it were really no more than the chance association of unreasoning animals. Often, also, some of these marriages are indissoluble by the sacramental bond, as well as by the original design of the Creator, and by the action of Christian proprietors and the neglect of a Christian government, these separated parties are subjected to the temptation to form criminal and forbidden alliances, from which frequency, custom, and the condition of servitude have removed, in the public view, the shame and stigma which they possess before God, and according to the maxims of the gospel. Christian proprietors will know and tolerate these alliances in their slaves, even when made without any formality, and where they are aware that one or both is under the obligation of other ties.

"It is not certain that the present dreadful calamities which afflict the country are not the scourge of God, chiefly for this sin, among the many that provoke his anger, in our people. He is not likely to leave long unpunished in a nation the palpable and flagrant contempt of his holy laws, such as is evinced in this neglect or refusal to respect in slaves the holiness, the unity, and the indissolubility of marriage. It would appear that by the present convulsions his providence is preparing for them at least a recognition of those rights as immortal beings which are required for the observance of the paramount laws of God. And if citizens desire to see the nation prosper and enjoy the blessing of God, let all unite to procure from the civil government, for the slaves, that their marriages be esteemed as God intends, and not be dealt with in future as they have been hitherto."

{430}

MATER ADMIRABLIS; OR, FIRST FIFTEEN YEARS OF MARY IMMACULATE. By Rev. Alfred Monnin, author of "The Life of the Curé d'Ars." Translated from the French by the Sisters of Charity, Mount St. Vincent, KY. 12mo., pp. 535. New York: James B. Kirker.

On the wall of a corridor in the convent of Trinità del Monti, at Rome, there is a fresco representing the Blessed Virgin, Mater admirabilis, at the age of fifteen. She is depicted spinning flax within the precincts of the temple, with her work-basket and an open book beside her. The picture was painted some twenty years ago by a young postulant of the community of Ladies of the Sacred Heart, to whom the Trinità belongs. It is not said that it is in any way remarkable as a work of art; but it has acquired a celebrity among pious Catholics second to that of hardly any picture in the world. Since the year 1846, when the Holy Father gave his solemn blessing to the picture, remarking that "it was a pious thought to represent the most Holy Virgin at an age when she seemed to have been forgotten," signal favors have repeatedly been bestowed upon persons who have prayed before it. The Rev. Mr. Blampin, a missionary from Oceanica, recovered his voice at the feet of the Mater admirabilis, in 1846, after having been deprived of it for twenty-one months. In a transport of gratitude he obtained permission to say mass before the fresco, and from that day the corridor became a real sanctuary. A great number of miraculous cures were reported as having been wrought there, and multitudes of sinners who came out of mere curiosity to gaze upon a picture of which so much had been said, were converted by an instantaneous infusion of divine grace. In 1849 Pope Pius IX., by an apostolic brief, granted permission for the celebration of the festival of the Mater admirabilis on the 20th of October, and enriched the sanctuary with indulgences. In 1854, by a second rescript, he confirmed an indulgence of three hundred days, which he had previously granted verbally to all the faithful who should recite three Hail Maries before this holy painting, adding the invocation, Mater admirabilis, ora pro nobis; and in the following year the indulgences were extended to the entire order of the Sacred Heart. The devotion to the "Mother most admirable" spread rapidly, and copies of the painting at the Trinità were soon to be found in various parts of Europe and America. There is one in the Convent of the Sacred Heart at Manhattanville, N. Y., from which the frontispiece to the volume before us has been engraved. "I admit," says Father Monnin, speaking of the original, "that of all the different ways by which art has represented this Virgin by excellence, there is not one which better corresponds with the beau ideal which, as a priest, I had loved to form in my mind. Like the chaste Madonnas of the most fervent ages—those of Beato in particular—this Madonna of the Lily makes one feel and understand that its designer had prayed before painting it, and that her imagination, fed by faith and the love of God, has delineated the most holy virgin child by interior lights derived from her meditations. By means of a constant communion with things divine, the disciples of Fiesole have succeeded in placing themselves as so many mediums between the Creator and the creature, by transmitting a ray of that eternal light amidst which they live; we may say that Mater admirabilis is of the school of Fra Angelico, although several centuries have elapsed since his time. There is, as it were, the image of a pure soul preserved ever from all stain, sent into the world to be joined to a perfect and immaculate body, and to become, in this twofold perfection and purity, the ineffable instrument of our salvation! It is thus the prophet deserved to see her, brilliantly resplendent with grace and innocence, with the clearness of eternal light, and the splendor of eternal or perpetual virginity. The ineffable peace which took possession of me, made me understand that beauty of which St. Thomas speaks, the sight whereof purifies the senses. …… There in the wall, within a niche contiguous to the great church of the monastery, is the most holy Virgin, painted in fresco at full size. …… The pilgrim looks in surprise, and very soon feels as if the air around this fair flower of the field and lily of the valley were embalmed with the perfumes of silence and recollection. He sees her occupied in simply spinning flax; near her, on the right, is a distaff resting upon a slender standard, and on the left a lily rising out of a crystal vase, and bending its flexible stalk toward Mary. …… Absorbed in her meditation, the most holy child has suspended her work; her shuttle, become motionless, falls from her hand, while her left hand still holds {431} a light thread which remains joined to the flax in the distaff; one foot of this most holy spinner rests upon a stool, near which lies an open book, spread out on a work-basket, filled with shuttles and skeins. The features of the youthful Mary express a purity in which there is nothing of earth; her countenance is modestly tinged, the ringlets of her golden hair are just perceptible through the wavings of a transparent veil which covers her neck; her pure virginal brow, slender figure, and delicate limbs give her a youthful appearance, full of grace and truthfulness. It is truly the Virgin of virgins; it is truly Mary,—and Mary at an age when but few works of art have sought to represent her."

The little chapel was soon decorated with votive offerings from all parts of the world. It became a venerated shrine, and few devout travellers now leave Rome without having prayed at it. The "archives of Mater admirabilis," preserved at the Trinità, contain records of the conversions, vocations, and cures effected at this consecrated spot; and these, together with some devotional writings composed by the pupils of the convent, form the groundwork of Father Monnin's book. The matter is arranged in such a way that the work may be used for the devotions of the month of May. It is divided into thirty-one chapters, or "days," each of which contains a meditation having special reference either to some virtue indicated by the picture, or to Mary's childhood; this is followed by an appropriate prayer, and a narrative taken from the archives.

Having explained the purpose of Father Monnin's book, we do not know that we need say more by way of recommending it. Whatever tends to foster love and veneration for the Blessed Virgin must commend itself strongly to every pious Catholic; and in the new devotion, which is here explained and illustrated, there is something so beautiful and touching, that we believe it has only to be known in this country to be embraced with the same eager affection as in Europe.

The external appearance of the volume is very attractive. We hail with great pleasure the improvement in taste and liberality evinced by the manufacture of such books as Kirker's "Mater Admirabilis" and O'Shea's edition of Dr. Curnmings's "Spiritual Progress."

There is no sufficient reason why Catholics should not print and bind books as well as other people.

THE LOVE Of RELIGIOUS PERFECTION; ON, HOW TO AWAKEN, INCREASE, AND PRESERVE IT IN THE RELIGIOUS SOUL. By Father Joseph Bayma, of the Society of Jesus. Translated from the Latin by a Member of the same Society. 24mo., pp. 254. Baltimore: John Murphy & Company.

The style and method of this little treatise are modelled upon those of "The Imitation of Christ." The style is clear and severely simple, not above the plainest comprehension, and not without attraction for those who are somewhat fastidious in literary matters. Father Bayma professes in his preface to have disregarded all ornaments of composition, having written his little book not so much for the edification of others as for the profit of his own soul. Our readers can readily understand that it is for that very reason all the more searching in its mental examinations and practical in its precepts. Father Bayma divides his work into three books. The first treats of the motives which should urge us toward religious perfection; the second, of the means by which perfection is most easily obtained; and the third, of the virtues in which it consists. The chapters are short, and broken up into verses, and open where we will, we find something to turn our thoughts toward God. Nor must it be supposed that, because the book was written by a religious for his own instruction, it contains only those more difficult counsels of perfection which few people in the world are found strong enough to follow. Like its prototype, "The Imitation of Christ" is a work for all classes—for the easy-going Christian no less than for the saint. Here is an extract from the chapter on "The Choice and Perfection of Virtues;" we choose it because it illustrates how well even those passages which are directly addressed to religious persons are adapted to the use of persons in the world:

"1. So long as we are weighed down by our mortal flesh, we cannot acquire the perfection of all virtues; and therefore, we have need of selection that we may not labor in vain.

"Choose then a virtue to practise, until, {432} by the assistance of God, thou become most perfect in it.

"Some virtues are continually called for in our daily actions, and are necessary for all; and therefore, should be acquired with particular industry.

"The more thou shalt make progress in meekness, patience, modesty, temperance, humility, and others, that come into more frequent use, the sooner wilt thou become holy.

"2. Some seek after virtues which have a greater appearance of nobility, and are reckoned amongst men to be more glorious.

"They instruct with pleasure, but it must be in famous churches, and to a large assembly of noble and learned men.

"They visit the sick with pleasure, and hear confessions, but only of those that are conspicuous for riches or honors.

"See that thou set not a high value upon these things: it is more perfect and safer to imitate Christ our Lord, and to go about villages, than to hunt for the praise of eloquence and learning in cities.

"It is more useful to thee to visit and console the poor and the rude, than the rich and noble, who, moreover, are less prepared to listen to and obey thy words.

"3. Some are content with the virtues that agree with their natural inclinations; because they seem easier, and require not any, or a less violent struggle.

"But when they have need of self-denial and mortification, they have not the courage to practise virtue; but they lose heart, turn faint-hearted, and think it is best to spare themselves.

"Do thou follow them not, for they that are such make no progress, but rather fall away from the way of perfection, because they follow not the teaching and example of Christ.

"For it was not those who spare themselves, and fear the hardship of the struggle, whom Christ declared blessed, but those that mourn, and fight manfully for justice sake."

LA MERE DE DIEU. From the Italian of Father Alphonse Capecelatro, of the Oratory of Naples. 24mo., pp. 180. Philadelphia: Peter F. Cunningham. New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Company.

Why not say "The Mother of God?" And why should Father Capecelatro, being an Italian, figure with the French name of Alphonse? If we cannot have the title of the book in English, at least let us have it in Italian—the language in which it was written—not in French.

But despite the bad taste displayed on the title-page, this is a very good little book. It exhales a genuine aroma of piety; it is written with great simplicity; and it is devoted to a subject which is dear to all of us. It is supposed to be addressed by a Tuscan priest to his sister. The first part treats of the respect to which the Blessed Virgin is entitled; the second traces her life, principally in the pages of the Holy Scriptures; and the third is devoted to an exhibition of the marks of veneration which she has received from the Church since the very beginning of Christianity. "It is charmingly, almost plaintively sweet," says Father Gratry, of the Oratory of Paris. "It is written as a prayer, not as a book; it is learned and affectionate, religious and instructive."

COUNT LESLIE; OR, THE TRIUMPH OF FILIAL PIETY. A Catholic Tale. From the French. 24mo., pp. 108.

PHILIP HARTLEY; OR, A BOY'S TRIALS AND TRIUMPHS. A Tale for Young People. By the author of "The Confessors of Connaught." 24mo., pp. 122.

THE CHILDREN OF THE VALLEY; OR, THE GHOST OF THE RUINS. Translated from the French. 24mo., pp. 123.

MAY CARLETON'S STORY; OR, THE CATHOLIC MAIDEN'S CROSS. THE MILLER'S DAUGHTER. Catholic Tales. 24mo., pp. 115.

COTTAGE EVENING TALES FOR YOUNG PEOPLE. Compiled by the author of "Grace Morton." 24mo., pp. 126. Philadelphia: Peter F. Cunningham. New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Company.

The above five volumes are portions of Cunningham's "Young Catholic's Library." They seem to have an excellent moral tendency, and as a general thing are well written—better written, we believe, than the majority of tales intended, as these are, for sodality and Sunday-school libraries. The first mentioned, however, "Count Leslie," is not rendered into irreproachable English. What respect can we expect children to entertain for the English grammar if our school libraries give them such cruel sentences to read as the following: "It was this young man, and him, only, who knew the cause of his mother's sadness?" With this exception we can honestly recommend so much as we have seen of the Young Catholic's Library to public favor. Mr. Cunningham has other volumes in preparation.

{433}

THE CATHOLIC WORLD

VOL. I., NO. 4. JULY, 1865.

THE TRUTH OF SUPPOSED LEGENDS AND FABLES. BY H. E. CARDINAL WISEMAN. [Footnote 79 ]

[Footnote 79: From "Essays on Religion and Literature. By Various Writers." Edited by H. E. Manning, D.D. London; Longman, Green & Co. 1865.]

The subject of the address which I am about to deliver is as follows: Events and things which have been considered legendary, or even fabulous, have been proved by further research to be historical and true.

Before coming directly to the subject upon which I wish to occupy your attention, I will give a little account of a very extraordinary discovery which may throw some light upon the general character and tendency of our investigation. In the year 1775 Pius VI. laid the foundation of the sacristy of St. Peter's. Of course, as is the case whenever the ground is turned up in Rome, a number of inscriptions came to light; these were carefully put aside, and formed the lining, if I may so say, of the corridor which unites the sacristy with the church. It was observed, however, that a great many of these inscriptions referred to the same subject, and a subject which was totally unknown to antiquarians: they all spoke of certain Arval Brethren—Fratres Arvales. Some were mere fragments, others were entire inscriptions.

These, to the number of sixty-seven, were carefully put together and illustrated by the then librarian of the Vatican, Mgr. Marini. It was an age when in Rome antiquarian learning abounded. There were many, perhaps, who could have undertaken the task, but it naturally belonged to him as being attached to the church near which the inscriptions were found. He put the fragments together, collated them one with another, and with the entire inscriptions. He procured copies at least, when he could not examine the originals, of such other slight fragments as seemed to have reference to the subject, the key having now been found, and the result was two quarto volumes, [Footnote 80] giving us the entire history, constitution, and ritual of this singular fraternity. Before this period two brief notices in Varro, one passage in Pliny, and allusions in two later writers, Minutius Felix and Fulgentius, were all that was known concerning it. One merely told the origin of it from the time of the kings, and the others only stated that it had something to do with questions about land; and there the matter ended. Now, out of this ignorance, out of this darkness, there springs, through the researches of Mgr. Marini, perhaps the most {434} complete account or history that we have of any institution of antiquity. So complete was the work, in fact, that only two inscriptions relating to this subject have been found since; one by Melchiorri, who undertook to write an appendix to the work; and the other in 1855 in excavating the Dominican garden at Santa Sabina, which indeed threw great light upon the subject. From these inscriptions we learn that this was one of the most powerful bodies of augurs or priests in Rome. Yet neither Pliny, nor Livy, nor Cicero, when expressly enumerating all the classes of augurs, ever alludes to them. Now, we know how they were elected. On one tablet is an order of Claudius to elect a new member, so to fill up their number of twelve, in consequence of the death of one. They wrote every year, and published, at least put up in their gardens, a full and minute account of all the sacrifices and the feasts celebrated by them. They were allied to the imperial family, and all the great families in Rome took part in their assemblies. They had a sacred grove, the site of which was perfectly unknown until the last inscription, found in 1855, revealed it. It was out of Porta Portese, on the road to the English vineyard at La Magliana. There they had sacrifices to the Dea Dia, whose name occurs nowhere else among all the writers on ancient mythology. It is supposed to be Ceres. They had magnificent sacrifices at the beginning of the year. There are tablets which say where the meetings will be held, whether at the house of the rector or pro-rector, leaving the date in blank, to be filled in the course of the year. We are told who were at the meetings, especially who among the youths from the first families—four of whom acted somewhat as acolytes; and we are told how they were dressed, which of their two dresses they wore. Then there is a most minute ritual given. We are told how each victim was slain; how the brethren took off the toga praetexta, their crowns and golden ears of corn, then put them on again, and examined the entrails of the sacrifices; all as minutely detailed as the rubrics of any office of unction and coronation could possibly be. Then we are told how many baskets of fruit they carried away, and what distribution there was of sweetmeats at the end, every one taking a certain quantity. All this is recorded, and with it their song in barbarous Oscan or early Etruscan, perfectly unintelligible, in which their acclamations were made. So that now we know perfectly everything about them. I may mention as an interesting fact, that Marini's own copy of his work on the Arval Brethren, two quarto volumes, having their margins covered with notes for a second edition, which was never published, and filled with slips of paper with annotations and new inscriptions of other sorts, which he subsequently found, is now in the library at Oscott.

[Footnote 80: Atti e Monumenti dei Fratelli Arvali. Da Mgr. Marini. 2 tom. Roma, 1795. ]

What do I wish to draw from this account? It is that history may have remained silent upon points which it seems impossible, in the multiplicity of writers that have been preserved to us, should not have cropped out, not have been mentioned in some way, not even have been made known to us through innumerable anterior discoveries. One fortunate circumstance brought to light the whole history of this body. How unfair, then, is it, on the reticence of history, at once to condemn anything, or to say, "We should have heard of it; writers who ought to have told us would not have concealed it from us." For a circumstance may arise which will bring out the whole history of a thing, and make that plain and clear before us which has been scouted completely by others, or of which we have been kept in the completest ignorance.

I could illustrate this by several other examples which I have collected together, but I foresee that I shall not get anything like through the subject I propose to myself. But here is one such instance bearing on Scripture truth. It was said by infidel writers {435} of the last century, "How is it that there could have been such a remarkable occurrence as the massacre of the Innocents without a single profane historian ever mentioning it—Josephus, if no one else?" Of course the answer was, "We do not know why, except that we might give plausible reasons why it should not have been noticed." That is all we need say. It is our duty to accept the fact. We must not reject things because we cannot find corroboration of them all at once. We may have to wait with patience; the world has had to wait centuries even before some doubted truth has come out clearly.

I. The subject which I wish to bring before you is one of those which, perhaps beyond any other, may be said to be considered thoroughly legendary, and even perhaps worse:—it is the history of St. Ursula and her eleven thousand companions, virgins and martyrs. At first sight it may appear bold to undertake a vindication of that narrative, or to bring it within the compass of history by detaching from it what has been embellishment, what has been perhaps even wilful invention, and bringing out in its perfect completeness a history corroborated on all sides by every variety of research. Such, however, is the object at which I aim to-day; other instances may occupy us afterward.

It has, in fact, been treated as fabulous by Protestants, beginning with the Centuriators of Magdeburg down to the present time. There is hardly any story more sneered at than this, that an English lady, with eleven thousand companions, all virgins, should have met with martyrdom at Cologne, and should have even gone to Rome on their journey by some route which is very difficult to comprehend; for they are always represented in ships. Hence the whole thing has been treated as a fable. But the more refined Germanism of later times takes what is perhaps meant to be a mitigated view, and treats it as a myth, that is, a sort of mythological tale. Thus the writer of a late work, [Footnote 81] entitled the History, or fable, of St. Ursula and the Eleven Thousand Virgins, printed in Hanover, in 1854, considers that St. Ursula is the ancient German goddess Rehalennia, and explains the history by the mythology of that ancient divinity.

[Footnote 81: Die Sage von der heilige Ursula und den, 11,000 Jungfrauen. Von Oskar Schade. Hanover, 1854. ]

But let us come to Catholics. A great number have been staggered completely by this history, and have said, "It is incredible; it is impossible to believe it; we must reject it: what foundation is there for it?" Some have tried to search one out; and perhaps one of the most ingenious explanations, though the most devoid of any foundation, is that which Sirmondus and Valesius [Footnote 82] and several other Catholics have brought forward—that there were only two saints, St. Ursula and St. Undecimilla, and that this last has been turned into the eleven thousand. This name Undecimilla has nowhere been found; there have been some like it, but that name is not known. The explanation is the purest conjecture, and has now been completely rejected. But still many find it very difficult to accept the history. If they were interrogated, and required to answer distinctly the question, "What do you think about St. Ursula?" there are very few who would venture to face the question and say, "I believe there is a foundation for it in truth."—For that is all one might be expected to say about a matter which has come down to us through ages, probably with additions.—"I believe the substance of it; it has been so altered by time as to reach us clogged with difficulties; still I believe there were martyrs in great number who had come from England that were martyred at Cologne." But there are few who like to talk about it: most say it is a legendary story. Even Butler only gives about two pages of history. He rejects the explanation which I have {436} just mentioned; but he throws the whole narrative into the shade, and passes it over with one of those little sermons which he gives us, to make up for not knowing much about a saint; so that his readers are left quite in the dark.

[Footnote 82: Acta Sanct. Bolland, Oct. tom. ix. p. 144. ]

Then unfortunately while many Catholics have been inclined to look at it as more legendary than historical, they have been badly served by those who have undertaken the defence or explanation of the event. There may be many here who have gone into what is called the golden chamber in the church of St. Ursula at Cologne, and have seen that multitude of skulls and bones that line the walls, and have been inclined to give an incredulous shrug and to say, "How could these martyrs have been got together? where did they come from? how do we know they were martyrs?"

We generally content ourselves with looking at such things through the eyes of Mr. Murray's traveller who tells us about them. Accordingly we look round at these startling objects, and say, "It is very singular; it is very extraordinary." But there is very little awe, very little devotion felt by us; while, to a good native of Cologne, it is the most venerable, sacred, and holy place almost in Christendom. He prays earnestly to the virgins of Cologne, and considers that they are his powerful patrons and intercessors.

However, little has been done to help us. Works have been published in favor of the truth of this history, but then they have run into excess. The most celebrated of all is one by a Jesuit named Crombach, who was led to compose it by Bebius, another learned Jesuit, whose papers were unfortunately burned in a conflagration at the college in Cologne. Crombach in 1647 published two large volumes entitled "St. Ursula vindicata." In them he has included an immense variety of things. He has accepted with scarce any discrimination works that are entitled to little or no credit—contradictory works; he has mingled them all up; and he insists upon the story or the history being true with all details. The consequence is that the work has been very much thrown aside, or severely attacked.

Yet it is acknowledged that it contains a great deal of valuable information, together with an immense quantity of documents which may be made good use of when properly examined, when the chaff is separated from the wheat. On the whole, however, it has not been favorable to the cause of the martyrs.

Now, however, there has appeared such a vindication, such a wonderful re-examination of the whole history, as it is impossible to resist. It is impossible to read the account of St. Ursula given in the 9th volume for October of the Bollandists, published in 1858, without being perfectly amazed at the quantity of real knowledge that has been gained upon the subject, and still more at the powerful manner in which this knowledge has been handled;—an erudition which, merely glancing over the pages and notes, reminds us of the scholars of three hundred years ago, in whom we have often wondered at the learning which they brought to bear on any one point.

This treatise occupies from page 73 to 303, 230 pages of closely printed folio in two columns. I acknowledge that it is not quite a recreation to read it, but still it is very well worth reading. All documents are printed at full length. Now, it so happened, that just after the volume had come out, I was at Brussels, and called at the library of the Bollandists, and had a most interesting conversation with Father Victor de Buck, the author of this history. He gave me an interesting outline of what he had been enabled to do. He told me that when they came to October 21, and he had to write a life of St. Ursula and her companions, his provincial wrote to him from Cologne and said, "Take care what you say, for the people are tremendously alarmed lest you should knock down all their traditions, and I {437} do not know what will be the case if you do." He replied, "Don't be at all afraid; I shall confirm every point, and I am sure they will be pleased with what I have to say." He was kind enough to put down in a letter the chief points of his vindication for me; but I have lost it, and so there was nothing left but to read through the whole of this great work. But, beside, a very excellent compendium has appeared, which takes pretty nearly the same view on every point, and approves of everything the author has said; indeed some points are perhaps put more popularly in it, though the history is reduced to a much smaller compass. I have the work before me. It is entitled, "St. Ursula and her Companions: A Critical, Historical Monograph. By John Hubert Kessel. Cologne, 1863." It is a work which is not too long to be translated and made known. What I have to say, after having gone through this preliminary matter, is, that I lay claim to nothing whatever beyond having been diligent, and having endeavored to grasp all the points in question, and reduce them to a moderate compass. I have changed the order altogether, taking that which seems to me most suitable to the subject, and co-ordinating the different parts and facts so as to make it popularly intelligible. In this I have the satisfaction to find that in a chapter at the end of the book, in which the history is summed up, exactly the same order is taken which I have adopted here. It will not be necessary to give a reference for every assertion that I shall have occasion to make; but I may say that I have the page carefully noted where the subject is fully drawn out and illustrated.

Now, let me first of all give, in a brief sketch, what Father de Buck considers the real history, which has been wrapt up in such a quantity of legendary matter—that which comes out from the different documents laid before us, as the kernel or the nucleus of the history, as Kessel calls it. He supposes that this army of martyrs, as we may well call them, was composed of two different bodies: a body of virgins who happened, under circumstances which I shall describe to you, to be at Cologne, and a body of the inhabitants, citizens of Cologne, and others, very probably many English and other virgins who had there sought safety. It may be asked how came these English to be there? About the year 446 the Britons began to be immensely annoyed by the incursions of the Picts and Scots, which led to their calling in (after the manner of the old fable, about the man calling in the dogs to hunt the hare in his garden) the Anglo-Saxons, who in return took possession of the country; and the inhabitants that they did not exterminate they made serfs. At this period we know the English were put to sad straits. Having so long lain quiet and undisturbed under the Roman dominion, they had almost lost their natural valor, and were unable to defend themselves. There was, therefore, a natural tendency to emigrate and get away. They had already done this before; for as De Buck shows, with extraordinary erudition, the occupation of Brittany or Armorica was a quiet emigration from England, which sought the continent, and also established colonies in Holland and Batavia, and by that means obtained a peace which they could not have at home. We have a very interesting document upon this subject. The celebrated senator Aëtius was at that time governor of Gaul; the Britons sent to him for help, and this is one passage of a most touching letter which has been preserved by Gildas: "Repellunt nos barbari ad mare, repellit nos mare ad barbaros; oriuntur duo genera funerum; aut jugulamur aut mergimur." [Footnote 83] They were tossed backward and forward by the sea to the barbarians, and by the barbarians to the sea; when they fell upon the barbarians they were cut to pieces, and when they were driven into the {438} sea "mergimur"—we go to the bottom. It does not mean that they ran into the sea, but that they went to their ships, and many of them perished in the sea by shipwreck or by sinking—"aut jugulamur aut mergimur." That shows that the English were leaving England to go to the continent. I am only giving you the web of the history, without its proofs; but I quote this passage to show it is not at all unlikely that at that moment, when they were in a manner straitened between the barbarians of the north and those coming upon them in the south, a great many of them went out of the country, and that especially being Christians they would wend their way to Catholic countries. Religious and other persons of a like character, we know, in every invasion of barbarians, were the first to suffer a double martyrdom. This is a supposition, therefore, about which there is no improbability, that a certain number, I do not say how many, of Christian ladies of good family, some of them, perhaps, royal, got over to Batavia or Holland (where there have been always traditions and names of places in confirmation of this), and made their way to Cologne, which was a capital and a seat of the Roman government, a Christian city, and in every probability considered a stronghold, both on account of its immense fortifications, and on account of the river.

[Footnote 83: Gildas de Excidio Britanniae, pars i., cap. xvii. Ed. Migne: Patrologia, tom. lxix., p. 342.]

Well, then comes the history, very difficult indeed to reconcile, of a pilgrimage to Rome, which it is said they made; but let us suppose that instead of the whole of them a certain number of them might go there. It is not at all improbable that at that time, as De Buck observes, a deputation, or a certain number of citizens and others, did go to Rome to obtain assistance there, as their only hope against the invasion, which I shall describe just now. There is no great difficulty in supposing this; and assuming that some of the English virgins also went, that would be a foundation for the great legendary history, I might say the fabulous history, which has been built upon it. Now, there is a strong confirmation of such a thing being done. St. Gregory of Tours [Footnote 84] mentions that at this very time Bishop Servatius did go to Rome to pray the Apostles Sts. Peter and Paul to protect his country and city against the coming invasion, and he saw no other hope of safety. He must have passed through Cologne exactly at that time, and, therefore, there is nothing absurd or improbable in supposing that some inhabitants of Cologne went with him as a deputation to Rome, and that some of the English virgins may have accompanied them. In the year following, Attila, the scourge of God, the most cruel of all the leaders of barbaric tribes who invaded the Roman empire, was marching along the Rhine with the known view of invading Gaul, and not only invading it, but, as he said, of completely conquering and destroying it; for his maxim was, "Where Attila sets his foot no more grass shall ever grow"—nothing but destruction and devastation. I will say a little more about the Huns later. In the meantime we leave them, in 450, on their way to cross the Rhine, with the intention of invading and occupying France. Attila united great cunning with his barbarity; he pretended to the Goths that he was coming to help them against the Romans, and to the Romans that he was going to help them to expel the Goths. By that means he paralyzed both for a time, until it was too well seen that he was the enemy of all. It is most probable, knowing the character as we shall see just now of the Huns, that the inhabitants of the neighboring towns would seek refuge in the capital, and that all living in the country would get within the strong walls of cities. We have important confirmation, at this very time, in the history of St. Genevieve, [Footnote 65] who was {439} a virgin living out in the country, but who, upon the approach of the Huns, hastened, we are told, immediately to seek safety in Paris, and was there the means of saving the city, by exhorting the inhabitants to build up walls, to close their gates, and to fight. This they did, and so saved themselves. That is just an example. When it is known that throughout his march Attila destroyed every city, committing incredible barbarities (ruins of some of the places remaining to this day), not sparing man, woman, or child, it is more than probable that there would be a great conflux and influx to the city of Cologne, where the Roman government still kept its seat, and where, of course, there was something like order, although we have unfortunate proofs, in the works of Salvianus, [Footnote 86] that the morality of the city had become so very corrupt that it deserved great chastisement. However, so far all is coherent. In 451, after Attila had gone to France, and had been completely defeated, he made his way back, greatly exasperated, burning and destroying everything in his way, sparing no one. Then he appeared before Cologne; and this is the invasion in which it is supposed the martyrdom took place.

[Footnote 84: S. Greg. Turon., Hist. Franc., lib. ii., cap. v. Ed. Migne: Patrologia. tom. lxviii., pp. 197, 576.]

[Footnote 85: Vid. Tillemont, Hist. des Emp., vi. p. 151. Acta Sanct. Boll., Jan. tom. i. in vit. S. Genovevae.]

[Footnote 86: De Gubernatione Dei, Ed. Baluzii, Paris, 1864, pp. 140, 141. ]

Having given you what the Bollandist considers the historical thread, every part of which can be confirmed and made most probable, I will now, before going into proofs of the narrative, direct your attention for a few minutes to what we may call the legendary parts of the history. When we speak of legends we must not confound them with fables, that is, with pure inventions. We must not suppose that people sat down to write a lie under the idea that they were edifying the Church or anybody. There have been such cases, no doubt; for Tertullian mentions the delinquency of a person's writing false acts of St. Paul, and being suspended from his office of priest in consequence. Such follies have happened in all times. We have had many instances in our own day of attempts at forging documents, and committing the worst of social crimes; but old legends as we have them, and even the false acts as they were called, were no doubt written without any intention of actually deceiving, or of passing off what was spurious for genuine. The person who first suggested this was a man certainly no friend of Catholics, Le Clerc, better known by his literary name of Clericus; who observes that school exercises were sometimes drawn from martyrdoms, as in our day from a classical subject, as Juvenal says of Hannibal:

      "I demens et saevas curre per Alpes
  Ut pueris placeas et declamatio flas."

Not that students professed to write a real history, but they gave wonderful descriptions of deeds of valor and marvellous events which had never occurred, and were never intended to be believed. In the same way, at a time when nothing but a religious subject could create interest, that sort of composition came to be applied to acts of saints and martyrs; so that many books and narratives which we have of that description may be thus accounted for. It is much like our historical novels, or the historical plays of Shakespeare, for instance. Nobody imagines that their authors wished to pass them off for history, but they did not contradict history; they kept to history, so that you may find it in them; and you might almost write a history from some of those books which are called historical works of fiction. In early times such compositions were of a religious character. Then came times of greater ignorance, and those works came to be regarded as true historical accounts. But, are we to reject them on that ground altogether? Are we to say, any more than we should with regard to the fictitious works of which I have just spoken, that there is no truth in them? We should proceed in the same way as people do who seek for gold. A {440} man goes to a gold-field, and tries to obtain gold from auriferous sand. Now suppose he took a sieve full, and said at once, "It's all rubbish," and threw it away; he might go on for a long time and never get a grain of gold. But if he knows how to set to work, if he washes what he obtains, picks out grain by grain, and puts by, he gets a small hoard of real genuine gold; and nobody denies that when, many such supplies are put together they make a treasure of sterling metal. So it is with these legendary accounts. They are never altogether falsehoods—I will not say never, but rarely. Whenever they have an air of history about them, the chances are that, by examining and sifting them well, we may get out a certain amount of real and solid material for history.

The legendary works upon these virgins are numerous and begin early. The first is one which I shall call, as all our writers do, by its first words, "Regnante Domino." This is an account of traditions, evidently written between the ninth and eleventh centuries. It is impossible to determine more closely than this. But we know that it cannot have been written earlier than the ninth century, nor later than the eleventh. It contains a long history of these virgins while in England, who they were, and what they were; of a certain marriage contract that was made with the father of St. Ursula, a very powerful king; how it was arranged that she should have eleven companions, and each of these a thousand followers; how they should embark for three years and amuse themselves with nautical exercises; how the ships went to the other side of the channel. It is an absurd story and full of fable, but there are three or four most important points in it. Geoffrey of Monmouth comes next. He gives another history, totally different from that of the "Regnante Domino;" but retains two or three points of identity. His is evidently a British tradition, which, of course, it is most important to compare with the German one; and we shall find how singularly they agree. Then, after these, come a number of legends called Passiones, long accounts filled with a variety of incongruous particulars which may be safely put aside; but in the same way germs or remnants of something good, which have been thus preserved, are found in them all, and when brought together may give us some valuable results. We next meet with what is more difficult to explain—the supposed revelations of St. Elizabeth of Schönau, and of Blessed Hermann of Steinfeld. It is not for us to enter into the discussion, which is a very subtle one, of how persons who are saints really canonized and field in immense veneration—one of them, Hermann, singularly so—can be supposed to have been allowed to follow their own imaginations on some points, while at the same time there seems no doubt that they lived in an almost ecstatic state. This question is gone into fully; and the best authorities are quoted by the Bollandist. It would require a long discussion, and it would not be to our purpose, to pursue it further. These supposed revelations are rejected altogether. Now we come to positive forgeries, consisting of inscriptions, or of engraved stones with legends carved upon them. One of these mentions a pope who never existed, and also a bishop of Milan who never lived, beside a number of other imaginary people. From the texture and state of these inscriptions there can be no doubt whatever that they are absolute forgeries, and the author of them is pretty well discovered. He was a sacristan of the name of Theodorus. In order to enhance the glory of these virgins, they are represented, as you see in legendary pictures, as being in a ship accompanied by a pope, bishops, abbots, and persons of high dignity, who are supposed to have come from Rome with them. All this we discard, making out what we can from the sounder traditions.

And this is the result. There are {441} two or three points on which, whether we take the English or the German traditions, all are agreed. First, we have that a great many of these virgins were English: that the Germans all agree upon; the earliest historical documents say the same. Secondly, that they were martyred by the Huns: that we are told both by the English and the German writers. It is singular that they should agree on such a point as this; and you will see how—I do not say corroborated, but absolutely proved it is. The third fact is, that there was a tremendous slaughter at the time, a singular slaughter of people committed at Cologne by these Huns. This comes out from all the legendary histories, which agree upon this point, and we can hardly know how they should do so except through separate traditions; for they evidently have nothing else in common. Their separate narratives we may reject as legendary.

Thus we come to an investigation of the true history, and see how it is proved. And first I must put before you what I may call the foundation-stone of the whole history on which it is based—the inscription now kept in the church of St. Ursula. It had remained very much neglected, though it had been given by different authors, until, when the Bollandists were going to write their history, they took three casts of it; one they gave to the archbishop of Cologne, another they kept for themselves; the third—I cannot say what became of it, but I think it went to Rome, having been taken by De Rossi. I could not afford to have a cast brought here, but I have had a most accurate tracing made of it. Those of you who are judges of graphic character will see the nature of the letters; they are capital, or uncial letters. First, you may ask what is the age of this inscription? It is pretty well agreed that it cannot be later than the year 500—that would be fifty years after that assigned to the martyrdom of the virgins. De Buck, who is really almost hypercritical in rejecting, says he does not see a single objection to the genuineness of this inscription. There is not a trace of Lombard or later character about it; it is purely Roman. The union of some of the letters is just what we find about that time in Roman inscriptions. It is then, as nearly as one can judge, of the age I have mentioned—about the year 500. De Rossi, passing through Cologne three or four years ago, examined it and pronounced it to be genuine, and said it could not be of a later period than that. Dr. Enner, a layman of Cologne, when writing his "History of Cologne," could not bring himself to believe that the inscription was so old, and he sent an exact copy in plaster (perhaps that was the third) to Professor Ritschl, the well-known editor of Plautus, and a Protestant, at Bonn. I have a copy of the Professor's letter here, in which he says that he has minutely examined the inscription, and that he cannot see anything in it to make it more modern than the date assigned to it, and that it contains peculiarities which no forger would ever hit upon, such as the double i, and other forms. He says, "I am not sufficiently acquainted with the history of St. Ursula to connect it in any way; but I have no hesitation in saying that the inscription cannot be later than the beginning of the sixth century;" which, you see, takes us back very nearly to the time when the martyrdom is supposed to have occurred. Then I may mention that the very inscription is copied in the next historical document that we have, as being already in the church. This is the translation of the inscription, of which I present an exact copy:

"Clematius came from the East; he was terrified by fiery visions, and by the great majesty and the holiness of these virgins, and, according to a vow that he made, he rebuilt at his own expense, on his own land, this basilica." Then follows a commination at the end, which is not unusual in such cases. Now, every expression here is to be found in inscriptions of the time.

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For instance, "de proprio;" "votum;" "loco suo" (sometimes it is "loco empto"), meaning of course land which one made his own, or which was his own before. There had been then a basilica—not the church that now exists, but a basilica—at the tombs where these saints were buried, which we shall have to describe later. He rebuilt the basilica fifty years after the martyrdom, destroyed no doubt during the constant incursions of barbarians. It was probably a very small one; for we know that at Rome every entrance to the tombs of martyrs had its basilica. De Rossi has been successful in finding one or two. One was built by St. Damasus, who wrote: "Not daring to put my ashes among so many martyrs, I have built this basilica for myself, my mother and sister;" and there are three niches at the end for three sarcophagi. It is universally allowed that there never was a catacomb without its basilica. In fact, in that of Pope St. Alexander, and Sts. Evantius and Theodulus, found lately, there is a basilica completely standing, and the bodies of these saints were found—one under the altar—and the others near it. Then from the basilica you go into the catacomb. So that nothing is more natural than that in the place where these martyrs were buried, Clematius should rebuild their basilica. After this monument we proceed to the next genuine document, though one of a later date, and by an unknown author—the "Sermo in Natali." This, there is no doubt, was written between the years 751 and 839; and I will give the ingenious argument by which this date is proved. But first it quotes the inscription I have read, with the exception of the threat at the end; in the second place it mentions that the virgins were probably Britons—that it was not certain, but the general opinion was that they had come from Britain; thirdly, it attributes the martyrdom to the Huns; fourthly, it insinuates what is of great importance in filling up the history, that it is by no means to be supposed that they were all virgins, but that many were widows and married people. The reason for fixing the earliest date at 751 is, that it quotes Bede's Ecclesiastical History, which was written in that year, giving apparently his account of the conversion of Lucius; though one cannot say that it is certainly a copy from Bede, because Bede himself copied from more ancient books, and both may have drawn from the same source. Then it could not have been written after 839 for two reasons. In 834 there was a tremendous incursion of other barbarians—of Normans; and it is plain from our book that there had been no such invasion when it was written; nothing was known of it, because the writer speaks of countries, particularly Holland, as being flourishing, which were completely destroyed by them. There is also this singular circumstance. In speaking of the great devotion to the virgins in Batavia, the writer states that this happened at a time when Batavia was an island formed by the two branches of the Rhine. Now in 839 an inundation completely destroyed it, one of the horns or arms being entirely obliterated. Therefore that gives us a certain compass within which the book was written. The author himself was a native of Cologne—for in referring to the inhabitants he once or twice speaks of "us"—and he would therefore be familiar with the traditions of the people. He says there was no written history at that time; he defends the traditions, and shows how natural it was that the people should have kept them. I ought to mention that he calls the head of the band of martyrs Pinnosa. He says, "She is called in her own country Vinosa, in ours Pinnosa;" and there is evidence that this was the name first given to the leader; how, by what transformation, it came to be St. Ursula, we cannot tell; it is certain that up to that time hers was not the name of the leader. Afterward Pinnosa appears on the list, but not as the chief, St. Ursula being the prominent name.

{444}

After that period there comes a mass of historical proofs that one can have no difficulty about. From 852 there are an immense number of diplomas giving grants of land to the nuns of the monastery of St. Ursula, at her place of burial. There is no doubt of the existence of that church, from other documents. Then the martyrologies repeat the whole tradition again and again. Thus, then, we fill up that gap of four hundred years (from A.D. 400 to A.D. 800). There is the inscription; there is the "Sermo in Natali," which quotes it, and gives old traditions; and afterward there are diplomas and other testimonies which are abundant.

We now proceed to compare the whole tradition with history, with known history, for after all this is our chief business. When we possess a tradition of a country and people, we ask, "What confirmation, what corroboration, have we? what does history tell us?" Let us then see what history does tell. It tells us, in the first place, that in the year 450 Attila was known to be coming to invade and take possession of Gaul, having been ejected from Italy. His army is said by contemporary writers to have been composed of 700,000 men. It was a hostile emigration. They brought their women and children in carts, as the Huns always used to do, and they of course marched but slowly. They went along both sides of the Danube, and got at length into France. De Buck, by a most interesting series of proofs, makes it almost as evident as anything can be that they crossed over at Coblentz, therefore not coming near Cologne. They entered, as I have said, into Gaul, destroying everything in their march. Some of their barbarities and massacres are almost incredible. After devastating nearly the whole of the country, they besieged Orleans. The inhabitants having been encouraged to resist, at last succeeded in obtaining certain terms; that is, Attila and his chiefs went into the city and took what they liked, but left the city standing. After this they were pursued by the general whom I have mentioned—Aetius, a Gaul, but who got together all the troops he could, Goths, Visigoths, Franks, and others, who saw what the design of these horrible barbarians was.

A most tremendous battle was now fought, that of Catalaunia (Châlons-sur-Marne), in which contemporary historians tell us 300,000 men were left on the field; but that number has been reduced to 200,000. Such battles, thank God! we seldom hear of now-a-days. Attila, routed, immediately took to flight, and got clear away from his pursuers. He went through Belgium, destroying city after city, leaving nothing standing, and massacring the people in the most barbarous way.

Here comes the most difficult knot of the whole history. Authors agree that Attila now made his way into Thuringia, that is to the heart of Germany; he must therefore be supposed to have got clear over the Rhine, and marched a long way through the country. On this subject De Buck has one of the most exquisite and beautiful geographical investigations, I should think, that have ever appeared. He proves, so that you can no more doubt it than you can doubt my having this paper before me, that there was Thuringia which lay on this side of the Rhine; he proves it by a series documents taken from mediaeval writers, and from inscriptions, that there was a Thuringia which stretched from Louvain to the Rhine. Indeed, it is impossible to conceive how Attila could have got, as by a leap, into the very midst of Germany. He traces the natural course of march (which you can follow by any map), taking the cities destroyed as landmarks, and brings him to this province; and when there, there was no possible way of crossing the Rhine but by Cologne; there was the only bridge, the only military pass of any sort. So there can be no doubt that the Huns, exasperated by their tremendous losses, and by being driven {445} out of Gaul, which they intended to occupy, having revenged themselves as they went on, were obliged to go through Cologne; and if you calculate the date of the victory, and consider the country through which Attila passed, destroying everything as he went, you bring him almost to a certainty to Cologne about the 21st of October, nearly the day of the martyrdom. The "Regnante Domino," which attributes the martyrdom to the Huns, corroborates all this account, which is the result of a most painstaking examination, extending over many pages.

Next we come to another important point. Why attribute this massacre to the Huns? Because there was no other invasion and passage of savages except that one. It accords, then, both with geographical and chronological facts. We have the martyrs at Cologne at the very time when these barbarians came.

But we must needs say something about the Huns. There is no question that the Huns were the most frightful, cruel, and licentious barbarians that ever invaded the Roman empire. They were not of a northern race, Germans or Scandinavians; they were, no doubt, Mongols or Tartars; they came from Tartary, from Scythia, and settled on the Caspian sea; they then moved on to the mouths of the Danube, and again to Hungary, and rolled on in this way toward the richer countries of the west. There are several authors of that period—Jornandes, Procopius, and others—who describe them to us. [Footnote 87] They tell us that when they were infants their mothers bound down their noses, and flattened them in such a way that they should not come beyond the cheek-bones; that their eyes were so sunk that they looked like two caverns; that they scarified all the lower part of the face with hot irons when young, so that no hair could grow; that they had no beard, and were more hideous than demons; that they wore no dress except a shirt fabricated by the women in the carts in which they entirely lived; it was never changed, but was worn till it dropped off, under a mantle made entirely of wild-rat skins. Their chaussure consisted of kid skins round their legs, with most extraordinary shoes or sandals, which had no shape whatever, and did not adapt themselves to the form; the consequence was that they could not walk, and they fought entirely on their wretched horses. They had no cuisine except between the saddle and the back of the horse, where they put their steaks and softened them a little before eating; but as to drink, they could take any amount of it. With regard to their morality it cannot be described. The writers of that age tell us that no Roman woman would allow herself to be seen by a Hun. They were licentious to a degree, and they carried off all the women they could into captivity; probably they destroyed a great many; which was their custom when they became a burden to them. These, then, were the sort of savages that reached Cologne.

[Footnote 87: Ammianua Marcellinus, lib. xxxi., cap. ii. ]

They had another peculiarity; of all the hordes of savages that invaded the Roman empire, they are the only ones that used the bow and arrow. The Germans hardly made any use of the bow, except a few men who mixed in the ranks; as a body their execution was with the sword, the lance, and the pike. The use of the bow was distinctly Tartar, or Scythian. Then we are told that their aim from horseback was infallible; that when flying from a foe they could turn round and shoot with perfect facility; that they rode equally well astride or seated sideways like a woman; in fact that they flew and turned just like the Parthians and Scythians from whom they were descended. In this great battle of Catalaunia they either lost heart or steadiness, and they could not fire upon their enemies, so that they were pursued and tremendously routed. That their mode of fighting was by the bow and arrow, you {446} will see in the representations given in the beautiful shrine at Hamelink, where the martyrs are fired into by the barbarians with bows and arrows. Let us see what this has to do with our question. The "Regnante Domino," which we have mentioned as legendary, gives a most beautiful description of the mode of dealing with the bodies. The writer says that when the inhabitants saw that the enemy were gone they came out, and in a field they found this great number of virgins lying on the ground. They collected their blood, got sarcophagi, or made graves, and put them in; "and there they lay, as they were placed," the writer says, "as any one can tell who has seen them," evidently suggesting that he had seen them. Now, in the year 1640, on July 2, Papebroch, an authority beyond all question, and Crombach, whose word may be relied on as that of a most excellent and holy man, were at the opening of the tombs. From all tradition this was no doubt the place of the stone of Clematius; there has always been a convent there; and you remember that part of the inscription which threatens eternal punishment to those who should bury any but virgins there. It is now called "St. Ursula's Acker," a sort of sacred field where the basilica was. Here they were buried, and so they remained undisturbed except by some translations of the middle ages, which do not concern us. In 1640 there was a formal exhumation, and eye-witnesses tell us what they saw. A nuncio came afterward to verify the facts.

I will give you the account of how these bodies were found. Many of them were in graves, in rows, but each body separate, there being a space of a foot between them. In other places there were stone sarcophagi in which they were laid separately. Then Crombach describes that there were some large fosses, sixty feet long, eight feet deep, and sixteen wide, containing a large number of bodies. They were placed in a row with a space between them; at their feet was another row; then a quantity of earth was thrown on, and another row was placed, and so on, until you came to the fourth. Every skeleton in the three rows was entire, and they all looked toward the east. They had their arms crossed upon their bosoms, and almost every one had a vessel containing blood, or sand tinged with blood. The fourth, or upper stratum, consisted of disjointed bones, and with these also there were vessels containing blood or colored sand. In this way, the writer says, he saw a hundred bodies. Then there was this remarkable circumstance about their clothes. Eutychianus, [Footnote 88] the pope, had published a decree that no body of a martyr was ever to be buried without having a dalmatic put upon it; and clothes in abundance were found upon these bodies.

[Footnote 88: Acta SS. Bolland. Octob., tom, ix., p. 139. Constant. Rom. Pont. Epist. Paris, 1721, p. 299. ]

Another important discovery was, that immense quantities of arrows were found mingled with the bones; some sticking in the skull, others in the breast, others in the arms—right in the bones. So it was clear that all these bodies had been put to death by means of arrows, and there was no other tribe but the Huns which made use of the arrow as its instrument of death. I may add that there were no signs of burning, or of any heathen burial about them. This also is most important. I have said that there had been other exhumations in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. There are pictures of these, and there are sarcophagi preserved in which bodies were found. These are laid in exactly the same manner as others were found in 1640. Crombach says the whole had been done most scientifically, that the distances were all arranged by measure, so that there was not a quarter of a foot difference anywhere.

Now, I ask, could these bodies have been put there in consequence of a plague, or an earthquake, or any event of that kind? Putting aside the arrows found in immense quantities, and the {447} vessels containing blood, we know that when people die in a plague to the number of hundreds, a foss is made, and they are thrown in, and there is an end of them. This could not have been a common cemetery. It contained nothing but the bodies of these women (I will speak of their physical characteristics later), all laid in studied order, with great care, and with such peculiarities, and all evidently buried at the same time. After reading all this, may we not exclaim with St. Ambrose, "We have found the signs of martyrdom," and with St. Gaudentius, "What can you desire more to show that they were all martyred?" [Footnote 89] And who does not see here confirmed the history of Clematius? Comparing the whole with traditions, both English and German, it seems to me that you have as much proof as you can reasonably require.

[Footnote 89: S. Ambros., class, i., epist. xxii Ed Ben., tom, iii., p. 927. S. Gaud., Serm. in Dedic. SS. XL. Martyr, ap. Migne, tom, xx., col. 963.]

Having given you concisely the facts and corroborations of history, let me now proceed to answer objections.

And, first there is the question, Were all these martyrs? Well, if they were to be tried by the rules established very justly in the modern Church, it would no doubt be difficult to say; because how can you prove that each of these women laid down her life voluntarily for Christ? The tradition of Cologne is that they would not sacrifice their virtue to those heathens, and that they were surrounded and shot. But in those times a wider meaning was sometimes attached to the word "martyr." There were what are called martyres improprie dicti, where there could not be the same kind of evidence as in the case of others; or martyres latiore sensu. A person was called a martyr when he was put to death without his will being consulted, as in the case of our own St. Edmund, and in the case of St. Wenceslaus, who was put to death without being interrogated as to whether he would remain a Christian or not, and many others. De Buck shows that there was nothing more common. We have the remarkable case of the Theban legion—another instance of a large number of men being surrounded and cut down by soldiers without being questioned as to whether they were in a state of grace, or whether they were prepared to die. The deed was done in odium religionis, by people who merely looked to the gratification of their own passions and their desire for revenge. In those days the question of such persons being martyrs would be a very simple one, if it were known that they were killed by the Huns in hatred, as was supposed, of their virginity and because of their resistance. We have in martyrologies the account of Nicomedia and its twelve thousand martyrs. De Buck supposes that the number included all the martyrs of the persecution. And the 6,700 of the Theban legion are explained in the same way.

The next question is, Were these persons all virgins? Who can know? It is quite certain that even married persons, when martyred, had sometimes the title of virgins given to them. Many instances are supplied by the martyrologies and offices. St. Sabina, [Footnote 90]for instance, is called a virgin martyr, though she was a married person. It was considered that martyrdom raised all women to a higher degree of excellence. There are some curious questions, too, arising, which would not very well do for a discussion here. It is, however, sufficiently proved that when there was a great number of virgins, and others were mixed with them, the nobler title was given to all. Just as, if you have a great many martyrs and some confessors united, the title of martyrs is applied to all, as they are included in one office, each sharing in the glory of martyrdom. The "Sermo in Natali" expressly tells us that it was not supposed at its early period that all were virgins, but that there were ladies of all ranks and children amongst them. Indeed, some remains of children were found.

[Footnote 90: Acta SS. Bolland. Octob., tom, ix., p. 143.]

{448}

Then comes the question, Were there eleven thousand? Certainly not as all one company. It is supposed, and there appears nothing unreasonable in it, that when once the rage of the Huns was excited they would give way to an indiscriminate massacre, and that the eleven thousand most probably included persons who had sought refuge, perhaps their own captives, and probably a great number of the inhabitants of the city.

But does it not seem a frightful number of persons to be massacred? Not by the Huns. In the year 436 these same Huns slaughtered at once in Burgundy 30,000 men. They were of the same race, the same family of men, as Tamerlane, who had 70,000 heads cut off in Ispahan. And the Turks, when they took the island of Chios, reduced the population of 120,000 to 8,000. So that those slaughters, which to us seem so fearful, are not to be considered in the same light when occurring in those times. We have a frightful example in the case of Theodosius and the inhabitants of Thessalonica. It is said that 15,000 persons were put to death in the theatre for a simple insult. The most moderate calculation is that by St. Ambrose, who gives the number as 7,000. Human life, of course, was not then regarded as by us, especially by men who devastated whole cities and burned them to the ground. Hence the difficulty as to the number of persons, including among them not merely the followers of St. Ursula, but the bulk of the female inhabitants, is explained.

Another question arises, Were they English, or were there English amongst them? That is answered unhesitatingly, Yes. All the traditions, English and German, agree that these ladies had come from England and sought refuge.

I have mentioned the facilities for emigration, and the way in which many went out of the country; so that there would be nothing wonderful in a certain number of British women being at Cologne at that time. Now there is this curious fact illustrating the subject. Very lately the Golden Chamber, as it is called, adjoining the church, where the chief remains are deposited, was visited by Dr. Braubach and Dr. Gortz of Cologne, Dr. Buschhausen of Ratingen, and others, who examined the skulls and pronounced them to be Celtic, not German. The Celtic characteristics, as given by Blumenbach and other writers, are quite distinct—the chin falls back considerably, the skull is very long, and the vertex of the head goes far behind—quite distinct from the Romans or Germans. Moreover, with the exception of ten or fifteen out of from eighty to a hundred, they were all the bodies of females. Now all the writers—all that I have seen at least—say that there could not have been an emigration of some hundreds of women without some men, some persons to guard them, and these would be with them and would share their martyrdom. Then, in the next place, they were all young people, there was no sign of their having died of a plague or any other casualty, but they appeared to be strong, healthy young women; which of course, as far as we can judge, verifies the narrative to the utmost.

I now leave you to judge how very different historical research has made this legend, as it is called, appear, and how much we have a right to regard it in a devotional spirit, as the inhabitants of Germany certainly do. I do not say that there have not been many exaggerations, false relics, and stories; but critical investigation enables us to put all these aside, and to sift their evidence. But certainly we have a strong historical verification of what has been considered until within the last few years as legendary, not only by real discoveries which have come to light, but also by a right use of evidence which before had been overlooked and neglected.

The whole of what I have said relates to events. But my subject embraces "events and things." The latter part remains untouched, and I have {449} yet to show how things or objects which have been looked upon as fabulous have been proved to be real and genuine.

II. I proceed, therefore, to objects which have been, or may be, easily misrepresented, as if asserted to be what they are not, and involving an imputation of imposture on the part of those who propose them to the notice or veneration of Catholics.

I will begin with a rather singular example, but one which, I trust, will verify the assertion which I have made; and if time permits, I will multiply the examples by giving two or three other instances.

I do not know whether any of you in your foreign travels have visited the cathedral of Chartres; I have not seen it myself, but I believe that it is one of the most noble, most majestic, and most inspiring of all Gothic buildings on the continent. The French always speak of it as combining the great effects of a mediaeval church, more perhaps than any other in their country; and as my address will relate to that cathedral, I think it is necessary to give a little preliminary account of it; at the same time warning you that I do not by any means intend to plunge into the depths of the singular mystery in which the origin of that cathedral is involved. It takes its rise from a Druidical cavern which was for some time the only church or cathedral. Over that the Christians—for the town was early converted to Christianity—built a church, of course modest, and simple, and poor, as the early churches of the Christians were; but in this was preserved, with the greatest jealousy, and with the deepest devotion, what was called a Druidical image of Our Lady, which was always kept in the crypt, for it was over the crypt that the church was built. It was said to have existed there before the building of the church; but into that part of the history it is not necessary to enter. In the year 1020 this poor old church was struck by lightning, was set on fire, and entirely consumed. The bishop at that time was one of the most remarkable men in the French Church—Fulbert, who has left us a full account of what was done in his time there. He immediately set to work to build another church, proposing that it should be perfectly magnificent according to all the ideas of the age; and to enable him to do so, he had recourse to our modern practice of collecting money on all sides. Among others Canute, king of England and Denmark, and Richard, duke of Normandy, and almost all the sovereigns of the north contributed largely. The result was the beginning of a very magnificent church. The singularity of the building was this, that everybody labored with his hands, not only men, but women, not only the poor, but the noble. These furnished with their own hands provisions or whatever was necessary for the workmen. However, after Fulbert's death, like most undertakings of that class, the work became more languid; and before it was completed (that was in 1094), the building, in which there was a great quantity of wood used, was again burnt to the ground. Well, this time it was determined that there should be a splendid church, such as had never been seen before; and here, again, that same plan of working with their hands was adopted to an extent which, as stated in an account given us by Haymon and one or two others, seems incredible. The laborers relieved one another day and night, lighting up the whole place with torches; provisions were abundantly furnished to all the workmen without their having to move from their places. In fact, the writer says that you might see noblemen, not a few, but hundreds and thousands, dragging carts or drawing materials and provisions; in fact, not resting until, in 1160, seventy years after the destruction, the church was consecrated; and there it remains, the grand cathedral church of Chartres at this day.

Now, it may be asked, what was {450} there which most particularly made Chartres a place of such great devotion, and so attached the inhabitants to its cathedral that they thus sacrificed their ease and comfort so many years to build a church worthy of their object? It was a relic—a relic which had existed for several hundred years at that time in the church, which made it a place of pilgrimage, and which was considered most venerable. What was this relic? The name which it has always borne in the mouths of the simple, honest, and devoted people of Chartres and its neighborhood, and in fact of all France, is La Chemise de la Sainte Vierge—that is, a tunic which was supposed and believed to have been worn by the Blessed Virgin, her under-clothing, and was of course considered most venerable from having been in contact with her pure virginal flesh. However, you may suppose that you require strong proof of such a relic at all, and you will remember that my object is to show how things which may have been doubtful, and perhaps considered almost incredible, have received great proof and elucidation by research. I do not pretend to say that in all respects you can prove the relic: the research to which I allude is modern, but it may guide us back, may confirm a tradition, may give us strong reasons in its favor, showing that it has not been received without good ground, though it may not be able to penetrate the darkness which sometimes surrounds the beginning of anything in very remote antiquity. I am not going, then, to prove the relic, but I am going to show you the grounds on which it had been accepted, and then come to the modern verification of it.

The history is this. A Byzantine writer of the fourteenth century, Nicephorus Calixtus, [Footnote 91] tells us that this very relic was in the possession of persons in Judaea, to whom it was left by our Blessed Lady before her death; that it fell, in the course of time, into the hands of a Jew in Galilee; that two patricians of Constantinople, Galbius and Candidus, traced it, purchased it, and took it to Constantinople, where, considering themselves in possession of a great treasure, they concealed it, and would not let it be known (this was in the middle of the fifth century); that the Emperor Leo, in consequence of the miracles which were wrought, and by which this relic was discovered, in spite of those who possessed it, immediately entered into negotiations, obtained it, and built a splendid church in Constantinople expressly to keep it; and that the church so built was considered as the safety, the palladium as it were, of the city of Constantinople. He mentions another fact which is important; that is, that there were at that time in Constantinople three other churches, each built expressly for the preservation of one relic of our Lady. I mention these facts for this purpose: there is a very prevalent idea, I believe among Catholics as well as certainly among Protestants, that what may be called the great tide of relics came into Europe through the crusades; that the poor ignorant crusaders, who were more able to handle a sword than to use their discretion, were imposed upon, and bought anything that was offered to them at any price, and so deluged Europe with spurious and false relics. Now, you will observe, that all that I have been relating is referred to an age quite anterior to the crusades, or to any movement of the west into the east. It is true that Nicephorus Calixtus is a comparatively modern writer, but he could bear testimony to churches that were existing, and tell by whom they were built. The mere writer of a hand-book can trace out the history of a church or any other public monument which is before the eyes of all: but he was not of that character: he was a historian, and he tells us that there were [Footnote 92] three churches in Constantinople, just as we might say that {451} in Rome there is the church of Santa Croce, built by Constantine to preserve the relics of the cross. Nobody can doubt that the church was built for the relic, that the relic was deposited there, and that earth from the Holy Land was put into its chapel. Monuments like that preserve their own history. Therefore, when this writer tells us that these churches existed from that period, we can hardly doubt that he could arrive at a knowledge of such facts; and at any rate it removes the impression that these wonderful relics were merely the sweepings, as it were, of Palestine during a fervent and pious but at the same time ignorant and unenlightened age.

[Footnote 91: Hist. Eccles., lib. xv., cap. xxiv.]

[Footnote 92: Hist. Eccles., lib. xv., cap. xxv., xxvi.]

Thus, we get the history so far. Now, we know that there was no one who valued relics to such an extent as Charlemagne. We see, by Aix-la-Chapelle and other places, what exceedingly curious relics he collected. I am not here to defend them individually, because I do not know their history; nor is it to our purpose. He was in close correspondence with the east, from which he received large presents; for it was very well known what he valued most. There was a particular reason for this. The Empress Irene at that time (Charlemagne died in 814) wished to have his daughter Rothrude in marriage for her son Porphyrogenitus, and later offered her own hand to himself.

Many relics existed at the time of this correspondence; and as presents are now made of Arab horses and China services, so were they then made of relics, which, if true, monarchs preferred to anything else. Now, there is every reason to suppose that among the presents sent by Irene to Charlemagne was this veil or tunic. [Footnote 93] There is in the cathedral of Chartres a window expressly commemorating the passage of this relic from the east to Chartres. Secondly, the relic, as you will see later, was, up to a few years ago, wrapped in a veil of gauze, which was entirely covered with Byzantine work in gold and in silk, which had never been taken off; and it was wrapped up in it till the last time it was verified. We have every reason to suppose that it had come from Constantinople, and that it was delivered at Chartres in that covering. In the third place, it is historical—there is no question about it, for all chronicles and authorities agree upon the point—that Charles the Bald, the grandson of Charlemagne, being obliged to leave Aix-la-Chapelle, in consequence of going to settle in France, which was the portion of the empire allotted to him, took the relic away, and deposited it in the cathedral of Chartres. So that, as far as we can trace a transaction of this sort, there seems to be as much evidence as would be accepted in respect to the transmission of any object of a profane character from one country to another. There is the correspondence of the workmanship; there are the records of the place; and there is the fact that the relics were brought from Aix-la-Chapelle, where Charlemagne had collected so many relics that he had received from Constantinople. Mabillon, who certainly is an authority in matters of ecclesiastical history, says it would be the greatest rashness to deny the genuineness of this relic. "Who will presume to deny that it is real and genuine?" This is in a letter to the bishop of Blois, in which he is expressly treating the subject of discerning true relics. Everything so far, therefore, helps to give authenticity to this extraordinary relic which made Chartres a place of immense pilgrimage.

[Footnote 93: See note at p. 455.]

Bringing it down so far, we may ask, what was the common, and we may say the vulgar, opinion of the people regarding it? It had never been opened, and was never seen until the end of the last century. The consequence was, that it was called by the name I have mentioned. It was represented as a sort of tunic. It was the custom to make tunics of that form, which were laid upon the shrine and {452} worn in devotion; they were sent specially to ladies of great rank, and were so held in veneration that it was the rule, that if any person going to fight a duel had on one of these chemisettes, as they were called, he must take it off; as it was supposed his rival had not fair play so long as he carried it upon him. In giving an account of the building I forgot to mention the wonderful miracles in connection with the relic there, which are believed by everybody to have taken place. It is even on record that the Chevalier sans peur et sans reproche went to Chartres pour se faire enchemiser before he went to war.

In 1712, we find that the relic was in a cedar case richly ornamented with gold and jewels—the original case in which it had arrived. The wood being worm-eaten and crumbling, it was thought proper to remove and clean it, and put it in some better place. The cedar case had no opening by which it could in any way be examined, and the bishop of the time, Mgr. de Merinville, proposed to open it. He chose a jury of the most respectable inhabitants of the town, clergy and laity, to assist. The box was unclosed, and the relic was found wrapped up, as I have said, in the veil of Byzantine work. The veil was not unclosed, so that they did not see the relic itself. The debris of the box was swept away, and the relic, as it was, was put into a silver case that had been prepared; this was locked up, and then deposited in a larger shrine distinct from all the other relics. The procès verbal still exists in the archives of Chartres giving an account of all that took place, from which the account I have given you is taken.

Infidelity was then spreading in France, and, as you may know, a great deal of ridicule was thrown on this relic. It was said that such a garment was not worn in those days, that the system of dress was quite different, and that it was absurd to imagine any article like this. Now, as no one had seen the relic, there was no way of answering these reproaches. In 1793, three commissioners came from the French government, went into the sacristy, and imperiously desired to look at the relic; it was very richly enshrined, and they intended to carry it off. The shrine was brought to them, as the procès verbal of the second examination relates, when they seemed to be seized with a certain awe, and said, "We will not touch it; let it be opened by priests." Two priests were ordered to open the box, and they did so. These men had come prepared to have a good laugh, and scoffing at this wonderful relic. For antiquarians had been saying that such inward clothing was not known so early as the first century, but that instead a long veil used to be wrapped round the body.

Well, they found a long piece of cloth four and a half ells in length—exactly what had been said should be the proper garment. The commissioners were startled and amazed, and said, "It is clear that this is not the relic the people have imagined; perhaps it is all an imposture." They then cut off a considerable piece and sent it to the Abbé Barthélemy, author of the "Travels of Anacharsis" and member of the Institute—a man who had made the customs and usages of antiquity his study; they did not tell him where it came from, but desired him to give an opinion of what it might be. He returned this answer: that it must be about 2,000 years old, and that from the description given him it appeared to be exactly like what the ladies in the East wear at this day, and always have worn—that is, a veil which went over the head, across the chest, and then involved the whole body, being the first dress worn. I ask, could a verification be more complete than this? And, recollect, it comes entirely from enemies. It was not the bishop or clergy that sought it. The relic was in the hands of those three infidel commissioners, who sent a portion to Paris without saying or giving any hint of what it was (they {453} wanted to make out that the whole was an imposture), and the answer was returned which I have mentioned, and which is contained in the procès in the archives of the episcopal palace at Chartres. If any one wants to read the whole history, I refer him to a most interesting book just published by the curé of St. Sulpice (Abbé Hamon), entitled "Notre Dame de France, ou Histoire du Culte de la Sainte Vierge en France." The first volume, the only one out, contains the history of the dioceses of the province of Paris.

I will proceed to a second popular charge, and it is one the opportunity of easily verifying which may never occur again. It refers to the head of St. John the Baptist, or, shall I say, to the three heads of St. John the Baptist? Because, if you read English travellers of the old stamp, like Forsyth, you will find that they make coarse jokes about it. Forsyth, I think, says something about Cerberus; but more gravely it has been said, that St. John must have had three heads—one being at Amiens, one at Genoa, and another at Rome; that at each place they are equally positive in their claims; and that there is no way of explaining this but by supposing that St. John was a triceps.

When we speak of a body you can easily imagine that one piece may be in one place, another in another, a third elsewhere, and so on. That is the common way in which we say that the bodies of saints are multiplied; because the Church considers that the place which contains the head or one of the larger limbs of a saint, or the part in which, if a martyr, he was killed or received his death-wound, has the right of keeping his festival and honoring him just as if it had the whole body. Therefore, in cathedrals and places where festivals are held in honor of a particular saint, where they have relics, which have perhaps been sealed up for years, and never examined, they often speak as if they have the entire body. This is a common practice, and if I had time I might give you an interesting exemplification of it. [Footnote 94] Suffice it to say, that according to travellers there are three heads of St. John. Now as I have said, a body can be divided, but you can hardly imagine this to be the case with a head.

[Footnote 94: Since published in The Month, "Story of a French Officer." (See CATH. WORLD, No. 1.)]

A very interesting old English traveller—Sir John Mandeville—went into the East very early, and returned in 1366; soon after which, almost as soon as any books were published, his travels appeared. He is a very well-known writer. Of course you must not expect that accuracy in his works which a person would now exhibit who has books at his command and all the conveniences for travelling. He was not a profound scholar: he believes almost whatever is told him, so what we must do is to let him guide us as well as he can, and endeavor to judge how far he is right. I will read you an extract, then, from Sir John Mandeville: [Footnote 95]

[Footnote 95: "Travels," chap, ix., p. 182. Ed. Bohn.]

"From thence we go up to Samaria, which is now called Sebaste; it is the chief city of that country. There was wont to be the head of St. John the Baptist inclosed in the wall; but the Emperor Theodosius had it drawn out, and found it wrapped in a little cloth, all bloody; and so he carried it to Constantinople; and the hinder part of the head is still at Constantinople; and the fore part of the head to under the chin, under the church of St. Silvester, where are nuns; and it is yet all broiled, as though it were half burnt; for the Emperor Julian above mentioned, of his wickedness and malice, burned that part with the other bones, as may still be seen; and this thing hath been proved both by popes and emperors. And the jaws beneath which hold to the chin, and a part of the ashes, and the platter on which the head was laid when it was smitten off, are at Genoa; and the Genoese make a great feast in honor of it, and so do the Saracens also. And some men say that the {454} head of St. John is at Amiens in Picardy; and other men say that it is the head of St. John the bishop. I know not which is correct, but God knows; but however men worship it, the blessed St. John is satisfied."

This is a true Catholic sentiment. Right or wrong, all mean to honor St. John, and there is an end of it. We could not expect a traveller going through the country like Sir John, not visiting every place, but hearing one thing from one and another from another, to tell us the exact full truth. But we have here two very important points gained. First, we have the singular fact of the division of the head at all. We occasionally hear of the head of a saint being at a particular place, but seldom of a part of a head being in one place and a part in another. Here we have an unprejudiced traveller going into the East; he comes to the place where the head of St. John used to be kept, and he finds there the tradition that it was divided into three parts, one of which was at Constantinople, one at Genoa, and another at Rome. Then he adds, "Other people say that the head is at Amiens." So much Sir John Mandeville further informs us: he mentions the places where it was reported the head was, telling us that it was divided into three.

This is a statement worthy of being verified. It was made a long time ago, and yet the tradition remains the same. It was as well believed in the thirteenth century in the East, at Sebaste, as it is in Europe at the present moment.

The church of S. Silvestro in Capite, which many of you remember, is a small church on the east side of the Corso, entered by a sort of vestibule: it has an atrium or court, with arches round, and dwellings for the chaplains; the outer gates can be shut at night so as to prevent completely any access to the church. The rest is an immense building, belonging to the nuns, running out toward the Propaganda. When the republicans in the late invasion got hold of Rome, the first thing, of course, which they did was to turn out the monks and nuns right and left, to make barracks; and the poor nuns of S. Silvestro were ordered to move. The head of St. John is in a shrine which looks very brilliant, but is poor in reality. I think it is exposed high beyond the altar, and the nuns kept it in jealous custody in their house. The republicans sent away the nuns in the middle of the night, at ten or eleven o'clock, just as they were, with what clothes they could get made into bundles: there were carriages at the door to send them off to some other convent, without the slightest warning or notice. The poor creatures were ordered to take up their abode in the convent of St. Pudentiana. The only thing they thought of was their relic, and that they carried with them. The good nuns received them though late at night, and did what they could to give them good cheer; they gave up one of their dormitories to them, putting themselves to immense inconvenience.

When the French came to Rome, they found S. Silvestro so useful a building for public purposes that they continued to hold it, but permitted the nuns to occupy some rooms near the church. I was in Rome while they were still at my titular church, and went to visit the nuns attached to it. Their guests asked, "Would you not like to see our relic of St. John?" I said, "Certainly I should; perhaps I shall never have another opportunity." I do not suppose it had been out of their house for hundreds of years. There is a chapel within the convent which the nuns of St. Pudentiana consider a sacred oratory, having a miraculous picture there, to which they are much attached; and in this they kept the shrine. On examination I found that there was no part of the head except the back. It is said in the extract I have read to you that the front part of the head is at Rome; but it is the back of the skull merely; the rest is filled up with some stuffing {455} and silk over it. The nuns have but a third of the head; and the assertion that they pretend to possess the head, which travellers make, is clearly false. I can say from my own ocular inspection that it is but the third part—the back part, which is the most interesting, because there the stroke of martyrdom fell. I was certainly glad of this fortunate opportunity of verifying the relic.

Some time afterward I was at Amiens. I was very intimate with the late bishop, and spent some days with him. One day he said to me, "Would you wish to see our head of St. John?" "Yes," I replied, "I should much desire it." "Well," he said, "we will wait till the afternoon; then I will have the gates of the cathedral closed, that we may examine it at leisure."

We dined early, and went into the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, where the relic was exposed, with candles. After saying prayers, it was brought, and I had it in my hands; it was nothing but the mask, the middle and back portions being totally wanting. You could almost trace the expression and character of the countenance in the bony structure. It was of the same size and color as the portion which I had seen at St. Pudentiana; but the remarkable thing about it is that there are stiletto marks in the face. We are told by Fathers, that Herodias stabbed the head with a bodkin when she got it into her hand, and here are the marks of such an operation visible. You could almost say that you had seen him as he was alive. I have not seen the third fragment, but I can hardly doubt that it is a portion of the same head, and that it would comprise the parts, the chin and the jaw, because there is no lower jaw in the front part, which is a mere mask. The only other claimant is Genoa, and its relic I have not seen. But this is exactly the portion allotted by Mandeville to that city. I have, however, had the satisfaction of personally verifying two of the relics, each of which comprises a third part of the head, leaving for the other remainder exactly the place which our old traveller allots to it.

Mr. Cashel Hoey, one of our learned contributors, has kindly furnished me with a most interesting corroboration of this account. It is an extract from the Revue Archéologique, new series, Jan. 1861, p. 36, in a paper by M. Louis Moland, entitled "Charlemagne à Constantinople," etc., giving an account of a MS. in the library of the Arsenal, anterior to the thirteenth century.

The following is the account of the relic which the emperor is stated to have brought from Constantinople to Aix-la-Chapelle:

"Li empereres prist les saintuaires tot en disant ses orisons, si les mist en eskerpes (écharpes) totes de drap de soie et si les enporta molt saintement avoec lui trosqu Ais la Capele en l'eglise Nostre Dame qu'il avoit ediflie. Là fu establis par l'apostolie (Le Pape) et par les archevesques et les evesques as pelerins li grans pardons, qui por Deu i venoient. Oiés une partie des reliques, que li empereres ot aportées: il i fu la moitiés de la corone dont Nostre Sires fu coronés des poignans espines. Et si i ot des claus dont Nostre Sires fu atachiés en la crois al jor que li Jui le crucifierent. Et si i ot de la vraie crois une pieche et del suaire Nostre Segnor, O le chemise Nostre Dame."

{456}

From The Month.

MADAME SWETCHINE AND HER SALON.

The salons of Paris form a distinctive feature of French society. Nowhere else is the same thing exactly to be found. Frenchwomen have a peculiar gift for conversation, due in a great measure to their graceful language, with its delicate shades of expression. We are prone to smile at French sentimentality, or to apply their own word verbiage, prefacing it with unmeaning. But when the epithet does truly fit, it is because the real thing has been abused, not because it does not exist. Conversation in France is cultivated as an art, just the same as epistolary style: both form an important branch of female education. When the soil is bad, the attempt at culture only betrays more clearly native poverty; in other words, a mind of little thought or taste becomes ridiculous in straining after the expression of what it can neither conceive nor feel. But when a well-informed and cultivated intelligence blossoms into keen appreciation of the beautiful, no language so delicately as French conveys minute shades of thought and feeling. 'Tis not repetition, then, but variety; and when such an instrument is handled with feminine tact, perfection in its kind is achieved.

No wonder that salons are exclusively French from the days of Julie de Rambouillet down to Madame Récamier. No wonder at the influence exercised by a woman who really has a salon. Few, very few, arrive at this result. Thousands may receive; hundreds glitter in the gay world of fashion, renowned for beauty, wit, good dressing, or good parties; two or three at most in a century are the presiding spirits of their social circles, and that is what constitutes having a salon. No one quality alone will do it; a combination is required; not always the same, but one or two together, whichsoever, attracting sympathy and producing influence. Influence—the effect, not the quality itself—can never be absent.

Strangers settling in Paris have had their salon; but we do not know that they could transport it with them to any other atmosphere. Beside Madame Récamier—whose rare beauty, joined to her goodness and her tact, helped to form her salon—two other women in our day, or just before it, have been the leading stars of their circles. Others, no doubt, there are; but the names of these three have escaped beyond Paris. Strange to say, two are foreigners, and both of these Russians. Except, however, as regards country and influence, no comparison can of course be established between the Princess Lieven and Madame Swetchine. One sought and gained a political object; the other accepted circumstances, and found them fame.

Madame Swetchine was already thirty-four years of age when she arrived in Paris. She had no beauty, and no pretensions to wit; indeed, her timidity was such that her expressions were always obscure when she began to speak; and it was only by degrees, as she went on, that she gathered confidence, and then her language flowed with ease, betraying, rather than fully revealing, the deep current of thought beneath. Still her advantages were many. As regards outward circumstances, she possessed good birth and high position; her manners were such as the early culture of a polished court bestows; she was accustomed to wield a large fortune, and to hold a prominent place in the social world. These were advantages that might be fairly set against the absence of beauty, wondrous as is that charm: beside, her person was not unpleasing. Though {457} small, she was graceful in her motions; despite little blue eyes, rather irregular, and a nose of Calmuck form, her face wore a soft kindly expression that attracted sympathy. Her complexion was remarkably fresh and clear.

But Madame Swetchine possessed innate qualities of heart and mind of the rarest description, that only unfolded themselves gradually the more closely she could be observed. Unlike mankind in general, the better she was known, the more was she beloved and admired. Her intelligence of richly-varied powers had been carefully cultivated; what she acquired in youth, with the aid of masters, had been since matured by her own unceasing study, and by reading of the most widely-discursive character. Not only was she familiar with ancient and modern literatures, perusing them in their originals, but she also conversed fluently in all the languages of Europe. Her imagination, enthusiastic and wild almost, as belongs to the north, successfully sought for outpourings, both in music and painting. By a strange combination, no natural quality of mind was more remarkable in Madame Swetchine than her good sense: the only feature that shone above it was her eminent gift of piety.

But virtues, and particularly religious virtues, proceed from the heart quite as much as from the intelligence; often, indeed, far more especially. Madame Swetchine possessed the warmest feelings, a nature both loving and expansive. As daughter, wife, and friend she evinced rare devotion; but the sentiment and thought that most filled heart and mind was undoubtedly her love for God.

What a rich assemblage of qualities is here! how strange that they should go to make up a Parisian woman of fashion! Such, however, in its most usual acceptation, Madame Swetchine never was: she never mingled in the light brilliant world; but she did form the centre of attraction to a large circle she had her salon.

General Swetchine, deeply wounded by the emperor, who lent too ready credence to unfounded reports whispered against so faithful a subject, would not stoop to justify himself, but quitted Russia in disgust, accompanied by his wife. When they reached Paris, in the spring of 1816, Louis XVIII. was on the throne of France. Madame Swetchine found now restored to their high positions those friends of her youth whom as exiles she had known and loved at St. Petersburg. Her place was naturally amongst them; new intimacies were soon added to the old. The Duchesse de Duras, authoress of Ourika, and friend of Madame de Staël, gained a strong hold on her affections. Yet it did not seem at first as if Madame Swetchine were destined to so much influence in French society. Modesty made her reserved. Madame de Staël had been invited to meet her at a small dinner-party; and Madame Swetchine, though seated opposite, was intimidated, and allowed the meal to pass over without speaking or scarcely raising her eyes. Afterward Madame de Staël came up and said, "I had been told that you desired my acquaintance; was I misinformed?" "By no means," was the reply; "but it is customary for royalty to speak first." Such was the homage she paid to genius.

At first it had seemed uncertain how long General and Madame Swetchine might remain absent from Russia; but after the lapse of a few years they took up their definite residence in Paris. Their hotel, Rue St. Dominique, was hired on a long lease, and fitted up as a permanent abode. They sent for their pictures and other articles from St. Petersburg. The general occupied the ground-floor; Madame Swetchine took the rooms above. Her apartments consisted of a salon and a library commanding an extensive view of gardens. Here it was that her friends used to assemble; not many at a time, but successively. She never gave soirées, and her dinner-parties consisted of a few intimates round a small table. Her hours for {458} reception were every day from three till six, and then from nine till midnight. Debarred by her health from paying visits, she contented herself with receiving in this manner; and for thirty years a continuous stream of persons was for ever passing on through her rooms. She had not sought to form it; but there was her salon, and one of a peculiar character.

Two features distinguished it: the religious tone that prevailed, and the absence of party spirit. Madame Swetchine herself was eminently religious, and she had a large way of viewing all things. Her influence, though partly moral and intellectual, was ever chiefly religious; and she gave that presiding characteristic to the atmosphere around. So long as faith and morality were not attacked, all other points she considered secondary, and admitted the widest diversity of opinion on them. Her own views on all subjects were firmly held, and she expressed them with freedom. There could be no mistake about it. In religion she was a strict Catholic, and in philosophy Christian; in politics she preferred a liberal monarchy; but far from seeking to give that color to her salon, she would not allow any friend holding the same views to try to impose them on others. This was equally the case in matters of art and taste; she tolerated nothing exclusive; but the principle is much more difficult to be followed out when applied to politics, which involve interests of such magnitude, appealing to all the passions, and especially in such an excitable atmosphere as that of Paris. Nothing better shows Madame Swetchine's tact and gentleness of temper than her intimacies with men of such different stamps, and the way in which she made them to a certain extent amalgamate. But the above qualities would have failed to do it, had their spring been a worldly one; hers flowed truly from the Christian charity with which her whole soul was full. In this she and her salon were unique.

She lived to see two great revolutions in France: the one of 1830, and that which substituted the republic for Louis Philippe, ending with the empire. Members of all these régimes were among her visitors. Ministers of state under the Restoration, those who embraced the Orleans cause, men belonging to the republican government, ambassadors from most of the foreign courts in Europe; all these in turn enjoyed her conversation, some her esteem or affection, according to the degrees of intimacy and sympathy. Her own feelings, as well as convictions, lay with legitimists; but others were no less welcomed, and some of various parties were highly valued. True, however, to religion, she never gave her friendship to men not devoted to the interests of the Church. Her great object was to do good to souls, but in a quiet, unostentatious, womanly way; gently leading to virtue, never inculcating it. This of course became more exclusively her province as she grew older.

She was truly liberal in all her sentiments; not assuredly from indifference, but through a large philosophy of spirit that allowed for diversities of opinion in all things not essential. At the same time her own convictions were unflinchingly avowed, as well as her ideas and tastes in smaller matters.

The men with whom she was most intimate have all more or less been known to fame, and are eminent also for their religious spirit. We might begin a list with Monsieur de Maistre at St. Petersburg, when she was but twenty-five; then following her to Paris, see her make acquaintance with his friend Monsieur de Bonald; exercise maternal influence over MM. de Falloux, de Montalembert, and Lacordaire; and finally wind up with Donoso Cortès, the Marquis de Valdegamas, Prince Albert de Broglie, and Alexis de Tocqueville.

Each one of the distinguished personages above has figured prominently on the great stage, more or less renowned in politics and letters, and {459} always holding a high moral character. It may seem fastidious to recall their titles to fame. In our day, when all are acquainted with continental literature, who is not familiar with the witty author of the Soirées de St. Pétersbourg, although it be permitted somewhat to ignore the rather dry philosophical works of his friend de Bonald? Monsieur de Falloux, with filial love, has raised a monument to Madame Swetchine that will endure beside his life of Pope Pius V., and jointly with the remembrance of his political integrity. Who that has followed the late history of Europe does not know Donoso Cortès, the great orator, whose famous three discourses in the Spanish chambers instantaneously reached so far and wide, whose written style is the very music of that rich Castilian idiom, and whose liberal political views kept pace with his large Catholic heart? Soeur Rosalie and Madame Swetchine together soothed his dying hours. The author of La Démocratic en Amérique has been indiscreetly praised, but none can deny his ability, Prince Albert de Broglie, doctrinaire in his views, still advocates with talent the cause of religion and of constitutional monarchy. These two latter were among the latest acquisitions to Madame Swetchine's salon.

MM. de Montalembert and de Falloux were like her sons; she knew them from their early manhood, called them by their Christian names, loved and counselled them as any mother might. But if her influence over them was so salutary, we cannot help admiring most the unswerving attachment of these young men to her; Madame Swetchine's letters show her expostulating with Comte de Montalembert, then little past twenty, and endeavoring to convince him he is wrong. He will not yield; but acknowledges afterward the justness of her views, and allows now these letters to be published. Alfred de Falloux is the son sent for when danger seems impending; he tends her dying couch in that same salon where he had so often and for so many years walked with her conversing; to him she confides her papers and last wishes.

The celebrated Père Lacordaire was very dear to her; and she certainly acted the part of a mother toward him. Monsieur de Montalembert presented him to her when Abbé Lacordaire was but twenty-eight, and quite unknown. His genius—which she immediately discerned—and his ardent soul interested her wonderfully. Soon after he became connected, through Abbé de Lamennais, with the journal L'Avenir; by his own generous and oft-repeated avowal she kept him from any deviation at this trying moment. "You appeared to me as the angel of the Lord," writes he, "to a soul floating between life and death, between earth and heaven."

Nor was this the only time. Her letters show her following him with breathless interest through his chequered career, and assuring him of her warm undying friendship, "so long as he remains faithful to God and his Church."

And this was a beautiful affection, whichever side we view it. For more than twenty years it lasted; that is, for the rest of her life. The ardent young man is seen with the erratic impulses of his glowing intellect, yet docile to the motherly admonitions of his old friend; and by degrees, as time mellows him somewhat—though it never could subdue nature altogether—he sinks into a calmer strain, still asking advice, and taking it, with language more respectful, though not a whit less tender. Madame Swetchine brought to bear on him a species of idolatry; she admired his genius to excess, and loved his fine nature as any doting parent might; but these sentiments never rendered her blind to his faults; and she constantly blended reproof with admiration, while strenuously endeavoring to keep him ever in the most perfect path. She had the satisfaction of seeing him, ere she departed this life, safely anchored in a religious order, and the Dominicans fairly re-established in France; one of her pre-occupations on her death-bed, after bidding him adieu, was to secure {460} that his letters should be one day given to the public. For thus she knew he would be better appreciated.

Other names of men well-known in the Parisian world of letters, or for their deeds of charity, might here be added as having adorned her salon. There was the Vicomte de Melun, connected with every good work (literary or other) in the French capital; and her two relatives, Prince Augustin Galitzin and Prince (afterward Père) Gagarin. The former still writes; the latter, erst a gay man of fashion and then metamorphosed into a zealous Jesuit, is now devoting his missionary labors to Syria.

And lastly may be named one who, though he never mingled in the world of her salon, yet visited Madame Swetchine and esteemed her greatly. Père de Ravignan presided at one time in her house over meetings of charitable ladies, who were afterward united with the Enfants de Marie at the convent of the Sacré Coeur.

Nor were her friendships exclusively confined to men. Madame Swetchine had not that foible into which many superior women fall of affecting to despise their own sex; and which always shows that they innately, unconsciously often, separate their individual selves from all the rest of womankind as alone superior to it. Hers was a larger view: she loved souls; and "souls," says one of her aphorisms, "have neither age nor sex." When shall we in general begin to live here as we are to do for ever hereafter?

She had had her early friendships in Russia, and most passionate they were; too girlish in their romantic enthusiasm, too wordily tender in expression; but time mellowed these affections, without wearing them out. The two principal women-friends of her youth in Russia, after her sister, were Roxandre Stourdja, a Greek by birth, afterward Comtesse Edlinz, and the Comtesse de Nesselrode. Both of these in later years visited her Paris salon. But she also formed several new French intimacies. Her grief for the loss of Madame de Duras, when death deprived her of that friend, was a little softened by her warm sympathy for the two daughters left, Mesdames de Rauzan and de la Rochejacquelain. If she saw most of the former, the latter had for Madame Swetchine a second tie through her early marriage with a grandson of the Princesse de Tarente, whom Madame Swetchine had so revered in her girlish days at St. Petersburg. Both the Duchesse de Rauzan and Comtesse de la Rochejacquelain were very beautiful; and Madame Swetchine dearly loved beauty, especially when combined, as in them, with grace and elegance, cleverness and piety. For both the sisters were remarkable: one had more fascinating softness united with good sense; the other was more witty and brilliant. The last country-house visited by Madame Swetchine shortly before her death was the chateau de Fleury, belonging to Madame de la Rochejacquelain, where we read that she loved to find still mementos of the Princesse de Tarente.

Madame Swetchine was very intimate with Madame Récamier, her fellow-star as leader of a contemporary salon. She greatly prized her worth. Another friend much loved was the Comtesse de Gontant Biron, in youth eminent for her beauty, and always for her many virtues. Among younger women distinguished by Madame Swetchine were Mrs. Craven, née la Ferronaye; the Princess Wittgenstein, lovely as clever, a Russian by birth, and a convert to the Catholic Church; and quite at the last period, the Duchess of Hamilton.

She was always partial to youth, taking a warm interest in anything that might minister to the welfare or pleasures of that age. Thus she liked the young women of her acquaintance to be well dressed, and would admire their taste or try to improve it, even in that respect, with perfectly motherly solicitude. Those going to balls frequently stopped on their way to show their toilettes to Madame Swetchine; and not seldom, too, they would {461} return in the morning to ask advice on graver matters, or to display the progress of their children. The good Madame Swetchine did to persons of the world by quiet friendly counsel is incalculable; she never spared the truth when she thought it could be of use, and as she had great perspicacity, she was not often deceived. Beside, her natural penetration became yet keener, not only by long experience, but also by the numerous confidences she received from the many souls in a measure laid bare before her. M. de Falloux has well said that she "possessed the science of souls, as savants do that of bodies." However one might be pained at what she said, it was impossible to feel wounded; her manner was so kind, and her rectitude of intention so evident. And thus did she render her salon useful: living in public, as it might appear, surrounded chiefly by the great ones of earth, her thought was yet ever with God, and she positively worked for him day by day without even quitting those few rooms. Nay, so completely is Madame Swetchine identified with her salon for those who knew her through any part of the thirty years spent in Paris, that it is difficult for our idea to separate her from it.

Even materially speaking she seldom left it. With a simplicity that seems strange indeed to our English notions, she caused her little iron bedstead to be set up every night in one of her reception-rooms; each morning it was doubled up again and consigned to a closet. During her last illness it was just the same; she lay in her salon, the only difference being that then the bed remained permanently. Not an iota else was changed in the aspect of her apartment; no table was near the sick-couch with glass or cup ready to hand; what she wanted in this way she signed for to a deaf-and-dumb attendant, Parisse, whose grateful eyes were ever fixed upon her benefactress, to divine or anticipate what might be wished. And there, too, she died.

To us with our exclusive family feelings, or indeed to the general human sentiment that courts the utmost privacy for that solemn closing scene, there is something which jars in the account of Madame Swetchine's last days on earth. Doubtless all the consolations of religion were there to hallow her dying moments; she continued to the last to devote long hours to prayer; and by an enviable privilege she possessed a domestic chapel blessed with the perpetual presence of the Blessed Sacrament; but what strikes us strangely is, that her salon had chanced to remain open while extreme unction was being administered; and so, as it was her usual reception hour, the few friends in Paris at that season (September) continued to drop in one by one, and kneeling, each new-comer behind the other, prayed with and for her. Those last visitors were Père Chocarn, prior of the Dominicans; Père Gagarin; Mesdames Fredro, de Meyendorf, and Craven; Messieurs de Broglie, de Falloux, de Melun, and Zermolof. But the strange feeling we cannot help experiencing must be reasoned with. Her salon and her friends were to Madame Swetchine home and family.

And now it might seem that nothing more could be said of her; but, in truth, a very small portion has yet been expressed. Beside the six hours devoted to reception, the day counted eighteen more. There were religious duties to be performed, and home duties no less imperative; there were the poor to be visited, and there were the claims of study, which Madame Swetchine never neglected up to the latest period of existence. All these calls upon her time were recognized by conscience, and therefore duly responded to. Madame Swetchine was, of course, an early riser; by eight or nine o'clock she had heard mass, visited her poor, and was ready to commence the business of the day.

After breakfast, an hour or two were devoted to General Swetchine, who liked her to read to him. During the {462} last fifteen years of his life, and his death only preceded hers seven years, he had become so deaf as to enjoy general society but little; but he would not allow her to give up her receptions on that account, as she wished to do. The rest of the morning was employed in study with strictly closed doors, only opened to cases of misfortune, and these Madame Swetchine never considered as intrusions. Her confidential servant knew it well, and did not scruple to disturb her when real want or sorrow begged for admittance. Her persevering love of study is well illustrated by her own assurance, but a few months before her death, that even then she never sat down to her writing-table without "feeling her heart beat with joy." She advised Mrs. Craven always to reserve a few morning hours for study, saying the quality of time was different at that period of day.

Several hours in the evening were again spent with the general. At midnight, when all visitors departed, Madame Swetchine retired to rest; but her repose never lasted much beyond two in the morning. Painful infirmities made her suffer all day long, and at night debarred her from sleep. Motion alone brought comparative ease, and therefore it was that, with intimate friends, she carried on conversation walking up and down her rooms. At night, suffocation increased, as also a nervous kind of excitement. It was at these hours, during the intervals snatched from pain, that she mostly composed the writings which M. de Falloux has given to the world. No wonder that they bear the impress of the cross; nor can we marvel that she speaks feelingly and scientifically of resignation, for good need had she to practise that. Such were usually her twenty-four hours in Paris.

If we look back to the past, religion had not always been the guiding principle with Madame Swetchine. Her father, M. Soymonof, was a disciple of Voltaire, and he brought her up without any pious training. She never even repeated morning or evening prayers; simply attended the imperial chapel as a matter of course. But Voltaire did not excite her admiration; his infidelity was too cold, his immorality too coarse; it was Rousseau who charmed her. His passionate language pleased her imagination, and the pages of La Nouvelle Héloise were almost entirely transcribed, to be again and again dwelt on. She could not detect the sophistry beneath. But the first deep sorrow of her youth taught her prayer, and brought her to the feet of God, never to abandon him. M. Soymonof was suddenly snatched from his children by death, and Madame Swetchine, the anguish of this bereavement, turned to heaven for help and consolation. Another sorrow, the nature of which we ignore, overtook her at this period; and, to use her own expression, she "threw herself then into the arms of God with such enthusiasm as naught else ever awakened."

The first effect was to render her a fervent adherent of Russian orthodoxy; but her mind was too philosophic to rest long satisfied with half conclusions. She was struck with the piety of French Catholics at St. Petersburg; especially the modest merit of the Chevalier d'Augard won her highest esteem. Finally, after much voluminous study, and despite the resistance her rebellious spirit loved to oppose to what she at first called M. de Maistre's "dogmatic absolutism," she entered the Catholic Church.

The absurd idea that religion renders the heart cold has been too often refuted to need any comment here. But it may be said that Madame Swetchine affords another example of how much devotion, by purifying human feeling, intensifies it also. God had given her a loving nature; and as her piety deepens with years, so does her tender affection for family ties, for friends, country, and finally for all the poor, suffering, helpless ones of earth. Her first great attachment was for her father, and so her first great sorrow was at his loss; for thus intimately {463} are love and pain ever conjoined in this world. Another deep affection of childhood and early youth, extending through life, was for her sister. Madame Swetchine was quite a mother to this child, ten years her junior. When she married, she still kept her with her; and when the young sister also married, becoming the wife of Prince Gagarin, Madame Swetchine became a mother also to the five boys who were successively brought into the world. "They are all my nephews," would she say; "but the two eldest are especially my children." And well did they respond to the feelings of their aunt, scarcely separating her from their own parent. When she shut herself up for study, it was their amusement to try and get her out to play with them; if she remained deaf to entreaties, the little boys would besiege her door, making deafening noises with their playthings, until she mostly yielded and let them in. A very short time before her death, when Madame Swetchine could hardly sit or speak, she assembled a large family party of young nephews and nieces, with their preceptors and governesses, to dine at her house, and was greatly diverted with their innocent mirth.

There is something disappointing in Madame Swetchine's marriage. The favor enjoyed by Monsieur Soymonof at court, her own position as maid-of-honor to the Empress Marie, her birth, fortune, extreme youth, and many individual qualifications, all alike rendered her a fitting match for any man in the empire. She certainly could have chosen. Several asked her hand. Amongst them was Count Strogonof, young, rich, noble, and talented. But Monsieur Soymonof preferred his own friend General Swetchine; and Sophie, we are told, accepted with affectionate deference her father's choice. The general was twenty-five years her senior, and though a fine military-looking man, with noble soldier-like feelings, scrupulously honorable, and with much to win esteem, yet he does not appear the sort of person suited to her ardent enthusiastic temperament. He possessed qualities fitted to command the respect of a young wife; but not exactly those that win her to admiration and love. Wherever honor was not concerned, he lapsed into his natural apathy: neither intellect nor imagination were by any means on a par with hers. And the girl of seventeen who prematurely linked her fate with his was full of romance: nurtured as she had been by a fond ill-judging father, with Rousseau to guide her opening thought, her early dreams probably had fed on some chivalrous St. Preux with whom to course the stream of life. Perhaps she was dreaming of wedding some stern military personification of the same. What an awakening there must have been! Was this the second deep sorrow that clouded her nineteenth summer? Was there a struggle then? Then did she "fling herself into the arms of God" victorious.

There is no clue to trace aught of this save that which guides to the usual windings of the human heart. Madame Swetchine was far too nice in her sense of duty, and far too delicate in feeling, to allow any such admissions to escape.

The devotion of a life-time was given unreservedly to General Swetchine. She never knew the happiness of becoming a mother, the tie that would of all others have been dearest to her heart. But the general had bestowed paternal affection on a young girl called Nadine Staeline, and Madame Swetchine also generously insisted on adopting her. Nadine, welcomed to their roof, was treated by Madame Swetchine like her own child.

Her attentions to the general continued unremitting. When he quitted Russia, she accompanied him to Paris; when he was summoned to return, though condemned to banishment from St. Petersburg and Moscow, she profited by the respite gained to go alone in her old age and infirmity to plead his cause herself with the emperor. Nor did she complain of the illness in Russia that followed such fatigue, for {464} her suit was granted. Still less did she regret the yet more serious malady that overtook her on returning to Paris with the glad tidings that brought such relief to his declining years. He lived to the age of ninety-two, and her grief at his loss was intense. Then indeed it was the long companion of a life-time that was taken from her; and we all know the tender attachment that strengthens with years between two persons who pass them together, and mutually esteem each other.

The general, on his part, always showed Madame Swetchine affection that had gradually become mixed up with a species of veneration. Though he never thwarted her religious views, he did not himself embrace them; he liked to see her Catholic friends, even priests, and especially Père de Ravignan; but remained satisfied with the Greek Church. Beside her duties as a wife, we have seen Madame Swetchine embrace those of a mother toward young Nadine. She never slackened in them until Nadine by her marriage ceased to require their exercise. Then she contrived to gratify her maternal instincts by undertaking the charge of Helene de Nesselrode, the daughter of her friend, just aged fourteen, and whose health demanded a warmer climate than that of Russia. Nor did she give her up till Helene married.

Faithful to all the sentiments she experienced, and warm in her friendships, Madame Swetchine's most enthusiastic attachment appears to have been for Mademoiselle Stourdja. It dated from her early married life, and continued through the whole of existence. At first it well-nigh provokes a smile to see how, scarcely parted for a few hours from her friend, she rushes to her pen, that it may express the pangs of separation. But girlhood has not passed over, ere thought, reason, duty, figure largely in the letters of Madame Swetchine. Her correspondence was extensive, and portrays herself just as she appeared in daily life—a wise, gentle, and affectionate friend or counsellor, as circumstances might dictate. Nowhere does this show her to greater advantage than in the letters—too few, unfortunately—that we possess from Madame Swetchine to Père Lacordaire. The difference between the two minds is striking. Her good sense and exquisite judgment contrast with his fiery impetuosity of thought and feeling; it is evident that her soul moves in the serene atmosphere of near union with God; while he, the religious of already some years' standing, is yet battling with strong human torrents. How gently she calls him up a higher path, never forgetting her womanhood nor his priestly character. His tone becomes much more religious; with rare candor and simplicity he sees and owns past imperfections.

Patriotism was one of her ardent sentiments, and she considered the feeling as a duty incumbent on women no less than men: of course, conduct was to be in accordance. Like many Russians, love of country centred for her in devotion to the sovereign; and of this her letters afford curious exemplification. She calls Alexander "the hero of humanity," and, after enumerating his many perfections, rejoices that this young sage is our emperor! When her husband was harshly summoned back to Russia, that the disgrace of exile from court might be inflicted, she exclaims: "God knows that I have never uttered a word of complaint against my sovereigns, nor so much as blamed them in heart!" Strange loyalty this to our modern western notions!

Her tender charity toward the poor began to show itself at an early age. At twenty-five in St. Petersburg she was already the soul of all good works there: nor did she content herself with merely giving alms, nor even with seeking to promote moral improvement; her ingenious kindness displayed itself also in endeavouring to procure pleasure or innocent amusements. She took flowers to those she visited, or tried to adorn their rooms with pictures. The {465} friendless deaf-and-dumb girl whom she had adopted became her constant attendant; and Madame Swetchine bore with her violence of temper until the defect was partly overcome.

She undertook the charge of a poor boy at Vichy, because his many maladies and their repulsive nature rendered him an object almost of disgust. Each summer that she returned there, he was among the first to greet her, sure of the kindest welcome. For years all his wants were supplied at her expense; and when he died, she said he had now become her benefactor.

To know Madame Swetchine thoroughly, her writings must be read. They were never meant for publication, but are either self-communings, or thoughts poured out before God. Some of her aphorisms are touchingly delicate in sentiment.

"Loving hearts are like paupers; they live on what is given them."

"Our alms form our sole riches, and what we withhold constitutes our real poverty."

Her prayers and meditations may be used with advantage for spiritual reading. Her unfinished treatise on Old Age is very beautiful; but more exquisite still is that more complete one on Resignation. Any passage chosen at random would show elevated thought.

"The first degree of submission produces respectful acquiescence to God's will; then this sentiment becomes transformed into a pious and sincere acceptation full of confidence; until confidence itself gradually acquires a filial character."

"Faith," she says, "makes resignation reasonable, and hope renders it easy."

"The love of God draws us away from our long love of self."

"Patience is so near to resignation, that it often seems one and the same thing."

She acknowledges that the hardest trials of resignation are found in those misfortunes irreparable here on earth. Such are death, old age, physical infirmity, loss of worldly honor, final impenitence. But the death of those we love, she says, may be deeply mourned in the midst of resignation; and our own certain death affords not only a counterbalance to such affliction, but also to the other evils of life. Old age is a halt between the world overcome, and eternity about to begin. Physical infirmities make us live in the atmosphere of the gospel beatitudes; we are then truly the poor ones of Christ, or rather poverty itself. The world sometimes forgets, but never pardons; what matters, provided virtue remain unscathed, or that it be restored through repentance?

"Suffering teaches us how to suffer; suffering teaches us how to live; suffering teaches us how to die."

And here we take our leave of this remarkable woman, who offers such a bright example to our generation.

{466}

From The Dublin Review.

RECENT IRISH POETRY.

Lays of the Western Gael and other Poems. By SAMUEL FERGUSON. London: Bell & Daldy. 1865.

Poems. By SPERANZA (LADY WILDE). Dublin: Duffy. 1864.

Laurence Bloomfield in Ireland. A modern Poem. By WILLIAM ALLINGHAM. London: Macmillan & Co. 1864.

Inisfail, a Lyrical Chronicle of Ireland. By AUBREY DE VERE. Dublin: Duffy. 1864.

In the palmy days of Young Ireland, its writers and speakers were particularly prone to the quotation of that strange saying of Fletcher of Saltoun: "If a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws of a country." It has been the destiny of Young Ireland to make and to administer the laws of other countries than that for which its hot youth hoped to legislate. But it has certainly left Ireland a legacy of excellent ballads. A glance at the fortunes of some of the more prominent members of this brilliant but ill-fated party, as they present themselves to view at this moment, suggests curious contrasts and strange reflections. Mr. Gavan Duffy, who was assuredly the source of its noblest and wisest inspirations, after having within ten years occupied high office in three Victorian ministries, and laid the impress of his organizing genius deep on the constitutional foundations of that most rising of the Australian states, is on his way home from Melbourne for a brief European vacation. Mr. John Mitchel, [Footnote 96] who represented the more violent and revolutionary section of Young Ireland, was, before the American war commenced, editor of the Richmond Enquirer, one of the most extreme organs of secession, and afterward visited Paris with the hope of inducing the Emperor Napoleon to invade Ireland; but since the war was declared, he has resumed his post at Richmond—sometimes writing articles that are supposed more particularly to forecast President Davis's policy; sometimes serving in the ranks of General Lee's army as the driver of an ambulance wagon. His eldest son fired the first shot that struck Fort Sumter, and afterward was himself struck at the heart in its command by a northern bullet. Mitchel's favorite lieutenant, Devin Reilly, on the other hand, died in office at Washington, and his illness was attributed at the time to over-fatigue in one of the earliest of those great electioneering contests in which the supremacy of Mr. Lincoln finally came to be established over Mr. Stephen Douglas, "the little giant of the west," and the only man, in Mr. Reilly's ardent conviction, who could have saved the American Union. Mr. D'Arcy McGee, whose character bore to that of Devin Reilly about the same relation as Mr. Duffy's did to that of Mr. Mitchel, is at present a leading member of the executive council of Canada, and (the Duke of Newcastle was of opinion) the ablest statesman of British America; in proof of which it may suffice to say, that the project of the Canadian confederation was in a great degree originated and elaborated by him. The handsome young orator, whose fiery eloquence surpassed in its influence on an Irish audience in the Rotunda even the most brilliant effects of Sheil at the old Catholic Association, is now to be recognized in a bronzed and war-worn soldier, under {467} the style and title of Major-General Thomas Francis Meagher, of the United States army, commanding a division, which, after Sherman commenced his marvellous march on Savannah, was sent forward to hold the southern section of Tennessee, and was last heard of in camp at Chattanooga. One of this orator's favorite disciples, Eugene O'Reilly, holds an equivalent rank; but his line of service has lain not in America, but in Asia—his allegiance is not to the President Abraham Lincoln, but to the Sultan Abdul Aziz; he is known to all true believers under the style of O'Reilly Bey, one of the earliest of the Christian officers who took rank under the Hatti Hamayoun; and his sword's avenging justice was freely felt among the Mohammedan mob who horrified Christendom five years ago by the massacres of Syria. What region of the earth is not full of the labors of this party, sect, and school of all the Irish talents, of whom may well be sung the antique Milesian elegy, to which their prophet and guide gave words that complain "they have left but few heirs of their company?" [Footnote 97] The rabid violence and the underbred vulgarity of style which belong to so many of the Irish Nationalist party of the present day, are all unlike even the errors of Young Ireland. That party, though it tragically failed in fulfilling its hopes at home, has at all events justified its ambition abroad; and it was always and everywhere singularly true to its ideas. Scattered as it is, broken, and often apparently divided against itself, its members have not failed to yield loyal, valiant, and signal service to whatever cause they espoused or country they adopted. Its poets have had a principal hand in framing the constitutions of states manifestly destined to future greatness. Its orators have led forlorn hopes against fearful odds; and, whether in the marshes of the Chickahominy or in Syrian defiles, have not known how to show their backs to the enemy. It would be easy to trace over a far wider range the fortunes of its members since the great emigration that scattered them in the years that followed their catastrophe in '48. It is possible any day to find a Young Irelander, who at a more or less brief period after Ballingarry abiit, evasit, erupit, in the red baggy breeches of the Zouave, or in judicial crimson and ermine at the antipodes; in the black robe of a Passionist father or the silk gown of a queen's counsel; surveying a railroad in Dakotah, or organizing brigands in Sicily; helping in some subordinate way the Emperor Maximilian to found the Mexican empire, or on the high road to make himself a Yellow Button at Peking. As for American generals north and south, and colonial law-givers east and west, their names are legion and the legion's name very much begins with Mac or O'. May they make war and law to good advantage! It was not given to them to make either for Ireland; but, if Fletcher of Saltoun was a wise man in his generation, they in theirs have left their country a far more precious heritage.

[Footnote 96: Our American readers need hardly be reminded that some of the biographical statements which follow are very wide of the truth.—Ed. C. W.]

[Footnote 97: As truagh gan oidir 'n-a bh-farradk—literally, "What a pity that there is no heir of their company." See the "Lament for the Milesians," in "The Poems of Thomas Davis." Dublin: Duffy.]

Irish poetry certainly existed before Young Ireland, and was even considered, like oratory, to be a quality naturally and easily indigenous to the Irish genius. Moore had not unworthily sustained the reputation of his country in an age of great poets; and it was Moore's own avowed belief that his "Irish Melodies" were the very flowering of his inspiration, and were indeed alone warranted to preserve his fame to future ages. But neither Moore, nor any other poet of Irish birth, had attempted to give to the Irish that poetry "racy of the soil," wherein every image and syllable smacks of their own native nationality, which Burns and Scott, and a host of minor poets, had created for the Scotch. This is the work which Young Ireland deliberately and avowedly attempted, and in which it has assuredly succeeded. When the effort was first made, it is {468} told that several of the writers who afterward wrote what, in its order of ballad poetry, is unexcelled in the language—and notably Mr. Davis were quite unaware of any possession of the poetic faculty, and took to the task as a boy takes to his tale of Latin spondees and dactyls at college. But the stream was in the rock, and when the rock was tapped the stream flowed. In the course of less than a year "The Spirit of the Nation" was published, in which, with much undeniable rubbish, there appeared a number of ballads and songs that won the admiration of all good critics; and to which the far more important testimony of their popular acceptance is still given in the form of continuously recurring and increasing editions. A Scotch publisher— Mr. Griffin, of Glasgow—ten years ago had heard such accounts of this curious flood-tide of Irish verse, that he thought it might be a safe speculation to try whether, despite its politics, it might not make its way in the British market. The edition was very soon exhausted, and the book is now, we believe, out of print. These facts are of even more value than the high opinion which so experienced and accomplished a critic as Lord Jeffrey expressed about the same time of the poetic gifts of Davis and Duffy; for by universal consent the test of sale loses all its vulgarity when applied to that most ethereal compound of the human intellect, poetry. The poet is born, and not made, according to Horace; but in so far as he is made anything by man, it is by process of universal suffrage over the counter. Gradual, growing, general recognition, testified by many editions, at last, in the course of thirty years, establishes the irrefragable position of a Tennyson; against which a Tupper, long struggling, in the end finds his level, and lines trunks.

Much of the poetry of this time was, consciously or unconsciously, mimetic—mainly of Sir Walter Scott and of Lord Macaulay, whose "Lays of Ancient Rome" had recently been published. Scott, indeed, more distinctly suggested the elements out of which the Young Ireland poetry grew. Burns wrote in a peculiar provincial dialect, and with the exception of a few glorious lyrics, which will occur to every reader's recollection, he wrote for a district and for a class. But in Scott's mind all the elements of the Scottish nationality were equally confluent and homogeneous—the Highlander, the Lowlander, and the Islander; the Celt, the Saxon, and the Dane; the laird, the presbyter, and the peasant; and his imagination equally vivified all times—from those of the Varangians at Constantinople to those of the Jacobites at Culloden. But in Ireland there was no formed dialect like the Lowland Scotch, with a settled vocabulary and a concrete form. The language of the peasantry in many parts of the country was the same sort of base English that a foreigner speaks—scanty in its range of words, ill-articulated and aspirated, loose in the use of the liquid letters, formed according to alien idioms, and flavored with alien expletives. The language of the best of the ballads of the peasantry was that of a period in which the people still thought in Irish, and expressed themselves in broken English, uttered with the deep and somewhat guttural tones of the Celt, and garnished now and then with the more racy epithets, or endearments, or shibboleths, of their native speech. For a time the example of Lord Macaulay's ballad poetry prevailed, with its long rolling metre, its picturesque nomenclature, its contrasts rather rhetorical than poetical. It was possible to describe that decisive charge of the Irish brigade at Fontenoy, which Mr. Carlyle treats as a mere myth, in strains which instantly suggest those of the "Battle of Ivry." And so did Davis in a very memorable ballad; but the likeness was mainly in the measure, and Lord Macaulay had no copyright in lines of fourteen feet. The poem itself was Irish to the manor born; and, it might be pleaded, was only as like the verse of Lord Macaulay as the prose of Lord Macaulay is like the prose of Edmund Burke. {469} Beyond this task-work, however, which, although very ingeniously and fluently done, was still as much task-work as college themes, there arose a difficulty and a hope. Was it possible to transfuse the peculiar spirit of the Irish native poetry into the English tongue? The researches of the Archaeological Society were at this time rapidly disentombing the long-hidden historical and poetical treasures of the Irish language. Many of these had been translated by Clarence Mangan, in a style which did not pretend to be literally faithful, but which so expanded, illustrated, and harmonized the original that the poem, while losing none of its idiosyncrasy, gained in every quality of grace, freedom, and force. The rich, the sometimes redundant array of epithets, the mobile, passionate transitions, the tender and melancholy spirit of veneration for a vanishing civilization, for perishing houses, scattering clans, and a persecuted Church—some even of the more graceful of the idioms and more musical of the metres—might surely be naturalized in the English language; and so an Irish poetical dialect be absolutely invented in the middle of the nineteenth century. It was known how an Irish peasant spoke broken English, and put it into rhyme that did not want a strange wild melody, that was to more finished and scholarly verse as the flavor of poteen is to the flavor of Burgundy. But how would an Irish bard, drawing his inspiration from the primeval Ossianic sources, and thinking in the true ecstatic spirit of the Irish muse, speak, if he were condemned to speak, in the speech of the Saxon? This was the bold conception; and no one who is familiar with the poetry of Ireland during the last twenty years, will deny that it has been in great part fulfilled.

The poet to whom its execution is especially due can hardly be called a Young Irelander in the political sense of the word. But Young Ireland was a literary school as well as a political sect; and any one who remembers, or may read, Mr. Ferguson's wonderful "Lament for Thomas Davis," which it is to be greatly regretted he has not included in the present edition of his poems, will recognize the strong elective affinities which attached him to their action and influence. As it is, this volume is by far the most remarkable recent contribution of the Irish poetical genius to English literature. Mr. Ferguson has accomplished the problem of conveying the absolute spirit of Irish poetry into English verse, and he has done so under the most difficult conceivable conditions—for he prefers a certain simple and unluxuriant structure in the plan of his poems, and he uses in their composition the most strictly Saxon words he can find. But all the accessories and figures, and still more a certain weird melody in the rhythm that reminds the ear of the wild grace of the native music, indicate at every turn what Mr. Froude has half-reproachfully called "the subtle spell of the Irish mind." It is not surprising to find even careful and accomplished English critics unable to reach to the essential meaning of this poetry, which, to many, evidently appears as bald as the style of Burns first seemed to southron eyes when he became the fashion at Edinburgh eighty years ago. And yet to master the dialect of Burns is at least as difficult as to master the dialect of Chaucer, while Mr. Ferguson rarely uses a word that would not be passed by Swift or Defoe. Before one of the most beautiful, simple, and graceful of his later poems a recent critic paused, evidently dismayed by the introduction, of which, however, not willing to dispute the beauty, he quoted a few lines. It was an old Irish legend, versified with surpassing grace and spirit, of which this is the argument. Fergus MacRoy, king of Ulster in the old pagan times, was a very good king of his kind. He loved his people and they loved him. He was handsome, and strong, and tall. He bore himself well in war and in the chase. He drank with discretion. {470} Nevertheless his life had two troubles. He did not love the law; and he did love a widow. To listen as chief justiciary to the causes, of which a constant crop sprang up at Emania, tares and corn thickly set together, troubled him sorely. To make verses to the widow, on the other hand, came as easy as sipping usquebaugh or metheglin. He proposed, and though a king was refused; but not discouraged, pressed his suit again and again. And at last Nessa the fair yielded, but she made a condition that her son Conor should sit on the judgment-seat daily by his stepfather's side.. This easily agreed, Nessa became queen, while, as Fergus tells the tale:

  While in council and debate
  Conor daily by me sate;
  Modest was his mien in sooth,
  Beautiful the studious youth,

  Questioning with eager gaze,
  All the reasons and the ways
  In the which, and why because,
  Kings administer the laws.

In this wise a year passed, the youth diligently observant, with faculties ripening and brightening as his majesty's grew more consciously rusty and slow; and then a crisis came, which Mr. Ferguson describes in verses of which it is hard to say whether they best deserve the coif or the laurel, for in every line there is the sharp wit of the lawyer as well as the vivid fancy of the poet:

  Till upon a day in court
  Rose a plea of weightier sort,
  Tangled as a briery thicket
  Were the rights and wrongs intricate

  Which the litigants disputed,
  Challenged, mooted, and confuted,
  Till when all the plea was ended
  Naught at all I comprehended.

  Scorning an affected show
  Of the thing I did not know,
  Yet my own defect to hide,
  I said, "Boy judge, thou decide."

  Conor with unalter'd mien,
  In a clear sweet voice serene,
  Took in hand the tangled skein,
  And began to make it plain.

  As a sheep-dog sorts his cattle,
  As a king arrays his battle,
  So the facts on either side
  He did marshal and divide.

  Every branching side-dispute
  Traced he downward to the root
  Of the strife's main stem, and there
  Laid the ground of difference bare.

  Then to scope of either cause,
  Set the compass of the laws,
  This adopting, that rejecting,—
  Reasons to a head collecting,—

  As a charging cohort goes
  Through and over scatter'd foes,
  So, from point to point he brought
  Onward still the weight of thought

  Through all error and confusion,
  Till he set the clear conclusion,
  Standing like a king alone,
  All things adverse overthrown,

  And gave judgment clear and sound:—
  Praises filled the hall around;
  Yea, the man that lost the cause
  Hardly could withhold applause.

In these exquisite verses, the language is as strict to the point as if it were taken from Mr. Smith's "Action at Law;" but the reader will remark how every figure reminds him, and yet not in any mere mimetic fashion, of the spirit and illustrations of the Ossianic poetry. Nevertheless each word taken by itself is simple Saxon. Its Celtic character only runs like a vein through the poem, but it colors and saturates it through and through.

The greatest of Mr. Ferguson's poems, however, is undoubtedly "The Welshmen of Tirawley," a ballad which, we do not fear to say, is unsurpassed in the English language, or perhaps in even the Spanish. Its epic proportion and integrity, the vivid picturesqueness of its phraseology, its wild and original metre, its extraordinary realization of the laws and customs of an Irish clan's daily life, the stern brevity of its general narrative, and the richness of its figures, though all barbaric pearl and gold, give it a pre-eminent place among ballads. Scott would have devoted three volumes to the story, were it not for the difficulty of telling some of its incidents. Mr. Ferguson exhibits no little skill in the way that he hurries his readers past what he could not altogether omit. For the facts upon which the ballad is founded are simply horrible, and they are historically true.

After the time of Strongbow, several Welsh families who had followed his flag settled in Connaught. Among {471} these "kindly Britons" of Tirawley, were the Walshes or Wallises, the Heils (a quibus MacHale, and, possibly, that most perfect instance of the Hibernis ipsis Hibemior, the archbishop of Tuam); also the Lynotts and the Barretts, with whom we are at present more particularly concerned. These last claimed descent from the high steward of the manor of Camelot, and their end is a story fit for the Round Table. The great toparch of the territory was the MacWilliam Burke, as the Irish called the head of the de Burgos, descended from William FitzAdelm de Burgo, conqueror of Connaught, and therein commonly called William Conquer—of whom the Marquis of Clanricarde is the present lineal representative; being to Connaught even still somewhat as the MacCallummore is to Argyle, more especially when he happens to be in the cabinet, and to have the patronage of the post-office. Now the Lynotts were subject to the Barretts, and the Barretts were subject to the Burkes. But when the Barretts' bailiff, Scorna Boy, came to collect the Lynotts' taxes, he so demeaned himself that the whole clan rose as one man, even as Jack Cade, and slew him. Whereupon the vengeful Barretts gave to all mankind among the Lynott clan a terrible choice—of which one alternative was blindness; and the bearded men were all of their own preference blinded, and led to the river Duvowen, and told to walk over the stepping stones of Clochan-na-n'all; and they all stumbled into the flood and were drowned, except old Emon Lynott, of Garranard—whom accordingly the Barretts brought back and blinded over again, by running needles through his eyeballs.

  But with prompt-projected footsteps, sure as ever,
  Emon Lynott again crossed the river,
  Though Duvowen was rising fast,
  And the shaking stones o'ercast,
  By cold floods boiling past;
      Yet you never,
      Emon Lynott,
  Faltered once before your foemen of Tirawley.

  But turning on Ballintubber bank, you stood
  And the Barretts thus bespoke o'er the flood—
  "Oh, ye foolish sons of Wattin,
  Small amends are these you've gotten,
  For, while Scorna Boy lies rotten,
      I am good
      For vengeance!"
  Sing the vengeance of the Welshmen of Tirawley.

  For 'tis neither in eye nor eyesight that a man.
  Bears the fortunes of himself and his clan,
  But in the manly mind
  These darken'd orbs behind,
  That your needles could never find,
      Though they ran
      Through my heartstrings.
  Sing the vengeance of the Welshmen of Tirawley.

  But little your women's needles do I reck,
  For the night from heaven never fell so black,
  But Tirawley and abroad
  From the Moy to Cuan-an-fod,
  I could walk it, every sod,
      Path and track,
      Ford and togher,
  Seeking vengeance on you, Barretts of Tirawley!

And so leaving "loud-shriek-echoing Garranard," the Lynott, with his wife and seven children, abandons his home, and takes refuge in Glen Nephin, where, in the course of a year, a son is born to him, whom he dedicates from the first breath to his vengeance. He trains this boy with assiduous care to all the accomplishments of a Celtic cavalier;

  And, as ever the bright boy grew in strength and size,
  Made him perfect in each manly exercise,
  The salmon in the flood,
  The dun deer in the wood,
  The eagle in the cloud,
      To surprise,
      On Ben Nephin,
  Far above the foggy fields of Tirawley.

  With the yellow-knotted spear-shaft, with the bow,
  With the steel, prompt to deal shot and blow,
  He taught him from year to year,
  And trained him, without a peer,
  For a perfect cavalier,
      Hoping so—
      Far his forethought—
  For vengeance on the Barretts of Tirawley.

  And when mounted on his proud-bounding steed,
  Emon Oge sat a cavalier indeed;
  Like the ear upon the wheat,
  When the winds in autumn beat
  On the bending stems his seat;
      And the speed
      Of his courser
  Was the wind from Barna-na-gee o'er Tirawley!

Fifteen years have passed and the youth is perfected in all the accomplishments of sport and war, and the Lynott thinks it is time to return to the world and work out the scheme of his vengeance. So the father and son quit their mountain solitude, and journey southward to the bailey of Castlebar; and in a few fine touches the picture of Mac William's grandeur, as it strikes {472} the boy's wondering eyes, rises before us; the stone house, strong and great, and the horse-host at the gate and their captain in armor, and the beautiful Bantierna by his side with her little pearl of a daughter. Who should this be but the mighty MacWilliam! Into his presence ride the Lynotts; and, after salutations, the old man declares his business. He has come to claim, as gossip-law allows, the fosterage of MacWilliam's son. Ever since William Conquer's time, his race were wont to place a MacWilliam Oge in the charge of a Briton of Tirawley; and the young Lynott was a pledge for his father's capacity in such tutelage. When MacWilliam saw the young Lynott ride, run, and shoot, he said he would give the spoil of a county to have his son so accomplished. When Lady MacWilliam heard him speak, and scanned his fresh and hardy air, she said she would give a purse of red gold that her Tibbot had such a nurse as had reared the young Briton. The custom was allowed. The young MacWilliam was sent under the guidance of old Lynott into Tirawley, and Emon Oge remained as a hostage in Castlebar. So back to Garranard, no longer the "loud-shriek-echoing," old Lynott returns—

  So back to strong-throng-gathering Garranard,
  Like a lord of the country with his guard,
  Came the Lynott before them all,
  Once again o'er Clochan-ua-n'all,
  Steady-striding, erect, and tall,
      And his ward
      On his shoulders;
  To the wonder of the Welshmen of Tirawley.

And then the young Tibbot was taught all manner of feats of body, to swim, to shoot, to gallop, to wrestle, to fence, and to run, until he grew up as deft and as tough as Emon Oge. But he was taught other lessons as well, which were not in the bond of his foster-father.

  The lesson of hell he taught him in heart and mind;
  For to what desire soever he inclined,
  Of anger, lust, or pride,
  He had it gratified,
  Till he ranged the circle wide
      Of a blind
      Self-indulgence,
  Ere he came to youthful manhood in Tirawley.

Shame and rage track his passage, till one night the young Barretts of the Bac fell upon him at Cornassack and slew him. His body was borne to Castlebar. The Brehons were summoned to judgment; and over the bier of MacWilliam Oge began the plea for an eric to be imposed upon the Barretts for their crime; and the Brehons decreed the mulct, and Lynott's share of it was nine ploughlands and nine score of cattle. And now the ultimate hour of the blind old man's vengeance had come, not to be sated with land and kine. "Rejoice," he cried, "in your ploughlands and your cattle, which I renounce throughout Tirawley." But, expert in all the rules and customs of the clans, he asks the Brehons, Is it not the law that the foster-father may, if he please, applot the short eric? And they say it is so. Whereupon, formally rejecting his own share of the mulct, he makes his award—that the land of the Barretts shall be equally divided on every side with the Burkes, and that MacWilliam shall have a seat in every Barrett's hall, a stall in every Barrett's stable, and needful grooming from every hosteler for every Burke who shall ride throughout Tirawley for ever. And then, in a speech full of barbaric sublimity and tragic concentration of passion, he confesses "the patient search and vigil long" of his vengeance. It is almost unjust to break the closely-wrought chain of this speech by a single quotation, and we have been already unduly tempted to extract from this extraordinary poem; but, perhaps, this one verse may be separated from the rest as containing the very culmination of the old man's hideous rage.

  I take not your eyesight from you as you took
  Mine and ours: I would have you daily look
  On one another's eyes,
  When the strangers tyrannize
  By your hearths, and blushes rise
      That ye brook
      Without vengeance
  The insults of troops of Tibbots throughout Tirawley.

Another moment and he has done. "Father and son," says MacWilliam, {473} "hang them high!" and old Lynott they hanged forthwith; but young Lynott had eloped with MacWilliam's daughter to Scotland, and there changed his name to Edmund Lindsay. The judgment of the short eric was, however, held good; and the Burkes rode rough-shod over the Barretts, until, as Mr. Ferguson, almost verbally versifying the Chronicle of Duald Mac Firbis, says:

  Till the Saxon Oliver Cromwell,
  And his valiant Bible-guided
  Free heretics of Clan London
  Coming in, in their succession,
  Rooted out both Burke and Barrett;

a process of eviction which Mr. Ferguson, not merely for the sake of poetical justice, but out of the invincible ignorance of pure puritanical Protestantism, appears on the whole very highly to approve.

This ballad is indeed unique in its order: no Irish ballad approaches its wild sublimity and the thoroughness of detail with which it is conceived and executed. The only Irish narrative ballad which can bear a general comparison with it is Mr. Florence MacCarthy's "Foray of Con O'Donnell," a poem as perfect in its historical reality, in the aptness of all its figures, illustrations, and feats of phrase to a purely Celtic ideal, and which even surpasses "The Welshmen" in a certain easy and lissome grace of melody, that falls on the ear like the delicately drawn notes of Carolan's music. But this grace is disdained by the grim and compressed character which animates every line of Mr. Ferguson's ballad. His other works, fine of fancy and ripe of phrase as they are, fall far below it, "The Tain-Quest" does not on the whole enthral the reader, or magnetize the memory. "The Healing of Conall Carnach," and "The Burial of King Cormac" are poems that will hold their place in many future Books of Irish Ballads; they are unusually spirited versifications of passages from the more heroic period of early Irish history; but excepting occasional lines, they only appear to be the versifications of already written legends. The ballad of Grace O'Malley, commonly called Grana Uaile, may be advantageously contrasted with these, and it contains some verses of singular power—as, for example, where the poet denies the imputation of piracy against this lady who loved to roam the high seas under her own commission—

  But no: 'twas not for sordid spoil
  Of barque or sea-board borough,
  She plough'd with unfatiguing toil
  The fluent-rolling furrow;
  Delighting on the broad-back'd deep
  To feel the quivering galley and sweep
  Strain up the opposing hill, and sweep
  Down the withdrawing valley.

"Aideen's Grave" is a poem of a different kind, full of an exquisite melancholy grace; and where Ossian is supposed to apostrophise his future imitator, it is as if he thought after the manner of the Fenians, but was withal master of every symphony of the English tongue:

  Imperfect in an alien speech
  When wandering here some child of chance,
  Through pangs of keen delight shall reach.
  The gift of utterance,—
  To speak the air, the sky to speak,
  The freshness of the hill to tell,
  Who roaming bare Ben Edar's peak,
  And Aideen's briery dell,
  And gazing on the Cromlech vast,
  And on the mountain and the sea,
  Shall catch communion with the past,
  And mix himself with me.

There are lines in this poem that a little remind us of Gray, as—

  At Gavra, when by Oscar's side
  She rode the ridge of war;

and again in the "Farewell to Deirdre" there is something in the cast and rhythm of the poem, rather than in any individual word or line, that recalls Scott's "Farewell to North Maven." But to say so is not to hit blots. Mr. Ferguson's is beyond question the most thoroughly original vein of poetry that any Irish bard of late days has wrought out; and in laying down this volume we can only regret that the specimens he has thought worthy of collection are so few in comparison not merely with what he might have done, but with what he actually has done. For {474} this modesty, let us hope that the prompt penance of a second and enlarged edition may atone.

We have said that though Mr. Ferguson could hardly be called a Young Irelander in politics, all the elective affinities of his genius tended toward that school of thought. But Lady Wilde, then known if she wrote prose as Mr. John Fanshawe Ellis, and if she wrote verse as Speranza, had an extraordinary influence on all the intellectual and political activities of Young Ireland. It was a favorite phantasy of that time, when Lamartine's book was intoxicating all Young Europe with the idea of a grand coming revolutionary epopoeia, and the atrocities of socialism in France and Mazzinianism in Italy had not yet horrified all Christendom, to find the model men for a modern Plutarch in the ranks of the Girondists. Notably Meagher was supposed to be gifted with all the qualities of Vergniaud, and Speranza to have more than the genius of Madame Roland. But when we come to real comparisons of character, the parallel easily gives way. If Smith O'Brien was like any Frenchman of the first revolution, it was Lafayette. Mitchel had in certain respects a suspicious resemblance to the earlier and milder phases of Robespierre's peculiar intellectual idiosyncrasy. The base of Carnot's character was that faculty for organization which was the mainspring of Gavan Duffy's various and powerful genius. The parallel was, even so far as it went, intrinsically unjust. Lamartine's glowing imagination gave to the Girondists a grandeur largely ideal. It is fair to say that Meagher's oratory was on the whole of a higher order than Vergniaud's; and certainly Madame Roland, great as may have been the influence of her character and her conversation, has left us no example of her talent that will bear comparison with Lady Wilde's poems or prose.

These poems, however, if full justice is to be done to them, ought to be read from first to last with a running commentary in the memory from the history of those few tragic years whose episodes they in a manner mark. One poem is a mournfully passionate appeal to O'Connell against the alliance with the Whigs, which was charged as one of the causes of the secession. Another is a ballad of the famine, with lights as ghastly as ever glowed in the imagination of Euripides or Dante, and founded on horrors such as Greek or Italian never witnessed. There is then a picture of "the young patriot leader"— which an artist would characterize as a decidedly idealized portrait of Meagher—that American general who has since proved his title to be called "of the sword." Again, a gloomy series of images recalls to us the awful state of the country—the corpses that were buried without coffins, and the men and women that walked the roads more like corpses than living creatures, spectres and skeletons at once; the little children out of whose sunken eyes the very tears were dried, and over whose bare little bones the hideous fur of famine had begun to grow; the cholera cart, with its load of helpless huddled humanity, on its way to the hospital; the emigrant ship sending back its woeful wail of farewell from swarming poop to stern in the offing; and, far as the eye could search the land, the blackened potato-fields, filling all the air with the fetid odors of decay. Again and again such pictures are contrasted with passionate lyrics full of rebellious fire, urging the people to die, if die they must, by the sword rather than by hunger—and sometimes, too, with an angry, unreasonable, readily-forgiven reproach to the priesthood, who bore with such noble fortitude and self-immolating charity the very cross of all the crosses of that terrible time.

It is a curious fact, and reminds one of the myth of Achilles' heel, that O'Connell, who marched among his myriad foes like one clad in panoply of mail from head to foot, with a sort of inexpugnable vigor and endurance, not to be wounded, not to be stunned, with his buckler ready for every {475} thrust, and a blow for every blow that rained on his casque, was weak as a child under the influence of verse. Any one who may count over the number of times his favorite quotations, such as the lines beginning "Hereditary bondsmen" from "Childe Harold" for example, crop up in the course of his speeches, will be inclined to say that his fondness for poetry was almost preposterous. It was always tempting him, indeed, into dangerous ways—for while his prose preached "the ethereal principles of moral force," and the tenet that "no political amelioration is worth the shedding of a single drop of human blood," his favorite quotations were strictly in favor of fighting. The "hereditary bondsmen" were to "strike the blow;" and the Irish are a nation only too well disposed to interpret such a precept literally. Moore's melodies were always at the tip of his tongue; and Moore's "Slave so lowly" is indignantly urged not to pine in his chains, but to raise the green flag forthwith, and do or die. Some verses of O'Connell's own, of which he was at least equally fond, began:

  Oh Erin! shall it e'er be mine
  To see thy sons in battle line?

It was not altogether politic, especially when Young Ireland was gaining the ascendant, to use such quotations habitually; but the temptation seems to have been irresistible. So, on the other hand, may be conceived his excessive sensitiveness to anything sounding like a reproach that reached him through the vehicle of verse. When Brougham or Stanley or Peel struck their hardest, they got in return rather more than they gave—when the whole House of Commons tried to stifle his voice, over all the din Mr. Speaker heard himself with horror called upon to stop this "beastly bellowing." But when Moore wrote those lines—so cruelly touching, so terribly caustic—"The dream of those days," which appeared in the last number of the Melodies, the Liberator was, it is said, so deeply affected that he shed tears. So again, these lines of Speranza, which appeared in the Nation at the time of the secession, stung him to the very heart:

  Gone from us—dead to us—he whom we worshipped so!
    Low lies the altar we raised to his name;
  Madly his own hand hath shattered and laid it low—
    Madly his own breath hath blasted his fame.
  He whose proud bosom once raged with humanity.
    He whose broad forehead was circled with might;
  Sunk to a time-serving, driveling inanity—
    God! why not spare our loved country the sight?

  Was it the gold of the stranger that tempted him?
    Ah! we'd have pledged to him body and soul—
  Toiled for him—fought for him—starved for him—died for him—
    Smiled though our graves were the steps to hi s goal.
  Breathed he one word in his deep, earnest whispering?
    Wealth, crown, and kingdom were laid at his feet;
  Raised he his right hand, the millions would round him cling—
    Hush! 'tis the Sassenach ally you greet.

It is a curious and, indeed, a very touching trait in O'Connell's character that an imputation conveyed in this form had a power to wound him which all the articles of the morning papers and all the speeches of the evening debates had not. This redoubtable master of every weapon of invective, whose weighty words sometimes fell on his adversary like one of Ossian's Titans hurling boulders, or again burst into a motley cascade of quip, and crank, and chaff, and wild, rampant ridicule, that (sometimes rather coarse and personal) was at its best, to other rhetoric, as the music of an Irish jig is to all other music, nevertheless had his Achilles' tendon. The man who loved to call himself "the best abused man in the universe" was as weak before the enemy who attacked him according to the rules of prosody as if he lived in the age when every Celt in Kerry piously believed that a man, if the metre were only made sufficiently acrid, might be rhymed to death, in the same manner {476} as an ancestor of Lord Derby was, according to the Four Masters. [Footnote 98]

[Footnote 98: "John Stanley came to Ireland as the king of England's viceroy—a man who gave neither toleration nor sanctuary to ecclesiastics, laymen, or literary men; but all with whom he came in contact he subjected to cold, hardship, and famine; and he it was who plundered Niall, the son of Hugh O'Higgin, at Uisneach of Meath; but Henry D'Alton plundered James Tuite and the king's people, and gave to the O'Higgins a cow in lieu of each cow of which they had been plundered, and afterward escorted them into Connaught. The O'Higgins, on account of Niall, then satirized John Stanley, who only lived live weeks after the satirizing, having died from the venom of their satires. This was the second instance of the poetical influence of Niall O'Higgin's satires, the first having been the Clan Conway turning gray the night they plundered Niall at Clodoin, and the second the death of John Stanley."—Annals of the Four Masters. A.D. 1414.]

Lady Wilde's verse has not at all the same distinctively Celtic character as Mr. Ferguson's. He aspires to be

  Kindly Irish of the Irish,
  Neither Saxon nor Italian;

and his choice inspirations come from the life of the clans. Speranza's verse, so far as it has a specially Irish character, is of the most ancient type of that character. It is full of oriental figures and illustrations. It is, when it is most Irish, rather cognate to Persian and Hebrew ways of thinking, forms of metaphor, redundance of expression—in its tendency to adjuration, in its habit of apostrophe, in its very peculiar and powerful but monotonous rhythm, which seems to pulsate on the ear with the even, strident stroke of a Hindoo drum. Where this peculiar poetry at all adapts itself to the vogue of the modern muse, it is easy to see that Miss Barrett had very great influence in determining the mere manner of Lady Wilde's genius. When in the midst of one very powerful poem, "The Voice of the Poor," these lines come in—

  When the human rests upon the human,
    All grief is light;
  But who lends one kind glance to illumine
    Our life-long night?
  The air around is ringing with their laughter—
    God has only made the rich to smile,
  But we—in our rags, and want, and woe—we follow after,
    Weeping the while.

—we are tempted to note an unconscious homage to the author of "Aurora Leigh." But the character of Lady Wilde's verse is far more colored by the range of her studies than by the influence of any special style. The general reader, who may not breathe at ease the political atmosphere of the earlier part of this volume, will pause with pleasure to observe the spirit, grace, and fidelity of the translations which succeed. They are from almost every language in Europe, whether of Latin or Teutonic origin, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German, Swedish, Danish, and Russian. Among these may be mentioned in particular two hymns of Savonarola, which are rendered so exquisitely that one is tempted to suggest that the "Carmina Sedulii," with much more of the ancient Irish hymnology, are as yet untranslated into the tongue now used in Ireland. It is a work peculiarly adapted to her genius. The first quality of Lady Wilde's poetry is that lyrical power of which the hymn is the finest development; and her most striking poems are those which assume the character of the older and more regular form of ode.

The readers of Mr. William Allingham's early writings were in general gratefully surprised when it was announced that he was the author of a very remarkable poem, of the order of eclogue, which appeared by parts in Fraser's Magazine in 1863. His earlier poems, chiefly songs and verse of society, were pleasing from a certain airy grace and lightness; but on the whole their style was thin and jejune. Of late, his faculties have evidently mellowed very rapidly, and his language has become more animated, more concentrated, and more sustained. "Laurence Bloomfield in Ireland" has had, as it were, a triple success—the success of a pamphlet, the success of a novel of Irish life, and its own more proper and legitimate success, as a regular pastoral, skilfully conceived, carefully executed, in which the flow of thought is sustained at a very even, if not a very lofty level throughout, {477} and whose language is on the whole admirably harmonized, full of happy allusional effects, of quaint, minute, picturesque delineation, and of a certain graceful and easy energy. Mr. Gladstone has quoted some of its lines in a speech on the budget as an excuse for maintaining the duty on whisky; and he is not the only Englishman who has derived from its perusal an unexpected insight into some of the more perplexing problems of Irish life. Certainly, Mr. Allingham's views of Irish society, when he touches on questions of religion and politics, are not our views. He is an Ulster Protestant by religion, and an advanced liberal (we take it) in politics. But making those allowances, it must be admitted that he shows the poet's many-sided sympathetic mind in every page of this very remarkable poem. "It is," as he fairly says, "free from personalities, and neither of an orange nor a green complexion; but it is Irish in phraseology, character, and local color—with as little use as might be of a corrupt dialect, and with no deference at all to the stage traditions of Paddyism." It is divided into twelve chapters, and it is written in pleasantly modulated pentameters.

The story is of the life of a young squire, who was on the point of declaring himself a Young Irelander in his youth. His guardian, to cut the folly short, sent him incontinently to Cambridge, thence to the continent. He returns to Ireland in his twenty-sixth year, and finds the population decimated by the famine, and agitated by agrarian conspiracy. The neighboring gentry are bent, as conacre has ceased to pay, on supplanting the population by cattle. The population suppurates into secret societies. Laurence Bloomfield, long revolving the difficulties of his lot, and abhorring pretty equally the crimes of each class against the other—determined, moreover, to be neither exterminator, demagogue, nor absentee—resolves to live among the people of his estate like a modern patriarch, and see what patience, kindness, a good understanding, and enlightened management may be able to effect. He extinguishes the Ribbon lodge, fastens his tenantry by equitable leases to the glebe, and gradually finds in the management of his estate a career of easy, pleasant, and even prosperous power. In the course of ten years, Lisnamoy has become an Irish Arcadia, and Mr. Allingham's honest muse rises accordingly to sing a hero even more memorable in his way than the Man of Ross.

Bloomfield first promulgates his peculiar views of territorial administration at a dinner of his landlord neighbors in Lisnamoy House, where the wholesale eviction of the tenantry of a large neighboring district is proposed on the plea that—

      "This country sorely needs
  A quicker clearance of its human weeds;
  But still the proper system is begun,
  And forty holdings we shall change to one."

  Bloomfield his inexperience much confessed,
  Doubts if the large dispeopled farms be best,—
  Best in a wide sense, best for all the world
  (At this expression sundry lips were curl'd),—
  "I wish but know not how each peasant's hand
  Might work, nay, hope to win, a share of land;
  For ownership, however small it be,
  Breeds diligence, content, and loyalty,
  And tirelessly compels the rudest field,
  Inch after inch, its very most to yield.
  Wealth might its true prerogatives retain;
  And no man lose, and all men greatly gain."

It is from the ill-concealed contempt of his class for such thoughts as these, that Bloomfield's resolution to remain in Ireland and administer his own estate arises.

The story, as it is evolved, presents some charming sketches of character. Hardly even Carleton has delineated so admirably the nature and habits of the Irish peasant family as Mr. Allingham has done in his picture of the Dorans. How easy and natural, for example, is the portrait of Bridget Doran:

  Mild oval face, a freckle here and there,
  Clear eyes, broad forehead, dark abundant hair,
  Pure placid look that show'd a gentle nature,
  Firm, unperplex'd, were hers; the maiden's stature
  Graceful arose, and strong, to middle height,
  With fair round arms, and footstep free and light;
  She was not showy, she was always neat
  In every gesture, native and complete,
  Disliking noise, yet neither dull nor slack,
  Could throw a rustic banter briskly back,
  Reserved but ready, innocently shrewd,—
  In brief, a charming flower of womanhood.

{478}

The occasional sketches of Irish scenery are also very vividly outlined. This of Lough Braccan is not perhaps the best, but it is the most easily detached from the text:

  Among those mountain skirts a league away,
  Lough Braccan spread, with many a silver bay
  And islet green; a dark cliff, tall and bold,
  Half-muffled in its cloak of ivy old,
  Bastioned the southern brink, beside a glen,
  Where birch and hazel hid the badger's den,
  And through the moist ferns and firm hollies play'd
  A rapid rivulet, from light to shade.
  Above the glen, and wood, and cliff, was seen,
  Majestically simple and serene,
  Like some great soul above the various crowd,
  A purple mountain-top, at times in cloud
  Or mist, as in celestial veils of thought,
  Abstracted heavenward.

We may give another specimen of Mr. Allingham's power of delineation, which shows that he has studied Irish country life as well as Irish scenery and Irish physiognomy.

  Mud hovels fringe the "fair green" of this town,
  A spot misnamed, at every season brown,
  O'erspread with countless man and beast to-day,
  Which bellow, squeak, and shout, bleat, bray, and neigh.
  The "jobbers" there each more or less a rogue,
  Noisy or smooth, with each his various brogue,
  Cool, wiry Dublin, Connaught's golden mouth,
  Blunt northern, plaintive sing-song of the south,
  Feel cattle's ribs, or jaws of horses try.
  For truth, since men's are very sure to lie,
  And shun, with parrying blow and practised heed,
  The rushing horns, the wildly prancing steed.
  The moistened penny greets with sounding smack
  The rugged palm, which smites the greeting back;
  Oaths fly, the bargain like a quarrel burns,
  And oft the buyer turns, and oft returns:
  Now mingle Sassenach and Gaelic tongue;
  On either side are slow concessions wrung;
  An anxious audience interfere; at last
  The sale is closed, and whisky binds it fast,
  In case of quilting upon oziers bent,
  With many an ancient patch and breezy rent.

This is as true a picture in its way as Mdlle. Rosa Bonheur's "Horse-fair."

Mr. Aubrey de Vere's "Inisfail" comes last on our list, but certainly not least in our estimation. No poet of Young Ireland has like him seized and breathed the spirit of his country's Catholic nationality, its virginal purity of faith, its invincible patience of hope, and all the gentle sweetness of its charity. Young Ireland rather studied the martial muse, and that with an avowed purpose. "The Irish harp," said Davis, "too much loves to weep. Let us, while our strength is great and our hopes high, cultivate its bolder strains, its raging and rejoicing; or if we weep, let it be like men whose eyes are lifted though their tears fall." Mr. de Vere has tried every mood of the native lyre, and proved himself master of all. His "Inisfail" is a ballad chronicle of Ireland, such as Young Ireland would have thought to be a worthy result of all its talents, and such as, in fact, Mr. Duffy at one time proposed. But it must be said that its heroic ballads are not equal to those of Young Ireland. Some one said of a very finished, but occasionally frigid, Irish speaker, fifteen years ago, that he spoke like "Sheil with the chill on." A few of Mr. de Vere's ballads have the same effect of "Young Ireland with the chill on." They want the verve, the glow, the energy, the resonance, which belong to the best ballads of "The Spirit of the Nation." Of the writers of that time, Mr. D'Arcy McGee is perhaps, on the whole, the most kindred genius to his. Mr. de Vere has an insight into all the periods of Irish history in their most poetical expression which Mr. McGee alone of his comrades seems to have equally possessed. Indeed, if Mr. Me Gee's poems were all collected and chronologically arranged—as it is to be hoped they may be some day soon—it would be found that he had unconsciously and desultorily traversed very nearly the same complete extent of ground that Mr. de Vere has systematically and deliberately gone over. But though no one has written more nobly of the dimly glorious Celtic ages, and many of his battle-ballads are instinct with life, and wonderfully picturesque, it is easy to see that Mr. McGee's best desire was to follow the footsteps of the early saints, and the Via Dolorosa of the period of the penal laws. These, {479} too, are the passages over which Mr. de Vere's genius most loves to brood, and his prevailing view of Ireland is the supernatural view of her destiny to carry the cross and spread the faith. Young Ireland wrote its bold, brilliant ballads as a part of the education of the new nationality that it believed was growing up, and destined to take possession of the island—"a nationality that," to use Davis's words again, "must contain and represent all the races of Ireland. It must not be Celtic; it must not be Saxon; it must be Irish. The Brehon law and the maxims of Westminster, the cloudy and lightning genius of the Gael, the placid strength of the Saxon, the marshalling insight of the Norman; a literature which shall exhibit in combination the passions and idioms of all, and which shall equally express our mind, in its romantic, its religious, its forensic, and its practical tendencies. Finally, a native government, which shall know and rule by the might and right of all, yet yield to the arrogance of none;—these are the components of such a nationality." And such was the dream that seemed an easy eventuality twenty years ago. But Mr. de Vere writes after the famine and in view of the exodus. His mind goes from the present to the past by ages of sorrow—of sorrow, nevertheless, illumined, nurtured, and sustained by divine faith and the living presence of the Church. So in the most beautiful poem of this volume, he sees the whole Irish race carrying an inner spiritual life through all their tribulation in the guise of a great religious order of which England is the foundress, and the rules are written in the statute-book. We cannot select a better specimen of the thorough Catholic tone of Mr. de Vere's genius, and of the vivid power and finished grace of his poetry, than this:

  There is an order by a northern sea
    Far in the west, of rule and life more strict
  Than that which Basil rear'd in Galilee,
    In Egypt Paul, in Umbria Benedict.

  Discalced it walks; a stony land of tombs,
    A strange Petraea of late days, it treads!
  Within its court no high-tossed censer fumes;
    The night-rain beats its cells, the wind its beds.

  Before its eyes no brass-bound, blazon'd tome
    Reflects the splendor of a lamp high hung:
  Knowledge is banish'd from her earliest home
    Like wealth: it whispers psalms that once it sung.

  It is not bound by the vow celibate,
    Lest, through its ceasing, anguish too might cease;
  In sorrow it brings forth; and death and fate
    Watch at life's gate, and tithe the unripe increase.

  It wears not the Franciscan's sheltering gown;
    The cord that binds it is the strangers chain;
  Scarce seen for scorn, in fields of old renown
    It breaks the clod; another reaps the grain.

  Year after year it fasts; each third or fourth
    So fasts that common fasts to it are feast;
  Then of its brethren many in the earth
    Are laid unrequiem'd like the mountain beast.

  Where are its cloisters? Where the felon sleeps!
    Where its novitiate? Where the last wolf died!
  From sea to sea its vigil long it keeps—
    Stern foundress! is its rule not mortified?

  Thou that hast laid so many an order waste,
    A nation is thine order! It was thine
  Wide as a realm that order's seed to cast,
    And undispensed sustain its discipline!

It is another curious illustration of the Hibernis ipsis Hibernior that a de Vere, who is, moreover, "of the caste of Vere de Vere," should have so intimate a comprehension of the Celtic spirit as is often shown in these poems, especially in the use of those allegories which are so characteristic of the period of persecution, and in some of his metres that appear to be instinct with the very melody of the oldest Irish music. Here, indeed, we seem to taste, in a certain vague and dreamy sensation, which the mere murmur of such verses even without strict reference to the words produces, all the charm of which that ancient poetry might have been capable, if it were still cultivated in a language of living civilization. Several of these poems, if translated into Irish verse, would probably pass back without the change of an idiom—so completely Celtic is the whole conception of the language. The dirges, for example, appear on a first reading to be only English versions of Irish poems belonging to the time of the Jacobites and the Brigade—until, as we examine more carefully, we observe that the allegory is {480} wrought out with all the finish of more modern art, and that the metaphors are brought into a more just inter-dependence than the native bard usually thought necessary.

The tenderness that approaches to a sort of worship of Ireland under the poetical personification of a mother wailing for her children, again and again breaks out in Mr. de Vere's verse; and in all the range of Irish poetry it is nowhere more exquisitely expressed. The solemn beauty of the following verses is like that of some of those earliest of the melodies, whose long lines, with their curious rippling rhythm, were evidently meant for recitation as well as for musical effect:

  In the night, in the night, O my country, the stream calls out from afar;
    So swells thy voice through the ages, sonorous and vast;
  In the night, in the night, O my country, clear flashes the star:
    So flashes on me thy face through the gloom of the past.

  I sleep not; I watch: in blows the wind ice-wing'd and ice-fingered:
    My forehead it cools and slakes the fire in my breast;
  Though it sighs o'er the plains where oft thine exiles look'd back, and long lingered,
    And the graves where thy famish'd lie dumb and thine outcasts find rest.

Hardly less sad, but in so different a spirit as to afford a contrast that brings us to a fair measure of the variety of Mr. de Vere's powers, is a poem of the days of the brigade. The wife of one of the soldiers who followed Sarsfield to France after the capitulation of Limerick, and entered the Irish brigade of Louis XIV., is supposed, sitting by the banks of the Shannon, to speak:

  River that through this purple plain
  Toilest (once redder) to the main,
  Go, kiss for me the banks of Seine!

  Tell him I loved, and love for aye,
  That his I am though far away—
  More his than on the marriage-day.

  Tell him thy flowers for him I twine
  When first the slow sad mornings shine
  In thy dim glass; for he is mine.

  Tell him when evening's tearful light
  Bathes those dark towers on Aughrim's height,
  There where he fought, in heart, I fight.

  A freeman's banner o'er him waves!
  So be it! I but tend the graves
  Where freemen sleep whose sons are slaves.

  Tell him I nurse his noble race,
  Nor weep save o'er one sleeping face
  Wherein those looks of his I trace.

  For him my beads I count when falls
  Moonbeam or shower at intervals
  Upon our burn'd and blacken'd walls:

  And bless him! bless the bold brigade—
  May God go with them, horse and blade,
  For faith's defense, and Ireland's aid!

Here the abrupt transition of tone in the last verse from the subdued melancholy of those which precede it is very fine and very Irish. One can fancy the widowed wife, in all her desolation, starting, even from her beads, as she thinks of Lord Clare's dragoons coming down on the enemy with their "Viva la for Ireland's wrong!"

Twenty years have now passed since "The Spirit of the Nation" gave some glimpses of the mine of poetry then latent in the Irish mind. In 1845 Mr. Gavan Duffy published his "Ballad Poetry of Ireland"—a book which had the largest sale of any published in Ireland since the union and probably the widest influence. Upon this common and neutral ground Orange-man and Ribbon-man, Tory, and Nationalist, were perforce brought into harmonious contact; and "The Boyne Water" lost half its virus as a political psalm when it was embalmed side by side with the "Wild Geese" or "Willy Reilly." Behind the produce of his own immediate period, Mr. Duffy, in arranging his materials, could only find a few ballads by Moore, a few by Gerald Griffin, a few by Banim, Callanan, Furlong, and Drennan, that could be accounted legitimate ballad poetry. The rest was fast cropping up while he was actually compiling his collection, under the hot breath of the National movement, in a lavish and luxuriant growth. This impulse seems to have spent itself some years ago. Anything of real merit in the way of Irish poetry does not now appear in periodical literature more than once or twice in a year; and Mr. Thomas Irwin is the only recent writer whose verse may fairly be named in the same breath with that which we have now noticed. A rich grace and finish of {481} expression, a most quaint and delicate humor, and a fine-poised aptness of phrase, distinguish his poetry, which is more according to the taste that Mr. Tennyson has established in England than that of any Irish writer of the day.

Irish poetry seems now, therefore, to have passed into a new and more advanced stage of development. Here are four volumes, by four separate writers, of poems, old and new—all published within a year; and all, we believe, decidedly successful, and in satisfactory course of sale. Mr. Florence MacCarthy's poems had previously gone through several editions, and won enduring fame—perhaps more widely spread in America than even at home, on account of a quality somewhat kindred to the peculiar genius of the best American poets, and especially Longfellow, Poe, and Irving, that the reader will readily recognize in his finely-finished and most melodious verse. Nor should we omit to mention, in cataloguing the library of recent Irish poets, "The Monks of Kilcrea," a long romantic poem in the style of "The Lady of the Lake," which contains many a passage that Scott might own, but of which the writer remains unknown. Thus Irish national poetry is accumulating, as it were, in strata. Mr. Duffy set on the title-page of his "Ballad Poetry" the Irish motto, Bolg an dana, which not all his readers clearly understood; but which, to all who did, seemed extremely appropriate at the time. "This man," say the Four Masters, speaking of a great bard of the fifteenth century, "was called the Bolg an dana, which signifies that he was a common budget of poetry." And this was all that Mr. Duffy's Ballad Poetry professed to be. But what was only a budget of desultory jetsam and flotsam in 1845 is taking the shape of a solid literature in 1865; and those twenty golden years have at all events been well filled with ranks of rhyme.

{482}

From The Month.

CONSTANCE SHERWOOD.

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

BY LADY GEORGIANA FULLERTON.

CHAPTER VIII.

After I had been musing a little while, Mistress Bess ran into the room, and cried to some one behind her:

"Nan's friend is here, and she is mine too, for we all played in a garden with her when I was little. Prithee, come and see her." Then turning to me, but yet holding the handle of the door, she said: "Will is so unmannerly, I be ashamed of him. He will not so much as show himself."

"Then, prithee, come alone," I answered. Upon which she came and sat on my knee, with her arm round my neck, and whispered in mine ear:

"Moll is very sick to-day; will you not see her, Mistress Sherwood?"

"Yea, if so be I have license," I answered; and she, taking me by the hand, offered to lead me up the stairs to the room where she lay. I, following her, came to the door of the chamber, but would not enter till Bess fetched the nurse, who was the same had been at Sherwood Hall, and who, knowing my name, was glad to see me, and with a curtsey invited me in. White as a lily was the little face resting on a pillow, with its blue eyes half shut, and a store of golden hair about it, which minded me of the glories round angels' heads in my mother's missal.

"Sweet lamb!" quoth the nurse, as I stooped to kiss the pale forehead. "She be too good for this world. Ofttimes she doth babble in her sleep of heaven, and angels, and saints, and a wreath of white roses wherewith a bright lady will crown her."

"Kiss my lips," the sick child softly whispered, as I bent over her bed. Which when I did, she asked, "What is your name? I mind your face." When I answered, "Constance Sherwood," she smiled, as if remembering where we had met. "I heard my grandam calling me last night," she said; "I be going to her soon." Then a fit of pain came on, and I had to leave her. She did go from this world a few days after; and the nurse then told me her last words had been "Jesu! Mary!"

That day I did converse again alone with my Lady Surrey after dinner, and walked in the garden; and when we came in, before I left, she gave me a purse with some gold pieces in it, which the earl her husband willed to bestow on Catholics in prison for their faith. For she said he had so tender and compassionate a spirit, that if he did but hear of one in distress he would never rest until he had relieved him; and out of the affection he had for Mr. Martin, who was one while his tutor, he was favorably inclined toward Catholics, albeit himself resolved to conform to the queen's religion. When Mistress Ward came for me, the countess would have her shown into her chamber, and would not be contented without she ordered her coach to carry us back to Holborn, that we might take with us the clothes and cordials which she did bestow upon us for our poor clients. She begged Mrs. Ward's prayers for his grace, that he might soon be set at liberty; for she said in a pretty manner, "It must needs be that Almighty God takes most heed of the prayers of {483} such as visit him in his affliction in the person of poor prisoners; and she hoped one day to be free to do so herself." Then she questioned of the wants of those Mistress Ward had at that time knowledge of; and when she heard in what sore plight they stood, it did move her to so great compassion, that she declared it would be now one of her chiefest cares and pleasures in life to provide conveniences for them. And she besought Mistress Ward to be a good friend to her with mine aunt, and procure her to permit of my frequent visits to Howard House, as the Charter House is now often called: which would be the greatest good she could do her; and that she would be most glad also if she herself would likewise favor her sometimes with her company; which, "if it be not for mine own sake, Mistress Ward," she sweetly said, "let it be for his sake who, in the person of his afflicted priests, doth need assistance."

When we reached home, we hid what we had brought under our mantles, and then in Mistress Ward's chamber, where Muriel followed us. When the door was shut we displayed these jewelled stores before her pleased eyes, which did beam with joy at the sight.

"Ah, Muriel," cried Mistress Ward, "we have found an Esther in a palace; and I pray to God there may be other such in this town we ken not of, who in secret do yet bear affection to the ancient faith."

Muriel said in her slow way: "We must needs go to the Clink to-morrow; for there is there a priest whose flesh has fallen off his feet by reason of his long stay in a pestered and infected dungeon. Mr. Roper told my father of him, and he says the gaoler will let us in if he be reasonably dealt with."

"We will essay your ointment, Mistress Sherwood," said Mistress Ward, "if so be you can make it in time."

"I care not if I sit up all night," I cried, "if any one will buy me the herbs I have need of for the compounding thereof." Which Muriel said she would prevail on one of the servants to do.

The bell did then ring for supper; and when we were all seated, Kate was urgent with me for to tell her how my Lady Surrey was dressed; which I declared to her as follows: "She had on a brown juste au corps embroidered, with puffed sleeves, and petticoat braided of a deeper nuance; and on her head a lace cap, and a lace handkerchief on her bosom."

"And, prithee, what jewels had she on, sweet coz?"

"A long double chain of gold and a brooch of pearls," I answered.

"And his grace of Norfolk is once more removed to the Tower," said Mr. Congleton sorrowfully. "'Tis like to kill him soon, and so save her majesty's ministers the pains to bring him to the block. His physician, Dr. Rhuenbeck, says he is afflicted with the dropsy."

Polly said she had been to visit the Countess of Northumberland, who was so grievously afflicted at her husband's death, that it was feared she would fall sick of grief if she had not company to divert her from her sad thoughts.

"Which I warrant none could effect so well as thee, wench," her father said; "for, beshrew me, if thou wouldst not make a man laugh on his way to the scaffold with thy mad talk. And was the poor lady of better cheer for thy company?"

"Yea, for mine," Polly answered; "or else for M. de la Motte's, who came in to pay his devoirs to her, for the first time, I take it, since her lord's death. And after his first speech, which caused her to weep a little, he did carry on so brisk a discourse as I never noticed any but a Frenchman able to do. And she was not the worst pleased with it that the cunning gentleman did interweave it with anecdotes of the queen's majesty; which, albeit he related them with gravity, did carry somewhat of ridicule in them. Such as of her grace's dancing on Sunday before last at Lord Northampton's wedding, and calling him to witness {484} her paces, so that he might let monsieur know how high and disposedly she danced; so that he would not have had cause to complain, in case he had married her, that she was a boiteuse, as had been maliciously reported of her by the friends of the Queen of Scots. And also how, some days since, she had flamed out in great choler when he went to visit her at Hampton Court; and told him, so loud that all her ladies and officers could hear her discourse, that Lord North had let her know the queen-mother and the Duke of Guise had dressed up a buffoon in an English fashion, and called him a Milor du Nord; and that two female dwarfs had been likewise dressed up in that queen's chamber, and invited to mimic her, the queen of England, with great derision and mockery. 'I did assure her,' M. de la Motte said, 'with my hand on my heart, and such an aggrieved visage, that she must needs have accepted my words as true, that Milor North had mistaken the whole intent of what he had witnessed, from his great ignorance of the French tongue, which did render him a bad interpreter between princes; for that the queen-mother did never cease to praise her English majesty's beauty to her son, and all her good qualities, which greatly appeased her grace, who desired to be excused if she, likewise out of ignorance of the French language, had said aught unbecoming touching the queen-mother.' 'Tis a rare dish of fun, fit to set before a king, to hear this Monsieur Ambassador speak of the queen when none are present but such as make an idol of her, as some do."

"For my part," said her father, when she paused in her speech, "I mislike men with double visages and double tongues; and methinks this monseer hath both, and withal a rare art for what courtiers do call diplomacy, and plain men lying. His speeches to her majesty be so fulsome in her praise, as I have heard some say who are at court, and his flattery so palpable, that they have been ashamed to hear it; but behind her back he doth disclose her failings with an admirable slyness."

"If he be sly," answered Polly, "I'll warrant he finds his match in her majesty."

"Yea," cried Kate, "even as poor Madge Arundell experienced to her cost."

"Ay," quoth Polly, "she catcheth many poor fish, who little know what snare is laid for them."

"And how did her highness catch Mistress Arundell?" I asked.

"In this way, coz," quoth Polly: "she doth often ask the ladies round her chamber, 'If they love to think of marriage?' and the wise ones do conceal well their liking thereunto, knowing the queen's judgment in the matter. But pretty, simple Madge Arundell, not knowing so deeply as her fellows, was asked one day hereof, and said, 'She had thought much about marriage, if her father did consent to the man she loved.' 'You seem honest, i' fait said the queen; 'I will sue for you your father.' At which the dam was well pleased; and when father, Sir Robert Arundell, came court, the queen questioned him his daughter's marriage, and pressed him to give consent if the match were discreet. Sir Robert, much astonished, said, 'He never had heard his daughter had liking to any man; but he would give his free consent to what was most pleasing to her highness's will and consent.' Then I will do the rest,' saith the queen. Poor Madge was called in, and told by the queen that her father had given his free consent. 'Then,' replied the simple one, 'I shall be happy, an' it please your grace.' 'So thou shalt; but not to be a fool and marry,' said the queen. 'I have his consent given to me, and I vow thou shalt never get it in thy possession. So go-to about thy business. I see thou art a bold one to own thy foolishness so readily.'"

"Ah me!" cried Kate, "I be glad not to be a maid to her majesty; for I would not know how to answer her {485} grace if she should ask me a like question; for if it be bold to say one hath a reasonable desire to be married, I must needs be bold then, for I would not for two thousand pounds break Mr. Lacy's heart; and he saith he will die if I do not marry him. But, Polly, thou wouldst never be at a loss to answer her majesty."

"No more than Pace her fool," quoth Polly, "who, when she said, as he entered the room, 'Now we shall hear of our faults,' cried out, 'Where is the use of speaking of what all the town doth talk of?'"

"The fool should have been whipped," Mistress Ward said.

"For his wisdom, or for his folly, good Mistress Ward?" asked Polly. "If for wisdom, 'tis hard to beat a man for being wise. If for folly, to whip a fool for that he doth follow his calling, and as I be the licensed fool in this house—which I do take to be the highest exercise of wit in these days, when all is turned upside down—I do wish you all good-night, and to be no wiser than is good for your healths, and no more foolish than suffices to lighten the heart;" and so laughing she ran away, and Kate said in a lamentable voice,

"I would I were foolish, if it lightens the heart."

"Content thee, good Kate," I said; but in so low a voice none did hear. And she went on,

"Mr. Lacy is gone to Yorkshire for three weeks, which doth make me more sad than can be thought of."

I smiled; but Muriel, who had not yet oped her lips whilst the others were talking, rising, kissed her sister, and said, "Thou wilt have, sweet one, so great a contentment in his letters as will give thee patience to bear the loss of his good company."

At the which Kate brightened a little. To live with Muriel was a preachment, as I have often had occasion since to find.

On the first Sunday I was at London, we heard mass at the Portuguese ambassador's house, whither many Catholics of his acquaintance resorted for that purpose from our side of the city. In the afternoon a gentleman, who had travelled day and night from Staffordshire on some urgent business, brought me a letter from my father, writ only four days before it came to hand, and about a week after my departure from home. It was as follows:

"MINE OWN DEAR CHILD,—The bearer of this letter hath promised to do me the good service to deliver it to thee as soon as he shall reach London; which, as he did intend to travel day and night, I compute will be no later than the end of this week, or on Sunday at the furthest. And for this his civility I do stand greatly indebted to him; for in these straitened times 'tis no easy matter to get letters conveyed from one part of the kingdom to another without danger of discovering that which for the present should rather be concealed. I received notice two days ago from Mistress Ward's sister of your good journey and arrival at London; and I thank God, my very good child, that he has had thee in his holy keeping and bestowed thee under the roof of my good sister and brother; so that, with a mind at ease in respect to thee, my dear sole earthly treasure, I may be free to follow whatever course his providence may appoint to me, who, albeit unworthy, do aspire to leave all things to follow him. And indeed he hath already, at the outset of my wanderings, sweetly disposed events in such wise that chance hath proved, as it were, the servant of his providence; and, when I did least look for it, by a divine ordination furnished me, who so short a time back parted from a dear child, with the company of one who doth stand to me in lieu of her who, by reason of her tender sex and age, I am compelled to send from me. For being necessitated, for the preservation of my life, to make seldom any long stay in one place, I had need of a youth to ride with me on those frequent journeys, and keep me company in such places {486} as I may withdraw unto for quietness and study. So being in Stafford some few days back, I inquired of the master of the inn where I did lay for one night, if it were not possible to get in that city a youth to serve me as a page, whom I said I would maintain as a gentleman if he had learning, nurture, and behavior becoming such a person. He said his son, who was a schoolmaster, had a youth for a pupil who carried virtue in his very countenance; but that he was the child of a widow, who, he much feared, would not easily be persuaded to part from him. Thereupon I expressed a great desire to have a sight of this youth and charged him to deal with his master so that he should be sent to my lodgings; which, when he came there, lo and behold, I perceived with no small amazement that he was no other than Edmund Genings, who straightway ran into my arms, and with much ado restrained himself from weeping, so greatly was he moved with conflicting passions of present joy and recollected sorrow at this our unlooked-for meeting; and truly mine own contentment therein was in no wise less than his. He told me that his mother's poverty increasing, she had moved from Lichfield, where it was more bitter to her, by reason of the affluence in which she had before lived in that city, to Stafford, where none did know them; and she dwelt in a mean lodging in a poor sort of manner. And whereas he had desired to accept the offer of a stranger, with a view to relieve his mother from the burden of his support, and maybe yield her some assistance in her straits, he now passionately coveted to throw his fortune with mine, and to be entered as a page in my service. But though she had been willing before, from necessity, albeit averse by inclination, to part with him, when she knew me it seemed awhile impossible to gain her consent. Methinks she was privy to Edmund's secret good opinion of Catholic religion, and feared, if he should live with me, the effect thereof would follow. But her necessities were so sharp, and likewise her regrets that he should lack opportunities for his further advance in learning, which she herself was unable to supply, that at length by long entreaty he prevailed on her to give him license for that which his heart did prompt him to desire for his own sake and hers. And when she had given this consent, but not before, lest it should appear I did seek to bribe her by such offers to so much condescension as she then evinced, I proposed to assist her in any way she wished to the bettering of her fortunes, and said I would do as much whether she suffered her son to abide with me or no: which did greatly work with her to conceive a more favorable opinion of me than she had heretofore held, and to be contented he should remain in my service, as he himself so greatly desired. After some further discourse, it was resolved that I should furnish her with so much money as would pay her debts and carry her to La Rochelle, where her youngest son was with her brother, who albeit he had met with great losses, would nevertheless, she felt assured, assist her in her need. Thus has Edmund become to me less a page than a pupil, less a servant than a son. I will keep a watchful eye over his actions, whom I already perceive to be tractable, capable, willing to learn, and altogether such as his early years did promise he should be. I thank God, who has given me so great a comfort in the midst of so great trials, and to this youth in me a father rather than a master, who will ever deal with him in an honorable and loving manner, both in respect to his own deserts and to her merits, whose prayers have, I doubt not, procured this admirable result of what was in no wise designed, but by God's providence fell out of the asking a simple question in an inn and of a stranger.

"And now, mine only and very dear child, I commend thee to God's holy keeping; and I beseech thee to be as mindful of thy duty to him as thou {487} hast been (and most especially of late) of thine to me; and imprint in thy heart those words of holy writ, 'Not to fear those that kill the body, but cannot destroy the soul;' but withal, in whatever is just and reasonable, and not clearly against Catholic religion, to observe a most exact obedience to such as stand to thee at present in place of thy unworthy father, and who, moreover, are of such virtue and piety as I doubt not would move them rather to give thee an example how to suffer the loss of all things for Christ his sake than to offend him by a contrary disposition. I do write to my good brother by the same convenience to yield him and my sister humble thanks for their great kindness to me in thee, and send this written in haste; for I fear I shall not often have means hereafter. Therefore I desire Almighty God to protect, bless, and establish thee. So in haste, and in visceribus Christi, adieu."

The lively joy I received from this letter was greater than I can rehearse, for I had now no longer before my eyes the sorrowful vision of my dear father with none to tend and comfort him in his wanderings; and no less was my contentment that Edmund, my dearly-loved playmate, was now within reach of his good instructions, and free to follow that which I was persuaded his conscience had been prompting him to seek since he had attained the age of reason.

I note not down in this history the many visits I paid to the Charter House that autumn, except to notice the growing care Lady Surrey did take to supply the needs of prisoners and poor people, and how this brought her into frequent occasions of discourse with Mistress Ward and Muriel, who nevertheless, as I also had care to observe, kept these interviews secret, which might have caused suspicion in those who, albeit Catholic, were ill-disposed to adventure the loss of worldly advantages by the profession of what Protestants do term perverse and open papistry. Kate and Polly were of this way of thinking—prudence was ever the word with them when talk of religion was ministered in their presence; and they would not keep as much as a prayer-book in their chambers for fear of evil results. They were sometimes very urgent with their father for to suffer them to attend Protestant service, which they said would not hinder them from hearing mass at convenient times, and saying such prayers as they listed; and Polly the more so that a young gentleman of good birth and high breeding, who conformed to the times, had become a suitor for her hand, and was very strenuous with her on the necessity of such compliance, which nevertheless her father would not allow of. Much company came to the house, both Protestant and Catholic; for my aunt, who was sick at other times, did greatly mend toward the evening. When I was first in London for some weeks, she kept me with her at such times in the parlor, and encouraged me to discourse with the visitors; for she said I had a forwardness and vivacity of speech which, if practised in conversation, would in time obtain for me as great a reputation of wit as Polly ever enjoyed. I was nothing loth to study in this new school, and not slow to improve in it. At the same time I gave myself greatly to the reading of such books as I found in my cousins' chambers; amongst which were some M. de la Motte had lent to Polly, marvellous witty and entertaining, such as Les Nouvelles de la Reine de Navarre and the Cents Histoires tragiques; and others done in English out of French by Mr. Thomas Fortescue; and a poem, writ by one Mr. Edmund Spenser, very beautiful, and which did so much bewitch me, that I was wont to rise in the night to read it by the light of the moon at my casement window; and the Morte d' Arthur, which Mr. Hubert Rookwood had willed me to read, whom I met at Bedford, and which so filled my head with fantastic images and imagined scenes, that I did, as it were, fall in love with {488} Sir Launcelot, and would blush if his name were but mentioned, and wax as angry if his fame were questioned as if he had been a living man, and I in a foolish manner fond of him.

This continued for some little time, and methinks, had it proceeded further, I should have received much damage from a mode of life with so little of discipline in it, and so great incitements to faults and follies which my nature was prone to, but which my conscience secretly reproved. And among the many reasons I have to be thankful to Mistress "Ward, that never-to-be-forgotten friend, whose care restrained me in these dangerous courses, partly by compulsion through means of her influence with my aunt and her husband, and partly by such admonitions and counsel as she favored me with, I reckon amongst the greatest that, at an age when the will is weak, albeit the impulses be good, she lent a helping hand to the superior part of my soul to surmount the evil tendencies which bad example on the one hand, and weak indulgence on the other, fostered in me, whose virtuous inclinations had been, up to that time, hedged in by the strong safeguards of parental watchfulness. She procured that I should not tarry, save for brief and scanty spaces of time, in my aunt's parlor when she had visitors, and so contrived that it should be when she herself was present, who, by wholesome checks and studied separation from the rest of the company, reduced my forwardness with just restraints such as became my age. And when she discovered what books I read, oh, with what fervent and strenuous speech she drove into my soul the edge of a salutary remorse; with what tearful eyes and pleading voice she brought before me the memory of my mother's care and my father's love, which had ever kept me from drinking such empoisoned draughts from the well-springs of corruption which in our days books of entertainment too often prove, and if not altogether bad, yet be such as vitiate the palate and destroy the appetite for higher and purer kinds of mental sustenance. Sharp was her correction, but withal so seasoned with tenderness, and a grief the keenness of which I could discern was heightened by the thought that my two elder cousins (one time her pupils) should be so drawn aside by the world and its pleasures as to forget their pious habits, and minister to others the means of such injury as their own souls had sustained, that every word she uttered seemed to sink into my heart as if writ with a pen of fire; and mostly when she thus concluded her discourse:

"There hath been times, Constance, when men, yea and women also, might play the fool for a while, without so great danger as now, and dally with idle folly like children who do sport on a smooth lawn nigh to a running stream, under their parents' eyes, who, if their feet do but slip, are prompt to retrieve them. But such days are gone by for the Catholics of this land. I would have thee to bear in mind that 'tis no common virtue—no convenient religion—faces the rack, the dungeon, and the rope; that wanton tales and light verses are no viaticum for a journey beset with such perils. And thou—thou least of all—whose gentle mother, as thou well knowest, died of a broken heart from the fear to betray her faith—thou, whose father doth even now gird himself for a fight, where to win is to die on a scaffold—shouldst scorn to omit such preparation as may befit thee to live, if it so please God, or to die, if such be his will, a true member of his holy Catholic Church. O Constance, it doth grieve me to the heart that thou shouldst so much as once have risen from thy bed at night to feed thy mind with the vain words of profane writers, in place of nurturing thy soul by such reasonable exercises and means as God, through the teaching of his Church, doth provide for the spiritual growth of his children, and by prayer and penance make ready for coming conflicts. Bethink thee of the many holy priests, yea and laymen also, who be in uneasy {489} dungeons at this time, lying on filthy straw, with chains on their bruised limbs, but lately racked and tormented for their religion, whilst thou didst offend God by such wanton conduct. Count up the times thou hast thus offended; and so many times rise in the night, my good child, and say the psalm 'Miserere,' through which we do especially entreat forgiveness for our sins."

I cast myself in her arms, and with many bitter tears lamented my folly; and did promise her then, and, I thank God, ever after did keep that promise, whilst I abode under the same roof with her, to read no books but such as she should warrant me to peruse. Some days after she procured Mr. Congleton's consent, who also went with us, to carry me to the Marshalsea, whither she had free access at that time by reason of her acquaintanceship with the gaoler's wife, who, when a maid, had been a servant in her family, and who, having been once Catholic, did willingly assist such prisoners as came there for their religion. There we saw Mr. Hart, who hath been this long while confined in a dark cell, with nothing but boards to lie on till Mistress Ward gave him a counterpane, which she concealed under her shawl, and the gaoler was prevailed on by his wife not to take from him. He was cruelly tortured some time since, and condemned to die on the same day as Mr. Luke Kirby and some others on a like charge, that he did deny the queen's supremacy in spiritual matters; but he was taken off the sledge and returned to prison. He did take it very quietly and patiently; and when Mr. Congleton expressed a hope he might soon be released from prison, he smiled and said:

"My good friend, my crosses are light and easy; and the being deprived of all earthly comfort affords a heavenly joy, which maketh my prison happy, my confinement merciful, my solitude full of blessings. To God, therefore, be all praise, honor, and glory, for so unspeakable a benefit bestowed upon his poor, wretched, and unworthy servant."

So did he comfort those who were more grieved for him than he for himself; and each in turn we did confess; and after I had disburdened my conscience in such wise that he perceived the temper of my mind, and where to apply remedies to the dangers the nature of which his clearsightedness did foresee, he thus addressed me:

"The world, my dear daughter, soon begins to seem insipid, and all its pleasures grow bitter as gall; all the fine shows and delights it affords appear empty and good for nothing to such as have tasted the happiness of conversing with Christ, though it be amidst torments and tribulations, yea and in the near approach of death itself. This joy so penetrates the soul, so elevates the spirit, so changes the affections, that a prison seems not a prison but a paradise, death a goal long time desired, and the torments which do accompany it jewels of great price. Take with thee these words, which be the greatest treasure and the rarest lesson for these times: 'He that loveth his life in this world shall lose it, and he that hateth it shall find it;' and remember the devil is always upon the watch. Be you also watchful. Pray you for me. I have a great confidence that we shall see one another in heaven, if you keep inviolable the word you have given to God to be true to his Catholic Church and obedient to its precepts, and he gives me the grace to attain unto that same blessed end."

These words, like the sower's seed, fell into a field where thorns oftentimes threatened to choke their effect; but persecution, when it arose, consumed the thorns as with fire, and the plant, which would have withered in stony ground, bore fruit in a prepared soil.

As we left the prison, it did happen that, passing by the gaoler's lodge, I saw him sitting at a table drinking ale with one whose back was to the door. A suspicion came over me, the most unlikely in the world, for it was against all credibility, and I had not seen so much as that person's face; but in the shape of his head and the manner of {490} his sitting, but for a moment observed, there was a resemblance to Edmund Genings, the thought of which I could not shake off. When we were walking home, Mr. Congleton said Mr. Hart had told him that a short time back a gentleman had been seized, and committed to close confinement, whom he believed, though he had not attained to the certainty thereof, to be Mr. Willisden; and if it were so, that much trouble might ensue to many recusants, by reason of that gentleman having dealt in matters of great importance to such persons touching lands and other affairs whereby their fortunes and maybe their lives might be compromised. On hearing of this, I straightway conceived a sudden fear lest it should be my father and not Mr. Willisden was confined in that prison; and the impression I had received touching the youth who was at table with the gaoler grew so strong in consequence, that all sorts of fears founded thereon ran through my mind, for I had often heard how persons did deceive recusants by feigning themselves to be their friends, and then did denounce them to the council, and procured their arrest and oftentimes their condemnation by distorting and false swearing touching the speech they held with them. One Eliot in particular, who was a man of great modesty and ingenuity of countenance, so as to defy suspicion (but a very wicked man in more ways than one, as has been since proved), who pretended to be Catholic, and when he did suspect any to be a Jesuit, or a seminary priest, or only a recusant, he would straightway enter into discourse with him, and in an artful manner cause him to betray himself; whereupon he was not slow to throw off the mask, whereby several had been already brought to the rope. And albeit I would not credit that Edmund should be such a one, the evil of the times was so great that my heart did misgive me concerning him, if indeed he was the youth whom I had espied on such familiar terms with that ruffianly gaoler. I had no rest for some days, lacking the means to discover the truth of that suspicion; for Mrs. Ward, to whom I did impart it, dared not adventure again that week to the Marshalsea, by reason of the gaoler's wife having charged her not to come frequently, for that her husband had suddenly suspected her to be a recusant, and would by no means allow of her visits to the prisoners; but that when he was drunk she could sometimes herself get his keys and let her in, but not too often. Mr. Congleton would have it the prisoner must be Mr. Willisden and no other, and took no heed of my fears, which he said had no reasonable grounds, as I had not so much as seen the features of the youth I took to be my father's page. But I could by no means be satisfied, and wept very much; and I mind me how, in the midst of my tears that evening, my eyes fell on the frontispiece of a volume of the Morte d' Arthur which had been loosened when the book was in my chamber, and in which was picture of Sir Launcelot, the present mirror of my fancy. I had pinned it to my curtain, and jewelled it as a treasure and fund of foolish musings, even after yielding up, with promise to read no more therein, the book which had once held it. And thus were kept alive the fantastic imaginings wherewith I clothed a creature conceived in a writer's brain, whose nobility was the offspring of his thoughts and the continual entertainment of mine own. But, oh, how just did I now find the words of a virtuous friend, and how childish my folly, when the true sharp edge of present fear dispersed these vapory clouds, even as the keen blast of a north wind doth drive away a noxious mist! The sight of the dismal dungeon that day visited, the pallid features of that true confessor therein immured, his soul-piercing words, and the apprehensions which were wringing my heart—banished of a sudden an idle dream engendered by vain readings and vainer musings, and Sir Launcelot held henceforward no higher, or not so high, a {491} place in my esteem as the good Sir Guy of Warwick, or the brave Hector de Valence.

A day or two after, my Lady Surrey sent her coach for me; and I found her in her dressing-room seated on a couch with her waiting-women and Mistress Milicent around her, who were displaying a great store of rich suits and jewels and such-like gear drawn from wardrobes and closets, the doors of which were thrown open, and little Mistress Bess was on tiptoe on a stool afore a mirror with a diamond necklace on, ribbons flaring about her head, and a fan of ostrich-feathers in her hand.

"Ah, sweet one," said my lady, when I came in, "thou must needs be surprised at this show of bravery, which ill consorts with the mourning of our present garb or the grief of our hearts; but, i' faith, Constance, strange things do come to pass, and such as I would fain hinder if I could."

"Make ready thine ears for great news, good Constance," cried Bess, running toward me encumbered with her finery, and tumbling over sundry pieces of head-gear in her way, to the waiting-woman's no small discomfiture. "The queen's majesty doth visit upon next Sunday the Earl and Countess of Surrey; and as her highness cannot endure the sight of dool, they and their household must needs put it off and array themselves in their costliest suits; and Nan is to put on her choicest jewels, and my Lady Bess must be grand too, to salute the queen."

"Hush, Bessy," said my lady; and leading me into the adjoining chamber, "'tis hard," quoth she, holding my hand in hers,—"'tis hard when his grace is in the Tower and in disgrace with her majesty, and only six weeks since our Moll died, that she must needs visit this house, where there be none to entertain her highness but his grace's poor children; 'tis hard, Constance, to be constrained to kiss the hand which threatens his life who gave my lord his, and mostly to smile at the queen's jesting, which my Lord Arundel saith we must of all things take heed to observe, for that she as little can endure dool in the face as in the dress."

A few tears fell from those sweet eyes upon my hand, which she still held, and I said, "Comfort you, my sweet lady. It must needs be that her majesty doth intend favor to his grace through this visit. Her highness would never be minded to do so much honor to the children if she did not purpose mercy to the father."

"I would fain believe it were so," said the countess, thoughtfully; "but my Lord Arundel and my Lady Lumley hold not, I fear, the same opinion. And I do hear from them that his grace is much troubled thereat, and hath written to the Earl of Leicester and my Lord Burleigh to lament the queen's determination to visit his son, who is not of age to receive her." [Footnote 99]

[Footnote 99: Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, 1547 to 1580: "Duke of Norfolk to the Earl of Leicester and Lord Burleigh; laments the queen's determination to visit his son's house, who is not of age to receive her."]

"And doth my Lord of Surrey take the matter to heart?"

"My lord's disposition doth incline him to conceive hope where others see reason to fear," she replied. "He saith he is glad her majesty should come to this house, and that he will take occasion to petition her grace to release his father from the Tower; and he hath drawn up an address to that effect, which is marvellous well expressed; and, since 'tis written, he makes no more doubt that her majesty will accede to it than if the upshot was not yet to come, but already past. And he hath set himself with a skill beyond his years, and altogether wonderful in one so young, to prepare all things for the queen's reception; so that when his grandfather did depute my Lord Berkeley and my Lady Lumley to assist us (he himself being too sick to go out of his house) in the ordering of the collation in the banqueting-room, and the music wherewith to greet her highness on her arrival, as well as the ceremonial to be observed during her visit, they did find that my lord had so {492} disposedly and with so great taste ordained the rules to be observed, and the proper setting forth of all things, that little remained for them to do. And he will have me to be richly dressed, and to put on the jewels which were his mother's, which, since her death, have not been worn by the two Duchesses of Norfolk which did succeed her. Ah me, Mistress Constance, I often wish my lord and I had been born far from the court, in some quiet country place, where there are no queens to entertain, and no plots which do bring nobles into so great dangers."

"Alack," I cried, "dear lady, 'tis not the highest in the land that be alone to suffer. Their troubles do stand forth in men's eyes; and when a noble head is imperilled all the world doth know of it; but blood is spilt in this land, and torments endured, which no pen doth chronicle, and of which scant mention is made in palaces."

"There is a passion in thy speech," my lady said, "which betrayeth a secret uneasiness of heart. Hast thou had ill news, my Constance?"

"No news," I answered, "but that which my fears do invent and whisper;" and then I related to her the cause of my disturbance, which she sought to allay by kind words, which nevertheless failed to comfort me.

Before I left she did propose I should come to the Charter House on the morning of the queen's visit, and bring Mistress Ward and my cousins also, as it would pleasure them to stand in the gallery and witness the entertainment, and albeit my heart was heavy, methought it was an occasion not to be overpast to feast my eyes with the sight of majesty, and to behold that great queen who doth hold in her hands her subjects' lives, and who, if she do but nod, like the god of the heathen which books do speak of, such terrible effects ensue, greater than can be thought of; and so I gave my lady mine humble thanks, and also for that she did gift me with a dainty hat and a well-embroidered suit to wear on that day; which, when Kate saw, she fell into a wonderful admiration of the pattern, and did set about to get it copied afore the day of the royal visit to Howard House. As I returned to Holborn in my lady's coach there was a great crowd in the Cornhill, and the passage for a while arrested by the number of persons on their way to what is now called the Royal Exchange, which her majesty was to visit in the evening. I sat very quietly with mine eyes fixed on the foot-passengers, not so much looking at their faces as watching their passage, which, like the running of a river, did seem endless. But at last it somewhat slackened, and the coach moved on, when, at the corner of a street, nigh unto a lamp over a shop, which did throw a light on his face, I beheld Edmund Genings. Oh, how my heart did beat, and with what a loud cry I did call to the running footmen to stop! But the noise of the street was so great they did not hear me, and I saw him turn and pursue his way down another street toward the river. My good uncle, when he heard I had verily seen my father's new page in the city, gave more heed to my suspicions, and did promise to go himself unto the Marshalsea on the next day, and seek to verify the name of the prisoner Mr. Hart had made mention of.

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From The Cornhill Magazine.

MODERN FALCONRY.

Hunting and hawking were, as every one knows, the great sports of our forefathers. Angling was but little understood before the time of Walton and Cotton, and not thoroughly even by those great masters themselves. In the olden time, the bow and arrow, being scarcely adapted for fowling, were used almost exclusively against large game, such as deer; the crossbow was perhaps not a very efficient weapon; and the art of shooting flying with a fowling-piece may be said to be of recent invention. It is true that, a couple of hundred years ago, men (the sportsmen of those days) might have been seen, armed with a match-lock, or some such wonderful contrivance, crawling toward a covey of basking partridges, with the intention of shooting them on the ground; and Dame Juliana Berners, who wrote upon falconry in the middle of the fifteenth century, invented a fly-rod of such excessive weight that the strongest salmon-fisher in these days would be unwilling to wield it. But this was sorry work, and we can well understand that, of itself, it was very far from satisfying a sport-loving people. They still held by the old sports. Hunting and hawking were in their glory when what we now call "shooting" and "fishing" were scarcely understood at all. Deer were in abundance, and so was other game, especially if we consider the few people privileged to kill it. In those days, though not in these, the most sportsmanlike way was the most profitable; and more quarry could be taken with dogs and hawks than in any other, and perhaps less legitimate, manner.

Hunting we retain, as our great and national sport, though circumstances, rather than choice, have led to our exchanging the stag for the fox. But falconry, the great sport of chivalry, once the national sport of these islands, has been permitted so nearly to die out that but few people are aware of its existence amongst us. That it does still live, however, though under a cloud,—to what extent and in what manner it is carried out,—it is the purport of this paper to show.

The causes of the decrease, and almost the loss, of this sport are obvious enough. Amongst the chief are, the present enclosed state of the country; the perfection—or what is almost perfection—of modern gunnery, and of the marksman's skill, and the desire to make large bags. Add to these, perhaps, the trouble and expense attendant upon keeping hawks. But the links have at no time absolutely been broken which, in England, unite falconry in the time of Ethelbert to falconry of the present day. Lord Orford and Colonel Thornton took them up and strengthened them at the end of the last, and the beginning of the present, century. Later still, the Loo Club in Holland saved falconry from extinction in England, because its English members brought their falcons to this country, and flew them here. The Barrs, first-rate Scotch falconers, and John Pells, of Norfolk, helped the course by training and selling hawks; and a work entitled "Falconry in the British Isles," published in 1855, together with some chapters which appeared rather later in one of the leading sporting newspapers (and were afterward collected in a volume), served to create or encourage a love for falconry.

It was said that the present Duke of St. Albans, the grand falconer, would take to the sport con amore, and not as a mere form; but this is very far indeed from being the case. {494} The Maharajah Dhuleep Singh was perhaps the most considerable falconer of the present day; and last season but one he killed 119 grouse with his young hawks; but he has lately given up the greater part of his hawking establishment. In Ireland there are some good falcons, flown occasionally at herons, and frequently, and with great success, at other quarry; many officers in the army are falconers; and, in the wilds of Cheshire, there lives a poor gentleman who has flown hawks for fifteen years, and contrives, through the courtesy of his friends, to make a bag on the moors with his famous grouse-hawk "The Princess," and one or two others.

Those who have been accustomed to regard falconry as entirely a thing of the past, and the secret of hawk-training as utterly lost as that of Stonehenge or the Pyramids, will be surprised to hear that there are, at the present time, hawks in England of such proved excellence, that it is impossible to conceive even princes in the olden time, notwithstanding the monstrous prices they are said to have paid for some falcons, ever possessing better. When a peregrine falcon will "wait on," as it is called, at the height of a hundred or a hundred and fifty yards above her master, as he beats the moors for her, and, when the birds rise, chase them with almost the speed of an arrow; when she is sure to kill, unless the grouse escapes in cover; when she will not attempt to "carry" her game, even should a dog run by her, and when she is ready to fly two or three times in one morning—it can easily be imagined, even by those who know nothing of falconry, that she has reached excellence.

And so, in heron-hawking. If a cast of falcons, unhooded at a quarter of a mile from a passing heron (especially a "light" heron, i. e., a heron going to feed, and therefore not weighted), capture him in a wind, and after a two-mile flight, it is difficult to suppose, caeteris paribus, that any hawks could possibly be superior to them. And, as such hawks as we have described exist, the inevitable conclusion is, that where falconry is really understood, it is understood as well as it ever was; or, in other words, that modern falconry, as far as the perfection of individual hawks is concerned, is equal to ancient.

Our forefathers, excellent falconers as they were, chose to make a wonderful mystery of their craft; and when they did publish a book on the subject of their great sport, its directions could only avail the gentry of those exclusive times. In examining these books, one is sometimes almost tempted to doubt whether the writers really offered the whole of their contents in a spirit of good faith; at any rate, some of the advice is very startling to modern ears; and no sane man of the present day would dream of following it. Perhaps the reader would like an extract. Here, then, is a recipe for a sick hawk, extracted from The Gentleman's Recreation, published 1677: "Take germander, pelamountain, basil, grummel-seed, and broom-flowers, of each half an ounce; hyssop, sassafras, polypodium, and horse-mints, of each a quarter of an ounce, and the like of nutmegs; cubebs, borage, mummy, mugwort, sage, and the four kinds of mirobolans, of each half an ounce; of aloes soccotrine the fifth part of an ounce, and of saffron one whole ounce. To be put into a hen's gut, tied at both ends." What was supposed to be the effect of this marvellous mixture, it is somewhat hard to divine; but our modern pharmacopoeia would be content with a little rhubarb and a few peppercorns. With regard to food, we are told, in the same work, that cock's flesh is proper for falcons that are "melancholick;" and that "phlegmatick" birds are to be treated in a different way—possibly fed on pullets. Were this paper intended as a notice of ancient, instead of modern falconry, we might multiply instances to show the extreme faddiness of the old falconers.

{495}

Simply to tame a hawk is excessively easy. To train it, up to a certain point, is not at all difficult. But it requires an old and practised hand to produce a bird of first-rate excellence.

The modern routine of training the peregrine falcon is shortly as follows: Young birds are procured, generally from Scotland, either just before they can fly, or just after. They are placed in some straw, on a platform, in an outhouse, which ought to open to the southeast. They are furnished each with a large bell (the size of a very small walnut) for the leg; and each with a couple of jessies (short straps of leather) for both legs. If they are unable to fly, the door of the coach-house (or whatever the outhouse may be) should be left open; but if they have tolerable use of their wings, it will be necessary to close it for the first few days. They are fed twice a day with beefsteak—changed, occasionally, for rabbit, rook, or pigeon; and, if the birds are very young, the food must be cut up small; but it is improper to take them from the nest until the feathers have shown themselves thoroughly through the white down. A lure is then used. This instrument need be nothing more than a forked and somewhat heavy piece of wood (sometimes covered with leather), to which is fastened a strap and a couple of pigeons' wings. To this meat is tied; and the young hawks are encouraged to fly down from their platform, at the stated feeding times, to take their meals from it, the falconer either loudly whistling or shouting to them the while. Presently, and as they become acquainted with the lures, they are permitted to fly at large for a fortnight or three weeks; and, if the feeding-times be kept, the lures well furnished with food, and the shout or whistle employed, the hawks will certainly return when they are due; unless, indeed, they have been injured or destroyed when from home, by accident or malice. This flying at liberty is termed "flying at hack." When the young hawks show any disposition to prey for themselves (though the heavy bells are intended slightly to delay this), they are taken up from "hack," either with a small net, or with the hand. They are then taught to wear the hood, and are carried on the fist. In a few days they are sufficiently tame to be trusted at large, and may be flown at young grouse or pigeons, the heavy bells having been changed for the lightest procurable. At this period great pains are taken by the falconer to prevent his bird "carrying" her game; for it is obvious that, were the hawk to move when he approached her, he would be subject constantly to the greatest trouble and disappointment. The tales told in books about hawks bringing quarry to their master are absurd; the falconer must go to his hawk. Such is a sketch of the training in modern times of the eyas or young bird. Wild-caught hawks, however, called "haggards," are occasionally used. These, though excellent for herons and rooks, are not good for game-hawking, as it is difficult to make them "wait on" about the falconer, and all game must be flown from the air, and not from the hood; i.e., by a hawk from her pitch, and not from the fist of her master. Haggards, of course, are never flown at "hack." The tiercel, or male peregrine, is excellent for partridges and pigeons; but the female bird only can have a chance with herons, and is to be preferred also for grouse and rooks.

We have in this country several trained goshawks, which are flown at rabbits; also sometimes at hares and pheasants. The merlin, too, is occasionally trained: the present writer flew these beautiful little birds at larks for years; but gave them up in 1857, and confined himself entirely to peregrines and goshawks. The sparrow-hawk, the wildest of hawks, is sometimes used for small birds. The hobby is hardly to be procured. The Iceland and Greenland falcons are prized, but are rarely met with.

These large birds are called gerfalcons; and, when very white, and good in the field, fetched extravagant prices in the old times. They may now sometimes be procured untrained for £5 or £6 each; but the peregrine is large enough for the game of this country.

{496}

It may be interesting to know, in something like detail, what a flight at game, rooks, pigeons, or magpies is like how it is conducted, and to what extent the sagacity of hawks may be developed. To this end, we will give a sketch or two of what is being done now, and what will be done in the game season.

At this season of the year, and in this country, falconers are obliged to be content with rook, pigeon, or magpie flying. Such quarry is flown "out of the hood," and not from the air; i.e. the hawk, instead of "waiting on" over the falconer in expectation of quarry being sprung, is unhooded as it rises, and is cast off from the fist. At least the only exception to this is when pigeons are thrown from the hand in order to teach a hawk to "wait on."

It will be understood that, in the following description, the peregrine is supposed to be used, for a long-winged hawk is necessary for the flights about to be described, and the merlin is too small to be depended upon for anything larger than a black-bird, or a young partridge; though the best females are good for pigeons.

Let us go out to-day, then, and try to kill a rook or two on the neighboring common. The hawks are in good condition; not indeed as fat as though they were put up to moult, but with plenty of flesh and muscle, and wind kept good by almost daily exercise. We have a haggard tiercel and a haggard falcon; also two eyas falcons; all are up to their work and have been well entered to rooks. We shall not trouble ourselves to take out the cadge to-day, for our party is quite strong enough to carry the hawks on the fist. Only two of us are mounted, a lady and a gentleman; the rest will run. The lady would carry the little tiercel, but she is afraid lest she should make a blunder in unhooding him, as her mare is rather fresh this morning; but her companion, who has flown many a hawk, willingly takes charge of him.

We are well on the common now; and lo! a black mass on the ground there, with a few black spots floating over. Hark to the distant "caw!" A clerical meeting. "Let us give them a bishop, then," says the bearer of the tiercel, which is called by that name. The wind is from them to us. The horseman and his companion canter onward; we follow at a slow run. The horses approach the flock; the black mass becomes disturbed and rises; the "bishop" is thrown off with a shout of "Hoo, ha! ha!" and rushes amongst his clergy with even more than episcopal energy. There is full enough wind; the rooks are soon into it, and ringing up in a compact body with a pace which, for them, is very good. His lordship, too, is mounting: he rose in a straight line the moment he left the fist, but he is now making a large circle to get above his quarry. He has reached them, but he does not grapple with the first bird he comes near, though he seems exceedingly close to it. But there is something so thoroughly systematic in his movements, something which so suggests a long and deadly experience, that even the uninitiated of the party feel certain that he is doing the right thing. He is nearly above them. A rook has left the flock—the very worst thing he could possibly do for his own sake: he has saved the bishop the trouble of selection. He makes for some trees in the distance, but it is inconceivable that he can reach them. There! and there! Now again! He is clutched at the third stoop, and both birds, in a deadly embrace, flap and twist to the ground together. The rest are high in the air, and a long way off.

It must not be considered that this tiercel did not dash at once into the whole flock because he was afraid to do so. He had no fear whatever; but nature or experience taught him that a stoop from above was worth half-a-dozen attempts to fly level and grapple.

"It's poor work after all," said one of the party, who had run for it notwithstanding; "these brutes can't fly, {497} and it's almost an insult to a first-rate hawk to unhood him at such quarry. Even the hawks don't fly with the same dash that one sees when a strong pigeon is on the wing. Beside, it's spoiling the eyases for game-hawking; when they ought to be 'waiting on' over grouse, they will be starting after the first rook that passes."

"My good fellow," answered another, "you must hawk rooks now, or be content with pigeons, unless you can find magpies (we will try that presently): there are no herons anywhere near (and I don't know that the eyases would fly them if there were); and, as for flying a house-pigeon, which has been brought to the field in a basket, though I grant the goodness of the flight, I don't see the sport. If we could find wood-pigeons far enough from trees, I should like that. As for the game next season, there are not many rooks on the moors; and, as these falcons would fly rooks even if they had not seen them for a year, I don't think we are losing much by what we are doing. It is exercise at any rate; and, beside, I assure you that I have seen an old cock-rook, in a wind like this, live for a mile, before one of the best falcons in the world, where there was not a single tree to shelter him."

We are compelled to go some distance before we can see a black feather; for rooks, once frightened, are very careful; or rather, we should have been so compelled had it not happened that an old carrion-crow, perhaps led near the spot by curiosity, is seen passing at the distance of about two hundred yards. The passage-falcon is instantly unhooded and cast off; and, as we are now in the neighborhood of a few scattered trees, it takes ten minutes to kill him; and a short time, too, for he has "treed" himself some eight or ten times in spite of our efforts to make him take the open.

Our time is short to-day; but let us get a magpie, if possible, before we go home. Our fair companion is fully as anxious for the sport as we are. Only a mile off there is a nice country; large grass fields, small fences, with a bush here and there. We have reached it. A magpie has flown from the top of that single tree in the hedgerow, and is skimming down the field. Off with the young falcons: wait till the first sees him; now unhood the second. Ah! he sees them, and flies along the side of the hedge. Let us ride and run! Get him out of cover as fast as possible, while the hawks "wait on" above. Pray, sir, jump the fence a little lower down, and help to get him out from the other side. Hoo-ha-ha! there he goes. Well stooped, "Vengeance," and nearly clutched, "Guinevere," but he has reached the tree in the hedgerow, and is moving his long tail about in the most absurd manner. A good smack of the whip, and he is off again. And so we go on for a quarter of an hour, riding, running, shouting, till "Guinevere" clutches him just as he is about to enter a clump of trees. Who-whoop!

Such is rook-hawking and magpie-hawking. In an open plain, and on a tolerably still day, a great number of rooks may be killed with good hawks. Either eyas or passage-falcons may be used. Last year, one hundred and fifty-two rooks and two carrion-crows were killed by some officers, on the finest place for rook-flying in England, with some passage-hawks and two eyases. In 1863, ninety rooks were killed, near the same spot, with eyases. Tiercels are better than falcons for magpie-hawking, as they are unquestionably quicker amongst hedgerows, and can turn in a smaller compass. One tiercel has been known to kill eight magpies in a day; but this is extraordinary work.

To prevent confusion, it may be as well to mention here that the term "haggard" and "passage-hawk" both mean a wild-caught hawk; while "eyas" signifies a bird taken from the nest or eyrie.

Heron-hawking requires an open country, with a heronry in the neighborhood. The quarry is flown at generally by passage-hawks; but a few {498} very good eyases have been found equal to the flight.

Game-hawking is conducted in the following manner: Let us suppose, in the first instance, that the falconer is living in the immediate neighborhood of grouse-moors, and that he wishes, on some fine morning at the end of October or the beginning of November, to show his friend a flight or two at grouse, without going very far for the sport. The old pointer is summoned; "The Princess," an eyas falcon in the second plumage, is hooded; and the walk is commenced.

Now, very early in the season on the moors, and through the whole of September with partridges, it is better to wait for a point before the hawk is cast oft, for this saves time, and you know that you have game under you; but at that period of the season which we have named, grouse rise the moment man or dog is seen, and you would have a bad chance indeed were you to fly your hawk out of the hood (i.e., from the fist) at them. The best way is to keep your dog to heel, not to talk, and, just before you show yourself in some likely place, to throw up the falcon. When she has reached her pitch, which she will soon do, hurry the dog on, run, clap your hands, and get the birds up as soon as may be.

The hill is ascended, "The Princess" is at her pitch—where she would remain, following her master and "Shot" the pointer, for ten minutes if necessary. Some minutes pass: an old cock-grouse, put up by a shepherd-dog, rises a couple of hundred yards off. Hoo-ha-ha-ha! "The Princess" vanishes from her post, more rapidly than the knights in "Ivanhoe" left theirs. She does not droop or fly near the ground (she has had too much experience for that), but almost rises as she shoots off after him. Had he risen under her, she would have cut him over; but this is a different affair. They are soon out of sight down the hill; but a marker has been placed that way. "I think she has killed him, sir," he shouts presently; "but it's a long way. No, she's coming back; she must have put him into cover." Up and down hill, it would take us twenty minutes to get there; and see! she is over our heads, "waiting on" again, and telling us, as well as she can, to spring another. A point! how is that?—only that there are some more which dare not rise because they have seen her. "Hi in, 'Shot!'" Again the falconer's shout startles his friend; again "The Princess" passes through the air like an arrow. "All right this time, sir," cries the marker; "I see her with it under yon wall." She has scarcely begun to eat the head as we reach her. One more flight. She is lifted on the grouse; the leash is passed through the jesses, and then she is hooded. Let us rest for ten minutes. Again, she is "waiting on," again she flies; but this time, though we see the flight for three-quarters of a mile, the birds top a hill, and we are an hour in finding them. The grouse, however, is fit for cooking even then; only the head, neck, and some of the back have vanished: it is plucked nearly as well as though it had been in the hands of a cook. That will do, and very good sport, too, considering we had but one hawk. Let us now feed her up on beef, and hood her.

In the very early part of the season, with grouse, and commonly with partridges, it is usual (as we have hinted) to wait for a point; the hawk is then cast off, and the birds are sprung when she has reached her pitch.

Goshawks, which may be occasionally procured from the Regent's Park Zoological Gardens, or directly from Sweden or Germany, are considered by some falconers to be difficult birds to manage. That they are sulkily disposed is certain; but in hands accustomed to them, and when they are constantly at work, they are exceedingly trustworthy, even affectionate, and will take as many as eight or ten rabbits in a day. They are short-winged hawks, and have no chance with anything faster than a rising pheasant; they are {499} excellent for rabbits, and a few large ones will sometimes hold a hare. In modern practice they are never hooded, except in travelling, and are always flown from the fist, or from some tree in which they may have perched after an unsuccessful flight.

There are probably, in these islands, about fifteen practical falconers, three or four of whom are professional; of the latter, John Pells and the Barrs are well worthy of mention.

John Pells was born at Lowestoft in 1815, and went, when he was thirteen, with his father to Valkneswaard to take passage-hawks for the Didlington Subscription Club; so that he was very soon in harness. The elder Pells commenced his career at the age of eleven, and was in every respect a perfect falconer; he was presented by Napoleon I. with a falconer's bag, which is now in possession of the Duke of Leeds. He died in 1838. The present John Pells has had all possible advantages in his calling, and has made every use of them. He was falconer to the Duke of Leeds, to Mr. O'Keeffe, to Mr. E. C. Newcome, to the late Duke of St. Albans, and now attends to the hawks which the present duke is bound, either by etiquette or necessity, to maintain. Pells also sells trained hawks, and gives lessons in the art of falconry. He was at one time an exceedingly active man, and spent six months in Iceland, catching Iceland falcons. After enduring a good deal of cold and fatigue, he brought fifteen of these birds to Brandon, in Norfolk, in November, 1845. He is now too stout and too gouty for strong exercise, but his experience is very valuable.

Too much can hardly be said in raise of John and Robert Barr (brothers). Their father, a gamekeeper in Scotland, taught them, in a rough way, the rudiments of falconry, They are now, and have been for a long time, most accomplished falconers, When in the employment of the Indian prince Dhuleep Singh, John Barr was sent to India to learn the Indian system of falconry. There is some notion now of his being placed at the head of a hawking club about to be established in Paris; and English falconry might well be proud of such a representative. Beside the Pells and the Barrs, we have Paul Möllen, Gibbs, and Bots—and one or two more—all good.

In consequence of the great rage for game-preserving which obtains in the present day, it does not seem unlikely that the peregrine falcon may, in time, be as thoroughly exterminated in Scotland and Ireland as the goshawk has already been. At present, however, falconers find no difficulty in procuring these birds, if they are willing to pay for them. In a selfish point of view, therefore, they have nothing of which to complain. But it might become a question, at least of conscience, whether mankind have the right, though they possibly may have the power, of blotting out from the face of creation—so long as there is no danger to human life and limb—any conspicuous type of strength or of beauty. The kingfisher is sought to be exterminated on our rivers, the eagle and the falcon on our hills; and it is brought forward in justification of this slaughter—at least it is brought forward in effect—that the sportsman's bag and the angler's creel are of much more importance than the wonderful works of God. To all that is selfish in these strict preservers of fish and of game it may be opposed that part of the food of the kingfisher consists in minnows; that the fry of trout and salmon, when not confined in breeding-boxes, are rarely procured by this bird, which constantly feeds upon the larvae of the Dytiscce and Libelluae, the real foes of the fry; that the peregrine falcon, though she undoubtedly kills very many healthy grouse, purges the moors of diseased ones, and drives away the egg-stealing birds. And to all that is generous in these martinets of preservation it may be submitted that true sport has other elements than those of acquisition and slaughter; that the pleasure of a ramble on the hills {500} or by the river is sadly dashed if you have struck out some of the beauty of the landscape; and that the incident of a flight made by a wild hawk, or the flash of a kingfisher near the angler's rod, is as lively and as well worth relating as the fall of an extra grouse to the gun, or the addition of another trout to the basket.

From The Lamp.

ALL-HALLOW EVE; OR, THE TEST OF FUTURITY.

BY ROBERT CURTIS.

CHAPTER I.

I could have wished that the incidents which I am about to describe in the following tale had taken place in some locality with a less Celtic, and to English tongues a more pronounceable, name than Boher-na-Milthiogue. I had at first commenced the tale with the word itself, thus: "Boher-na-Milthiogue, though in a wild and remote part of Ireland," etc. But I was afraid that, should an English reader take up and open the book, he would at the very first word slap it together again between the palms of his hands, saying, "Oh, that is quite enough for me!" Now, as my English readers have done me vastly good service on former occasions, I should be sorry to frighten them at the outset of this new tale; and I have therefore endeavored to lead them quietly into it. With my Irish friends no such circumlocution would have been necessary. Perhaps, if I dissever and explain the word, it may enable even my English readers in some degree to approach a successful attempt at its pronunciation. I am aware, however, of the difficulty they experience in this respect, and that their attempts at some of our easiest names of Irish places are really laughable—laughable, at least, to our Celtic familiarity with the correct sound.

Boher is the Irish for "bridge," and milthiogue for a "midge;" Boher-na-Milthiogue, "the midge's bridge."

There now, if my English friends cannot yet pronounce the word properly, which I still doubt, they can at least understand what it means. It were idle, I fear to hope, that they can see any beauty in it; and yet that it is beautiful there can be no Celtic doubt whatever.

Perhaps it might have been well to have written thus far in the shape of a preface; but as nobody nowadays reads prefaces, the matter would have been as bad as ever. I shall therefore continue now as I had intended to have commenced at first.

Boher-na-Milthiogue, though in a wild and remote part of Ireland, is not without a certain degree of natural and romantic beauty, suiting well the features of the scene in which it lies.

Towering above a fertile and well-cultivated plain frown and smile the brother and sister mountains of Slieve-dhu and Slieve-bawn, the solid masonry of whose massive and perpendicular precipices was built by no human architect. The ponderous and scowling rocks of Slieve-dhu, the brother, are dark and indistinct; while, separated from it by a narrow and abrupt ravine, those of Slieve-bawn, the sister, are of a whitish spotted gray, contrasting cheerfully with those of her gloomy brother.

{501}

There is generally a story in Ireland about mountains or rivers or old ruins which present any peculiarity of shape or feature. Now it is an undoubted fact, which any tourist can satisfy himself of, that although from sixty to a hundred yards asunder, there are huge bumps upon the side of Slieve-bawn, corresponding to which in every respect as to size and shape are cavities precisely opposite them in the side of Slieve-dhu. The story in this case is, that although formerly the mountains were, like a loving brother and sister, clasped in each other's arms, they quarrelled one dark night (I believe about the cause of thunder), when Slieve-dhu in a passion struck his sister a blow in the face, and staggered her back to where she now stands, too far for the possibility of reconciliation; and that she, knowing the superiority of her personal appearance, stands her ground, as a proud contrast to her savage and unfeeling relative.

Deep straight gullies, worn by the winter floods, mark the sides of both mountains into compartments, the proportion and regularity of which might almost be a matter of surprise, looking like huge stripes down the white dress of Slieve-bawn, while down that of Slieve-dhu they might be compared to black and purple plaid.

"Far to the north," in the bosom of the minor hills, lies a glittering lake—glittering when the sun shines; dark, sombre, and almost imperceptible when the clouds prevail.

The origin of the beautiful name in which the spot itself rejoices I believe to be this; but why do I say "believe?" It is a self-evident and well-known fact.

Along the base of Slieve-bawn there runs a narrow roadeen, turning almost at right angles through the ravine already mentioned, and leading to the flat and populous portion of the country on the other side of the mountains, and cutting the journey, for any person requiring to go there, into the sixteenth of the distance by the main road. In this instance the proverb would not be fulfilled, that "the longest way round was the shortest way home." Across one of the winter-torrent beds which runs down the mountain side, almost at the entrance of the ravine, is a rough-built rustic bridge, at a considerable elevation from the road below. To those approaching it from the lower level, it forms a conspicuous and exceedingly picturesque object, looking not unlike a sort of castellated defence to the mouth of the narrow pass between the mountains.

This bridge, toward sunset upon a summer's evening, presents a very curious and (except in that spot) an unusual sight. Whether it arises from any peculiarity of the herbage in the vicinity, or the fissures in the mountains, or the crevices in the bridge itself, as calculated to engender them, it would be hard to say; but it would be impossible for any arithmetician to compute at the roughest guess the millions, the billions of small midges which dance in the sunbeams immediately above and around the bridge, but in no other spot for miles within view. The singularity of their movements, and the peculiarity of their distribution in the air, cannot fail to attract the observation of the most careless beholder. In separate and distinct batches of some hundreds of millions each, they rise in almost solid masses until they are lost sight of, as they attain the level of the heathered brow of the mountain behind them, becoming visible again as they descend into the bright sunshine that lies upon the white rocks of Slieve-bawn. In no instance can you perceive individual or scattered midges; each batch is connected and distinct in itself, sometimes oval, sometimes almost square, but most frequently in a perfectly round ball. No two of these batches rise or fall at the same moment. I was fortunate enough to see them myself upon more than one occasion in high perfection. They reminded me of large balls thrown up and caught successively by some distinguished {502} acrobat. During the performance, a tiny little sharp whir of music fills the atmosphere, which would almost set you to sleep as you sit on the battlement of the bridge watching and wondering.

By what law of creation, or what instinct of nature, or, if by neither, by what union of sympathy the movements of these milthiogues are governed—for I am certain there are millions of them at the same work in the same spot this fine summer's evening—would be a curious and proper study for an entomologist; but I have no time here to do more than describe the facts, were I even competent to enter into the inquiry. Fancy say fifty millions of midges in a round ball, so arranged that, under no suddenness or intricacy of movement, any one touches another. There is no saying amongst them, "Keep out of my way, and don't be pushin' me," as Larry Doolan says.

So far, the thing in itself appears miraculous; but when we come to consider that their motions, upward to a certain point, and downward to another, are simultaneous, that the slightest turn of their wings is collectively instantaneous, rendering them at one moment like a black target, and another turn rendering them almost invisible, all their movements being as if guided by a single will—we are not only lost in wonder, but we are perfectly unable to account for or comprehend it. I have often been surprised, and so, no doubt, may many of my readers have been, at the regularity of the evolutions of a flock of stares in the air, where every twist and turn of a few thousand pairs of wings seemed as if moved by some connecting wire; but even this fact, surprising as it is, sinks into insignificance when compared with the movements of these milthiogues.

But putting all these inquiries and considerations aside, the simple facts recorded have been the origin of the name with which this tale commences.

CHAPTER II.

Winifred Cavana was an only daughter, indeed an only child. Her father, old Ned Cavana of Rathcash, had been always a thrifty and industrious man. During the many years he had been able to attend to business—and he was an experienced farmer—he had realized a sum of money, which, in his rank of life and by his less prosperous neighbors, would be called "unbounded wealth," but which, divested of that envious exaggeration, was really a comfortable independence for his declining years, and would one of those days be a handsome inheritance for his handsome daughter. Not that Ned Cavana intended to huxter the whole of it up, so that she should not enjoy any of it until its possession might serve to lighten her grief for his death—no; should Winny marry some "likely boy," of whom her father could in every respect approve, she should have six hundred pounds, R.M.D.; and at his death by which time Ned hoped some of his grandchildren would make the residue more necessary—she should have all that he was able to demise, which was no paltry matter. In the meantime they would live happily and comfortable, not niggardly.

With this view—a distant one, he still hoped—before him, and knowing that he had already sown a good crop, and reaped a sufficient harvest to live liberally, die peacefully, and be berrid dacently, he had set a great portion of his land upon a lease during his own life, at the termination of which it was to revert to his son-in-law, of whose existence, long before that time, he could have no doubt, and for whose name a blank had been left in his will, to be filled up in due time before he died, or, failing that event—not his death, but a son-in-law—it was left solely to his daughter Winifred.

Winny Cavana was, beyond doubt or question, a very handsome girl—and she knew it. She knew, too, {503} that she was "a catch;" the only one in that side of the country; and no person wondered at the many admirers she could boast of, though it was a thing she was never known to do; nor did she wonder at it herself. Without her six hundred pounds, Winny could have had scores of "bachelors;" and it was not very surprising if she was hard to be pleased. Indeed, had Winny Cavana been penniless, it is possible she would have had a greater number of open admirers, for her reputed wealth kept many a faint heart at a distance. It was not to be wondered at either, if a wealthy country beauty had the name of a coquette, whether she deserved it or not; nor was it to be expected that she could give unmixed satisfaction to each of her admirers; and we all know what censoriousness unsuccessful admiration is likely to cause in a disappointed heart.

Amongst all those who were said to have entered for the prize of Winny's heart, Thomas Murdock was the favorite—not with herself, but the neighbors. At all events he was the "likely boy" whom Winny's father had in his eye as a husband for his daughter; and in writing his will, he had lifted his pen from the paper at the blank already mentioned, and written the name Thomas Murdock in the air, so that, in case matters turned out as he wished and anticipated, it would fit in to a nicety.

The townlands of Rathcash and Rathcashmore, upon which the Cavanas and Murdocks lived, was rather a thickly populated district, and they had some well-to-do neighbors, beside many who were not quite so well-to-do, but were yet decent and respectable. There were the Boyds, the Beattys, and the Brennans, with the Cahils, the Cartys, and the Clearys beyond them; the Doyles, the Dempseys, and the Dolans not far off; with the Mulveys, the Mooneys, and the Morans quite close. The people seemed to live in alphabetical batches in that district, as if for the convenience of the county cess-collector and his book. Many others lived still further off, but not so far (in Ireland) as not to be called neighbors.

Kate Mulvey, one of the nearest neighbors, was a great friend and companion of Winny's. If Kate had six hundred pounds she could easily have rivalled Winny's good looks, but she had not six hundred pence; and notwithstanding her magnificent eyes, her white teeth, and her glossy brown hair, she could not look within miles as high into the clouds as Winny could. Still Kate had her admirers, some of whom even Winny's fondest glance, with all her money, could not betray into treachery. But it so happened that the person at whom she had thrown her cap had not (as yet, at least) picked it up.

CHAPTER III.

It was toward the end of October, 1826. There had been an early spring, and the crops had been got in favorably, and in good time. There had been "a wet and a windy May;" a warm, bright summer had succeeded it; and the harvest had been now all gathered in, except the potatoes, which were in rapid progress of being dug and pitted. It was a great day for Ireland, let the advocates for "breadstuffs" say what they will, before the blight and yellow meal had either of them become familiar with the poor. There were the Cork reds and the cups, the benefits and the Brown's fancies, for half nothing in every direction, beside many other sorts of potatoes, bulging up the surface of the ridges—there were no drills in those days; mehils in almost every field, with their coats off at the digging-in.

"Bill, don't lane on that boy on the ridge wid you; he's not much more nor a gossoon; give him a start of you."

"Gossoon aniow; be gorra, he's as smart a chap on the face of a ridge as the best of us, Tom."

{504}

"Ay; but don't take it out of him too soon, Bill."

"Work away, boys," said the gossoon in question; "I'll engage I'll shoulder my loy at the end of the ridge as soon as some of ye that's spaking."

"It was wan word for the gossoon, as he calls him, an' two for himself, Bill," chimed in the man on the next ridge. "Don't hurry Tom Nolan; his feet's sore afther all he danced with Nelly Gaffeny last night."

Here there was a loud and general laugh at poor Tom Nolan's expense, and the pickers—women and girls, with handkerchiefs tied over their heads looked up with one accord, annoyed that they were too far off to hear the joke. It was well for one of them that they had not heard it, for Nelly Gaffeny was amongst them.

"It's many a day, Pat, since you seen the likes of them turned out of a ridge."

"They bate the world."

"They bang Banagher; and Banagher, they say—"

"Whist, Larry; don't be dhrawing that chap down at all."

"I seen but wan betther the year," said Tim Meaney.

"I say you didn't, nor the sorra take the betther, nor so good."

"Arra, didn't I? I say I did though."

"Where, avic ma cree?"

"Beyant at Tony Kilroy's."

"Ay, ay; Tony always had a pet acre on the side of the hill toward the sun. He has the best bit of land in the parish."

"You may say that, Micky, with your own purty mouth. I led his mehil, come this hollintide will be three years; an' there wasn't a man of forty of us but turned out eight stone of cup off every ten yards a a' four-split ridge. Devil a the like of them I ever seen afore or since."

"Lumpers you mane, Andy; wasn't I there?"

"Is it you, Darby? no, nor the sorra take the foot; we all know where you were that same year."

"Down in the lower part of Cavan, Phil. In throth, it wasn't cup potatoes was throublin' him that time; but cups and saucers. He dhrank a power of tay that harvest, boys."

Here there was another loud laugh, and the women with the handkerchiefs upon their heads looked up again.

"Well, I brought her home dacent, boys; an' what can ye say to her?"

"Be gor, nothing, Darby avic, but that she's an iligant purty crathur, and a credit to them that owns her, an' them that reared her."

"The sorra word of lie in that," echoed every man in the mehil.

Thus the merry chat and laugh went on in every potato-field. The women, finding that they had too much to do to enable them to keep close to the men, and that they were losing the fun, of course got up a chat for themselves, and took good care to have some loud and hearty laughs, which made the men in their turn look up, and lean upon their loys.

Everything about Rathcash and Rathcashmore was prosperous and happy, and the farmers were cheerful and open-hearted.

"That's grand weather, glory be to God, Ned, for the time of year," said Mick Murdock to his neighbor Cavana, who was leaning, with his arms folded, on a field-gate near the mearing of their two farms. The farms lay alongside of each other—one in the town-land of Rathcash, and the other in Rathcashmore.

"Couldn't be bet, Mick. I'm upward of forty years stannin' in this spot, an' I never seen the batin' of it."

"Be gorra, you have a right to be tired, Ned; that's a long stannin'."

"The sorra tired, Mick a wochal. You know very well what I mane, an' you needn't be so sharp. I'd never be tired of the same spot."

"Them's a good score of calves, Ned; God bless you an' them!" said Mick, making up for his sharpness.

"An' you too, Mick. They are a fine lot of calves, an' all reared since Candlemas."

{505}

"There's no denying, Ned, but you med the most of that bit of land of yours."

"'Tis about the same as your own, Mick; an' I think you med as good a fist of yours."

"Well, maybe so, indeed; but I doubt it is going into worse hands than what yours will, Ned."

"Why that, Mick?"

"Ah, that Tom of mine is a wild extravagant hero. He doesn't know much about the value of money, and never paid any attention to farming business, only what he was obliged to pick up from being with me. He thinks he'll be rich enough when I'm in my clay, without much work. An' so he will, Ned, so far as that goes; but it's only of book-larnin' an' horse-racin' an' coorsin' he's thinkin', by way of being a sort of gentleman one of those days; but he'll find to his cost, in the lather end, that there's more wantin' to grow good crops than 'The Farmer's Calendar of Operations.'"

"He's young, Mick, an' no doubt he'll mend. I hope you don't discourage him."

"Not at all, Ned. The book-larnin 's all well enough, as far as it goes, if he'd put the practice along with it, an' be studdy."

"So he will, Mick. His wild-oats will soon be all sown, an' then you'll see what a chap he'll be."

"Faix, I'd rather see him sowing a crop of yallow Aberdeens, Ned, next June; an' maybe it's what it's at the Curragh of Kildare he'll be, as I can hear. My advice to him is to get married to some dacent nice girl, that id take the wildness out of him, and lay himself down to business. You know, Ned, he'll have every penny and stick I have in the world; and the lease of my houlding in Rathcashmore is as good as an estate at the rent I pay. If he'd give up his meandherin', and take a dacent liking to them that's fit for him, I'd set him up all at wanst, an' not be keeping him out of it until I was dead an' berrid."

The above was not a bad feeler, nor was it badly put by old Mick Murdock to his neighbor. "Them that's fit for him" could hardly be mistaken; yet there was a certain degree of disparagement of his own son calculated to conceal his object. It elicited nothing, however, but a long thoughtful silence upon old Ned Cavana's part, which Mick was not slow to interpret, and did not wish to interrupt. At last Ned stood up from the gate, and smoothing down the sleeves of his coat, as if he supposed they had contracted some dust, he observed, "I'm afear'd, Mick, you're puttin' the cart before the horse; come until I show you a few ridges of red apples I'm diggin' out to-day. You'd think I actially got them carted in, an' threune them upon the ridges: the like of them I never seen."

And the two old men walked down the lane together.

But Mick Murdock's feeler was not forgotten by either of them. Mick was as well pleased—perhaps better—that no further discussion took place upon the subject at the time. He knew Ned Cavana was not a man to commit himself to a hasty opinion upon any matter, much less upon one of such importance as was so plainly suggested by his observations.

Ned Cavana, too, brooded over the conversation in silence, determined to throw out a feeler of his own to his daughter.

Ned had himself more than once contemplated the possibility as well as the prudence of a match between Tom Murdock and his daughter. The union, not of themselves alone, but of the two farms, would almost make a gentleman of the person holding them. Both farms were held upon unusually long leases, and at less than one-third of their value. If joined, there could be no doubt but, with the careful and industrious management of an experienced man, they would turn in a clear income of between five and six hundred a year; quite sufficient in that part of the world to entitle {506} a person of even tolerably good education to look up to the grand-jury list and a "justice of the pace."

The only question with Ned Cavana was, Did Tom Murdock possess the attributes required for success in all or any of the above respects? Ned, although he had taken his part with his father, feared not. Ay, there was another question, Was Winny inclined for him? He feared not also.

The other old man had not forgotten the feeler he had thrown out either, nor the thoughtful silence with which it had been received; for Mick Murdock could not believe that a man of Ned Cavana's penetration had misunderstood him. Indeed, he was inclined to think that the same matter might have originated in Ned's own mind, from some words he had once or twice dropped about poor Winny's prospects when he was gone, and the suspense it would be to him if she were not settled in life before that day; "snaffled perhaps by some good-for-nothing, extravagant fortune-hunter, with a handsome face, when she had no one to look after her."

There was but one word in the above which Mick thought could be justly applied to Tom; "extravagant" he undoubtedly was, but he was neither handsome—at least not handsome enough to be called so as a matter of course—nor was he good-for-nothing. He was a well-educated sharp fellow, if he would only lay himself down to business. He was not a fortune-hunter, for he did not require it; but idleness and extravagance might make him one in the end. Yet old Mick was by no means certain that the propriety of a match between these only and rich children had not suggested itself to his neighbor Ned as well as to himself. He hoped that if Tom had a "dacent hankerrin' afther" any one, it was for Winny Cavana; but, like her father, he doubted if the girl herself was inclined for him. He knew that she was proud and self-willed. He was determined, however, to follow the matter up, and throw out another feeler upon the subject to his son.

CHAPTER IV.

It was now the 25th of October, just six days from All-Hallow Eve. Mick would ask a few of the neighbors to burn nuts and eat apples, and then, perhaps, he might find out how the wind blew.

"Tom," said he to his son, "I believe this is a good year for nuts."

"Well, father, I met a couple of chaps ere yesterday with their pockets full of fine brown shellers, coming from Clonard Wood."

"I dare say they are not all gone yet, Tom; an' I wish you would set them to get us a few pockets full, and we would ask a few of the neighbors here to burn them on All-Hallow Eve."

"That's easy done, father; I can get three or four quarts by to-morrow night. Those two very chaps would be glad to earn a few pence for them; they wanted me to buy what they had; and if I knew your intentions at the time, I should have done so; but it's not too late. Who do you intend to ask, father?"

"Why, old Cavana and his daughter, of course, and the Mulveys; in short, you know, all the neighbors. I won't leave any of them out, Tom. The Cavanas, you know, are all as wan as ourselves, livin' at the doore with us; and they're much like us too, Tom, in many respects. Old Ned is rich, an' has but one child—a very fine girl. I'm old, an' as rich as what Ned is, and I have but one child; I'll say though you're to the fore, Tom—a very fine young man."

Old Mick paused. He wanted to see if his son's intelligence was on the alert. It must have been very dull indeed had it failed to perceive what his father was driving at; but he was silent.

"That Winny Cavana is a very fine girl, Tom," he continued; "and I often wonder that a handsome young fellow like you doesn't make more of her. She'll have six hundred pounds fortune, as round as a hoop; beside, whoever gets her will fall in for that farm at her {507} father's death. There's ninety-nine years of it, Tom, just like our own."

"She's a conceited proud piece of goods, father; and I suspect she would rather give her six hundred pounds to some skauhawn than to a man of substance like me."

"Maybe not now. Did you ever thry?"

"No, father, I never did. People don't often hold their face up to the hail."

"Na-bockleish, Tom, she'd do a grate dale for her father, for you know she must owe everything to him; an' if she vexes him he can cut her out of her six hundred pounds, and lave the interest in his farm to any one he likes; and I know what he thinks about you, Tom."

"Ay, and he's so fond of that one that she can twist him round her finger. Wait now, father, until you see if I'm not up to every twist and turn of the pair of them."

"But you never seem to spake to her or mind her at all, Tom; and I know, when I was your age, I always found that the girls liked the man best that looked afther them most. I'm purty sure too, Tom, that there's no one afore you there."

"I'm not so sure of that, father. But I'll tell you what it is: I have not been either blind or idle on what you are talking about; but up to this moment she seems to scorn me, father; there's the truth for you. And as for there being no one before me, all I can say is that she manages, somehow or other, to come out of the chapel-door every Sunday at the same moment with that whelp, Edward Lennon, from the mountain; Emon-a-knock, as they call him, and as I have heard her call him herself. Rathcash chapel is not in his parish at all, and I don't know what brings him there."

"Is it that poor penniless pauper, depending on his day's labor? Ah, Tom, she's too proud for that."

"Yes, that very fellow; and there's no getting a word with her where he is."

"Well, Tom, all I can say is this, an' it's to my own son I'm sayin' it—that if you let that fellow pick up that fine girl with her six hundred pounds and fall into that rich farm, an' you livin' at the doore with her, you're not worth staggering-bob broth, with all your book-larnin' an' good looks, to say nothin' of your manners, Tom avic." And he left him, saying to himself, "He may put that in his pocket to balance his knife."

Thus ended what old Murdock commenced as a feeler, but which became very plain speaking in the end. But the All-Hallow Eve party was to come off all the same.

A word or two now of comparison, or perhaps, more properly speaking, of contrast, between these two aspirants to Winny Cavana's favor, though young Lennon was still more hopeless than the other, from his position.

Thomas Murdock was more conspicuous for the manliness of his person than for the beauties of his mind or the amiability of his disposition. Although manifestly well-looking in a group, take him singly, and he could not be called very handsome. There was a suspicious fidgetiness about his green-spotted eyes, as if he feared you could read his thoughts; and at times, if vexed or opposed, a dark scowl upon his heavy brow indicated that these thoughts were not always amiable. This unpleasing peculiarity of expression marred the good looks which the shape of his face and the fit of his curly black whiskers unquestionably gave him. In form he was fully six feet high, and beautifully made. At nineteen years of age he had mastered not only all the learning which could be attained at a neighboring national school, but had actually mastered the master himself in more ways than one, and was considered by the eighty-four youngsters whom he had outstripped as a prodigy of valor as well as learning. But Tom turned his schooling to a bad account; it was too superficial, and served more to set his head astray than to correct his heart; and there were some respectable {508} persons in the neighborhood who were not free from doubts that he had already become a parish-patriot, and joined the Ribbon Society. He was high and overbearing toward his equals, harsh and unkind to his inferiors, while he was cringing and sycophantic toward his superiors. There was nothing manly or straightforward, nothing ingenuous or affectionate, about him. In fact, if ever a man's temper and disposition justified the opinion that he had "the two ways" in him, they were those of Thomas Murdock. His father was a rich farmer, whose land joined that of old Ned Cavana, of whom he was a contemporary in years, and with whom he had kept pace in industry and wealth.

Thomas Murdock was an only son, as Winny Cavana was an only daughter, and the two old men were of the same mind now as regarded the future lot of their children.

A few words now of Edward Lennon, and we can get on.

He was the eldest of five in the family. They lived upon the mountain-side in the parish of Shanvilla, about two "short miles" from the Cavanas and Murdocks. His father and mother were both alive. They were respectable so far as character and conduct can make people respectable who are unquestionably poor. Their marriage was what has been sarcastically, but perhaps not inaptly, called by an English newspaper a "potato marriage;" that is—but no, it will not bear explanation. The result, however, after many years' struggling, may be stated. The Lennons had lived, and were still living, in a small thatched house upon the side of a mountain, with about four acres of reclaimed ground. It had been reclaimed gradually by the father and his two sons—for Emon had a younger brother—and they paid little or no rent for it. The second son and eldest daughter were now at service, "doin' for theirselves;" and those at home consisted of the father, the mother, the eldest son, and two younger daughters, mere children. For the house and garden they paid a small rent, which "a slip of a pig" was always ready to realize in sufficient time; while a couple of goats, staggering through the furze, yoked together by the necks, gave milk to the family.

Edward, though not so well-looking as to the actual cut of his features, nor so tall by an inch and a half, as our friend Murdock, was far more agreeable to look upon. There was a confident good-nature in his countenance which assured you of its reality, and the honesty of his heart. His figure, from his well-shaped head, which was beautifully set upon his shoulders, to his small, well-turned feet, was faultless. In disposition and character young Lennon was a full distance before the man to whom he was a secret rival, while in talent and learning he had nothing to fear by a comparison. He had commenced his education when a mere gossoon at a poor-school with "his turf an' his read-a-ma-daisy," and as he progressed from A-b-e-l, bel, a man's name; A-b-l-e, ble, Able, powerful, strong, until finally he could spell Antitrinitarian pat, he then cut the concern, and was promoted by his parish-priest—"of whom more anon," as they say—to Rathcash national school, where he soon stood in the class beside Tom Murdock, and ere a week had passed he "took him down a peg." This, added to his supposed presumptuous thoughts in the quarter which Tom had considered almost his exclusive right, sowed the seed of hatred in Murdock's heart against Lennon, which one day might bear a heavy crop.

That young Lennon was devotedly but secretly attached to Winny Cavana there was no doubt whatever in his own mind, and there were few who did not agree with him, although he had "never told his love;" and as we Irish have leave to say, there was still less that his love was more disinterested than that of his richer rival. There was another point upon which there was still less doubt than either, and that was that Winny Cavana's heart secretly leaned to "Emon-a-knock," as {509} young Lennon was familiarly called by all those who knew and loved him. One exception existed to this cordial recognition of Emon's good qualities, and that was, as may be anticipated, by Thomas Murdock, who always called him "that Lennon," and on one occasion, as we have seen, substituted the word "whelp."

Winny, however, kept her secret in this matter to herself. She knew her father would go "tanterin' tearin' mad, if he suspected such a thing." She conscientiously endeavored to hide her preference from young Lennon himself, knowing that it would only get them both into trouble. Beside, he had never (yet) shown a decided preference for her above Kate Mulvey. Whether she succeeded in her endeavors is another question; women seldom fail where they are in earnest.

It is not considered amongst the class of Irish to which our dramatis persona belong as any undue familiarity, upon even a very short acquaintance, for the young persons of both the sexes to call each other by their Christian names. It is the admitted custom of the country, and Winny Cavana, rich and proud as she was, made no exception to the general rule. She even went further, and sometimes called young Lennon by his pet name. As regarded Tom Murdock, although she could have wished it otherwise, she would not make herself particular by acting differently. The first three letters of his name, coupled with the scowl she had more than once detected on his countenance, sounded unpleasantly upon her ear, Mur-dock. She always thought people were going to say murder before the "dock" was out. She never could think well of him; and although she called him Tom, it was more to be in keeping with the habit of the country, and as a refuge from the other name, than from a friendly feeling.

These were the materials upon which the two old men had to work, to bring about a union of their landed interests and their only children.

CHAPTER V.

The invitations for All-Hallow Eve were forthwith issued in person by old Murdock, who went from house to house in his Sunday clothes, and asked all the respectable neighbors in the politest manner. Edward Lennon, although he could scarcely be called a neighbor, and moreover was not considered as "belonging to their set," was nevertheless asked to be of the party. Old Murdock had his reasons for asking him; although, to tell the truth, he and his son had a difference of opinion upon the subject. Tom thought to "put a spoke in his wheel," but was overruled by the old man, who said it would look as if they were afraid to bring him and Winny Cavana together; that it was much better to let the young fellow see at once that he had no chance, which would no doubt be an easy matter on that night: "it was betther to humiliate him at wanst."

Tom was ashamed not to acquiesce, but wished nevertheless that he might have had his own way. Edward Lennon lived too far from the Murdocks for the old man to go there specifically upon the mission of invitation; and the moment this difficulty was hinted by his father, Tom, who was not in the habit of making such offers, was ready at once to "go over to Shanvilla, and save his father the walk: he would deliver the message."

There was an anxiety in Tom's manner which betrayed itself; and old Mick was not the man to miss a thing of the kind.

"No, Tom a wochal" he observed, "I won't put such a thramp upon you. Sure I'll see him a Sunda'; he always comes to our chapel."

"Fitter for him stick to his own," said Tom.

"It answers well this turn, at all events," replied the old man.

Upon the following Sunday he was as good as his word. He watched young Lennon coming out of the chapel, and asked him, with more cordiality than Tom, who happened to be by, approved of.

{510}

Had nothing else been necessary to secure an acceptance, the fact of Tom Murdock being present would have been sufficient. The look which he caught from under the rim of Tom's hat roused Lennon's pride, and he accepted the old man's invitation with unhesitating civility. Lennon on this, as on all Sunday occasions, "was dressed in all his best;" and that look seemed to say, "I wonder where that fellow got them clothes, and if they're paid for:" he understood the look very well. But the clothed were paid for,—perhaps, too, more promptly than Tom's own; and a better fitting suit, from top to toe, was not to be met with in the whole parish. A "Caroline hat," smooth and new, set a wee taste jauntily upon his well-shaped head; a shirt like the drifted snow, loose at the throat, but buttoned down the breast with tiny blue buttons round as sweet-pea seeds; a bright plaid waistcoat, with ditto buttons to match, but a size larger; a pair of "spic-an'-span" knee-breeches of fine kersey-mere, with unexceptionable steel buttons and blue silk-ribbon strings, tied to perfection at the knee; while closely-fitting lamb's-wool long stockings showed off the shape of a pair of legs which, for symmetry, looked as if they had been turned in a lathe. Of his feet I have already spoken; and on this occasion they did not belie what I said.

Old Mick desired Edward Lennon "to bring Phil M'Dermot the smith's son with him. He was a fine young man, a good dancer, and had mended a couple of ploughs for him in first-rate style, an' very raisonable, for the winther plowing."

Tom Murdock did not want for fine clothes, of course. Two or three suits were at his command; and as this was Sunday, he had one of his best on. It was "given up to him" by most of the girls that he was the handsomest and best-dressed man in the parish of Rathcash, and some would have added Shanvilla; yet he now felt, as he stole envious glances at young Lennon, that his case with Winny Cavana might not be altogether a "walk over." All Tom's comparisons and metaphors had reference to horse-racing.

This little incident, however, cut young Lennon out of his usual few words with Winny; for, as a girl with a well-regulated mind, she could not venture to dawdle on the road until old Murdock had done speaking to Emon: she knew that would be remarked. She had never happened to see old Murdock speaking to Emon before, and her secret wonder now was— "Could it be possible that he was asking Edward Lennon for All-Hallow Eve?"

Quite possible, Winny; but you scarcely have time to find out before you meet him there, for another Sunday will not intervene before the party.

CHAPTER VI.

The last day of October came round apace, and about six o'clock in the evening the company began to arrive at old Mick Murdock's. Winny Cavana and her father took their time. They were near enough to make their entree at any moment; and Winny had some idea, like her betters, that it was not genteel to be the first. She now delayed, however, to the other extreme, and kept her father waiting, under the pretence that she was finishing her toilet, until, on their arrival, they found all the guests assembled. Winny flaunted in, leaning upon her father's arm, "the admired of all admirers." Not being very learned in the mysteries of the toilet, I shall not attempt to describe the dresses of the girls upon this occasion, nor the elaborate manner in which their heads were set out, oiled, and bedizened to an amazing extent, while the roses above their left ears seemed to have been all culled from the same tree.

{511}

Altogether there were about sixteen young persons, pretty equally divided as to boys and girls, beside some—and some only—of their fathers and mothers. Soon after the arrival of Ned Cavana and his daughter, who were the guests of the evening, supper was announced, and there was a general move into the "large parlor," where a long table was set out with a snow-white cloth, where plates (if not covers) were laid for at least twenty-four. In the middle of the table stood a smoking dish of calcannon, which appeared to defy them, and as many more; while at either end was a raking pot of tea, surrounded with cups and saucers innumerable, with pyramids of cut bread-and-butter nearly an inch thick.

The company having taken their seats, it was announced by the host that there were "two goold weddin'-rings in the calcannon;" but whereabouts, of course, no one could tell. He had borrowed them from two of the married women present, and was bound to restore them; so he begged of his young friends, for his sake as well as their own, to be careful not to swallow them. It was too well known what was to be the lot of the happy finders before that day twelvemonth for him to say anything upon that part of the subject. He would request of Mrs. Moran, who had seen more All-Hallow Eves than any woman there present—he meant no offence—to help the calcannon.

After this little introduction, Mrs. Moran, who by previous arrangement was sitting opposite the savory volcano, distributed it with unquestionable impartiality. It was a well-known rule on all such occasions that no one commenced until all were helped, when a signal was given, and a simultaneous plunge of spoons took place.

Another rule was that all the married persons should content themselves with tea and bread-and-butter, in order that none of them might possibly rob the youngsters of their chance of the ring. Upon this occasion, however, this restriction had been neatly obviated by Mrs. Moran's experience in such matters; and there was a knock-oge of the same delicious food without any ring, which she called "the married dish." The tea was handed up and down from each end of the table until it met in the middle, and for some time there was a silent onslaught on the calcannon, washed down now and then by a copious draught of tea.

"I have it! I have it!" shouted Phil M'Dermott, taking it from between his teeth and holding it up, while his cheeks deepened three shades nearer to the color of the rose in Kate Mulvey's hair, nearly opposite.

"A lucky man," observed Mrs. Moran, methodically, who seemed to be mistress of the mysteries. "Now for the lucky girl; and lucky everybody will say she must be."

The words were scarcely finished when Kate Mulvey coughed as if she were choking; but pulling the other ring from her mouth, she soon recovered herself, declaring that she had nearly swallowed it.

Matters, as Mrs. Moran thought, had so far gone quite right, and a hearty quizzing the young couple got; but, to tell the truth, one of them did not seem to be particularly satisfied with the result. The attack upon the calcannon from this point waxed very weak, for the charm was broken, and the tea and bread-and-butter came into play. Apples and nuts were now laid down in abundance, and the young girls might be seen picking a couple of pairs of nice nuts out of those on the plate, as nearly as fancy might suggest, to match the figures of those whom they were intended to represent upon the bar of the grate. Almost as if by magic a regiment of nuts in pairs were seen smoking, and some of them stirring and purring on the flat bar at the bottom of the grate, which had been swept, and the fire brightened up, for the purpose. Of course Mrs. Moran insisted upon openly putting down Phil M'Dermott and Kate Mulvey of the rings; for in general there is a secrecy observed as to who the nuts are, in order to save {512} the constant girl from a laugh at the fickleness of her bachelor, should he go off in a shot from her side, and vice versâ. And here the mistress of the mysteries was not at fault. Kate Mulvey, without either smoking or getting red at one end (which was a good sign), went off like the report of a pistol, and was actually heard striking against the door as if to get out. There was a general laugh at Mrs. Moran's expense, who was told that it was a strong proof in favor of putting the pairs down secretly.

But Mrs. Moran was too experienced a mistress of her position to be taken aback, and quietly said, "Not at all, my dears. I have three times to burn them, if he does not follow her; but he has three minutes to do so."

As she spoke there was another shot. Phil M'Dermott could not stand the heat by himself, and was off to the door after Kate Mulvey.

This was a crowning triumph to Mrs. Moran, who quietly put back the second pair of nuts which she had just selected for another test of the same couple, and remarked that "it was all right now."

The couples, generally speaking, seemed to answer the expectations of their respective match-makers better than perhaps the results in real life might subsequently justify. It is not to be supposed that on this occasion Tom Murdock and Winny Cavana did not find a place upon the bar of the grate. But as Winny had given no encouragement to any one to put her down with him, and as the mistress of the mysteries alone could claim a right to do so openly, as in the case of the rings, their place, with the result, could be known only to those who put them down, and perhaps a confidant.

There were a few pops occasionally, calling forth exclamations of "The good-for-nothing fellow!" or "The fickle lass!" while some burned into bright balls—the admiration of all the true and constant lovers present.

The next portion of the mysteries were three plates, placed in a row upon the table; one contained earth, another water, and the third a gold ring. This was, by some, considered rather a nervous test of futurity, and some objections were whispered by the timid amongst them. The fearless and enthusiastic, however, clamored that nothing should be left out, and a handkerchief to blind the adventurers was produced. The mystery was this: a young person was taken outside the door, and there blindfolded; he, or she, was then led in again, and placed opposite to the plates, sufficiently near to touch them; when told that "all was right," he, with his fore-finger pointed, placed it upon one of the plates. That with the earth symbolled forth sudden, or perhaps violent, death; that with the water, emigration or ship-wreck; while that with the ring, of course a wedding and domestic happiness.

Young people were not generally averse to subject themselves to this ordeal, as in nine cases out of ten they managed either to be previously acquainted with the position of the plates, or, having been blindfolded by their own bachelor, to have a peep-hole down by the corner of their nose, which enabled them to secure the most gratifying result of the three.

With this usual course before his mind, Tom Murdock, as junior host, presented himself for the test, hoping that Winny Cavana, whom he had asked to do so, would blindfold him. But in this instance he had presumed too far; and while she hesitated to comply, the mistress of the mysteries came to her relief.

"No, no, Tom," she said, folding the handkerchief; "that is my business, and I'll transfer it to no one; come outside with me."

Tom was ashamed to draw back, and retired with Mrs. Moran to the hall. He soon returned, led in by her, with a handkerchief tied tightly over his eyes; there was no peep-hole by the side of his nose, let him hold back {513} his head as he might, Mrs. Moran took care of that. Having been placed near the table, he was told that he was exactly opposite the plates. He pointed out his fore-finger, and threw back his head as much as possible, as if considering, but in fact to try if he could get a peep at the plates; but it was no use. Mrs. Moran had rendered his temporary blindness cruelly secure. At length his hand descended, and he placed his finger into the middle of the earth.

"Pshaw," said he, pulling the handkerchief off his eyes, "it is all humbug! Let Lennon try it."

"Certainly, certainly," ran from one to the other. It might have been remarked, however, if any one had been observing, that Winny Cavana had not spoken.

Young Lennon then retired to the hall with Mrs. Moran, and was soon led in tightly blindfolded, for the young man was no more to her than the other; beside, she was strictly honorable. The plates had been re-arranged by Tom Murdock himself, which most people remarked, as it was some time before he was satisfied with their position. Lennon was then placed, as Tom had been, and told that "all was right." There was some nervousness in more hearts than one as he pointed his finger and brought down his hand. He also placed his finger in the centre of the plate with the earth, and pulled the handkerchief from his eyes.

"Now, you see," said Tom, "others can fail as well as me;" and he seemed greatly pleased that young Lennon had been as unsuccessful as himself.

A murmur of dissatisfaction now ran through the girls. The two favorites had been unfortunate in their attempts at divination, and there was one young girl there who, when she saw Emon-a-knock's finger fall on the plate with the earth, felt as if a weight had been tied round her heart. It was unanimously agreed by the elderly women present, Mrs. Moran amongst the number, that these tests had turned out directly contrary to what the circumstances of the locality, and the characters of the individuals, would indicate as probable, and the whole process was ridiculed as false and unprophetic. "Time will tell, jewel," said one old croaking crone.

A loud burst of laughter from the kitchen at this moment told that the servant-boys and girls, who had also been invited, were not idle. The matches having been all either clenched or broken off in the parlor, and the test of the plates, as if by mutual consent, having been declared unsatisfactory, old Murdock thought it a good opportunity to move an adjournment of the whole party, to see the fun in the kitchen, which was seconded by Mrs. Moran, and carried nem. con.

[TO BE CONTINUED. Page 657]

{514}

Translated from Etudes Religieusea, Historiques, et Littéraires, par des Pères de la Compagnie de Jesus.

A CITY OF WOMEN.

THE ANCIENT BEGUINAGE OF GHENT.

BY THE REV. A. NAMPON, S.J.

According to some authors, St. Begghe, daughter of Pepin, Duke of Brabant, and sister of St. Gertrude, must have given her name to those pious assemblages of Christian virgins and widows called from very remote times beguinages.

These holy women, united under the protection and the rule of St. Begghe, had nothing in common except the name with those Beguines whose errors were condemned by the council of Vienne.

Beguinages exist at Ghent, Antwerp, Mechlin, Alost, Louvain, Bruges, etc., etc. The rule is not in all places the same, but everywhere these pious establishments are places of refuge open to devout women, wherein they may sanctify themselves by prayer, labor, and retirement from the distractions of the world.

Let us transport ourselves to the capital of Flanders. From the centre of that tumultuous city, in which industry, commerce, activity, and pleasure reign supreme, are separated two other smaller towns of venerable aspect—closed to the world, destitute of shops, coaches, public criers, and all modern inventions. These two towns are the Great and the Little Beguinage.

These places are delightful oases, wherein you breathe a pure air, where, in the noonday of the nineteenth century, you find the simplicity of the faith and customs of antiquity. They are surrounded, as they were five or six centuries ago, by a ditch and a wall; you enter them by a single gate carefully closed at night, and not less carefully watched all day. This gate, surmounted by the cross, was formerly protected by a drawbridge.

As soon as you have passed through this gateway, you are forcibly struck with the calm and pious atmosphere of this peaceful city, and with the grave and edifying looks of its female inhabitants. I say female inhabitants, for no man has ever dwelt in this enclosure. The priests who serve the beguinages only enter to fulfil their sacred offices, and have no place therein save the pulpit, the altar, and the confessional. The dress of the inmates is not elegant, but it is in strict conformity with the model traced in their thirteenth century rule.

All the streets, which are at right angles, are named after saints. The houses are also distinguished by the names, and frequently by the statue, of some saint, under whose protection they are placed; thus you may read, gate of St. Martha, gate of St. Mary-Magdalen, etc., etc.

The houses, which are whitewashed annually, display in their furniture, as in their construction, no other luxury but a charming cleanliness. They are of two kinds, convents and hermitages. The convents are inhabited by communities, each governed by a superior. The hermitages, which resemble very much the dwellings of the Carthusians, consist of two or three bed-rooms, a parlor, a kitchen, and a small garden. Prominent among the convents is the dwelling of the superior-general, called Grande Dame, who has charge of the infirmary, and who is conservator of the documents, traditions and pictures, which date from five or six centuries ago. Lastly, in the midst of this peaceful city rises the house of God, a large church, very commodious and clean, surrounded by a {515} cemetery, in conformity with an ancient custom, which all the beguinages, however, have not been able to retain.

The object of these societies is very clearly stated in a paragraph of the rule of the beguinage of Notre Dame du Pré', founded at Ghent in 1234. We retain the old style:

"Louis, Count of Flanders, of Nevers, and of Rethel, etc., etc., to all present and to come makes known, that Dame Jane, and Margaret, her sister of happy memory, who were successively Countesses of Flanders and of Hainault (as we are, [Footnote 100] by the grace of God), having remarked that in the Flemish territory there were a great number of women, who, from their condition in life and that of their parents, were unable to find a fitting match; observing that honorable persons, the daughters of nobles and burgesses, who desired to live in a state of chastity, could not all enter into convents of women, by reason of their too great number, or for want of means; remarking, moreover, that many young ladies of noble extraction and others had fallen into a state of decadence, so that they were reduced to mendicity, or to a painful existence, to the dishonor of their families, unless they could be provided for in a discreet and becoming manner; incited by God, and with the advice, knowledge, and consent of several bishops and other persons of probity, the aforesaid countesses founded, in several cities of Flanders, establishments with spacious dwellings and lands, called beguinages, where noble young ladies and children of good families were received, to live therein chastely in community, with or without vows, without humiliation to themselves or their families, and where they might, by applying themselves to reasonable labor, procure their food and clothing. They founded among others a beguinage in our city of Ghent, called the beguinage of Notre Dame du Pré, enclosed by the river Scheldt, and by walls. In the centre is a church, a cemetery, and a hospital for infirm or invalid beguines, the whole given by the before-mentioned princesses, etc."

[Footnote 100: This bull is in the original French: "Comteses de Flandre et de Hainault, comme nous aussi, par la grace de Dieu."]

Those young persons who desire to be admitted to the beguinage must first become postulants, and afterward make their noviciate in the convents or communities. They remain there even after their profession up to thirty years of age. Thus are they protected during the most stormy period of life by the watchfulness of their superior and their companions, by prayer and labor in common. Later they can enjoy without danger a larger measure of freedom. They then live two or three together in one of the hermitages, where they pass their time in exercises of prayer and labor, to which the early years of their cenobitical life have accustomed them.

"The great beguinage at Ghent," says M. Chantrel, "contains four hundred small houses, eighteen common halls, one large and one small church. There are sometimes as many as seven hundred beguines assembled in the church. The assembly of these pious women, in their ancient Flemish black dresses, and white bonnets, is very solemn and impressive. The novices are distinguished by their dress. Those who have recently taken the veil have their heads encircled by a crown.

"The beguines admit within their enclosure, as boarders, persons of the gentler sex, of every age and condition, who find in these establishments an asylum for the inexperience of youth, or a calm and peaceful sojourn where those who are tired of the world may pass their days without any other rule than that of a Christian life. In the great beguinage at Ghent there are nearly two hundred secular boarders, who live either privately or in community with the nuns."

Among the novices of the great beguinage at Ghent there lived, fifteen years ago, a Mlle, de Soubiran, the niece of a former vicar of Carcassonne. For twenty years this worthy ecclesiastic had communed with Almighty God, in incessant prayers, to obtain an {516} answer to this question: "Would it be a useful work to introduce, or rather to resuscitate, beguinages in France?"

Monseigneur de la Bouillerie, whose eloquence and zeal for good works have made him famous, interpreted in a favorable sense the signs furnished by a concurrence of providential circumstances; and a small establishment was opened twelve years ago, in a suburb of Castelnaudary, under the direction of the Abbé de Soubiran. Since 1856, it has had its postulants, novices, and professed sisters.

The buildings of the new beguinage were too small and poor. This defect was remedied by a great fire which consumed them, and compelled their reconstruction on a larger plan, and with better materials than the planks and bricks of the original buildings.

There is doubtless a vast distance between this feeble beginning and the extensive beguinage in Belgium, which so many centuries have enlarged and brought to perfection. But Mlle, de Soubiran and her first companions brought with them from Flanders the old traditions, with the spirit of fervor and of poverty and humble labor. The trials which they have undergone have only improved their work. They are happy in the blessing of their bishop, and his alms would not be wanting in case of need.

The Castelnaudary beguinage is already fruitful. A second establishment is forming at Toulouse, on the Calvary road. Those of our readers who are acquainted with the capital of Languedoc know the situation of that road, but all Christians have long since learnt that the road to Calvary is the way of salvation.

Suffice it for the present that we notice the existence of these two establishments. We shall have at a future time to narrate their progress and development.

{517}

From The Month.

THE DREAM OF GERONTIUS.

BY JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, D.D.

§ 1.

GERONTIUS.

  JESU, MARIA—I am near to death,
    And thou art calling me; I know it now.
  Not by the token of this faltering breath,
    This chill at heart, this dampness on my brow,—
  (Jesu, have mercy! Mary, pray for me!)
    'Tis this new feeling, never felt before,
  (Be with me, Lord, in my extremity!)
    That I am going, that I am no more.
  'Tis this strange innermost abandonment,
    (Lover of souls! great God! I look to thee,)
  This emptying out of each constituent
    And natural force, by which I come to be.
  Pray for me, O my friends; a visitant
    Is knocking his dire summons at my door,
  The like of whom, to scare me and to daunt,
    Has never, never come to me before.
  'Tis death,—loving friends, your prayers!—'tis he!…
  As though my very being had given way,
    As though I was no more a substance now,
  And could fall back on naught to be my stay,
    (Help, loving Lord! Thou my sole refuge, thou,)
  And turn no whither, but must needs decay
    And drop from out this universal frame
  Into that shapeless, scopeless, blank abyss,
    That utter nothingness, of which I came:
  This is it that has come to pass in me;
  O horror! this it is, my dearest, this;
  So pray for me, my friends, who have not strength to pray.

  ASSISTANTS.

  Kyrie eleïson, Christe eleïson, Kyrie eleïson.
  Holy Mary, pray for him.
  All holy angels, pray for him.
  Choirs of the righteous, pray for him.
  Holy Abraham, pray for him.
  St. John Baptist, St. Joseph, pray for him.
  St. Peter, St. Paul, St. Andrew, St. John,
  All apostles, all evangelists, pray for him.
  All holy disciples of the Lord, pray for him.
  All holy innocents, pray for him.
  All holy martyrs, all holy confessors,
  All holy hermits, all holy virgins,
  All ye saints of God, pray for him.

{518}

  GERONTIUS.

  Rouse thee, my fainting soul, and play the man;
      And through such waning span
  Of life and thought as still has to be trod,
      Prepare to meet thy God.
  And while the storm of that bewilderment
      Is for a season spent,
  And, ere afresh the ruin on thee fall,
      Use well the interval.

  ASSISTANTS.

  Be merciful, be gracious; spare him, Lord.
  Be merciful, be gracious; Lord, deliver him.
  From the sins that are passed;
      From thy frown and thine ire;
            From the perils of dying;
            From any complying
            With sin, or denying
            His God, or relying
  On self, at the last;
      From the nethermost fire;
  From all that is evil;
  From power of the devil;
  Thy servant deliver,
  For once and for ever.

  By thy birth, and by thy cross,
  Rescue him from endless loss;
  By thy death and burial,
  Save him from a final fall;
  By thy rising from the tomb,
            By thy mounting up above,
            By the Spirit's gracious love,
  Save him in the day of doom.

  GERONTIUS.

  Sanctus fortis, Sanctus Deus,
      De profundis oro te,
  Miserere, judex meus,
      Parce mihi, Domine.
  Firmly I believe and truly
      God is Three, and God is One;
  And I next acknowledge duly
      Manhood taken by the Son.
  And I trust and hope most fully
      In that manhood crucified;
  And each thought and deed unruly
      Do to death, as he has died.
  Simply to his grace and wholly
      Light and life and strength belong,
  And I love supremely, solely,
      Him the holy, him the strong.

{519}

  Sanctus fortis, Sanctus Deus,
      De profundis oro te,
  Miserere, judex meus,
      Parce mihi, Domine.
  And I hold in veneration,
      For the love of him alone,
  Holy Church, as his creation.
      And her teachings, as his own.
  And I take with joy whatever
      Now besets me, pain or fear,
  And with a strong will I sever
      All the ties which bind me here.
  Adoration aye be given,
      With and through the angelic host,
  To the God of earth and heaven,
      Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
  Sanctus fortis, Sanctus Deus,
      De profundis oro te,
  Miserere, judex meus,
      Mortis in discrimine.

  I can no more; for now it comes again,
  That sense of ruin, which is worse than pain,
  That masterful negation and collapse
  Of all that makes me man; as though I bent
  Over the dizzy brink
  Of some sheer infinite descent;
  Or worse, as though
  Down, down for ever I was falling through
  The solid framework of created things,
  And needs must sink and sink
  Into the vast abyss. And, crueller still,
  A fierce and restless fright begins to fill
  The mansion of my soul. And, worse and worse,
  Some bodily form of ill
  Floats on the wind, with many a loathsome curse
  Tainting the hallowed air, and laughs and flaps
  Its hideous wings,
  And makes me wild with horror and dismay.
  O Jesu, help! pray for me, Mary, pray!
  Some angel, Jesu! such as came to thee
  In thine own agony. ……
  Mary, pray for me. Joseph, pray for me. Mary, pray for me.

  ASSISTANTS.

  Rescue him, O Lord, in this his evil hour,
  As of old so many by thy gracious power:—Amen.
  Enoch and Elias from the common doom; Amen.
  Noe from the waters in a saving home; Amen.
  Abraham from th' abounding guilt of heathenesse; Amen.
  Job from all his multiform and fell distress; Amen.
  Isaac, when his father's knife was raised to slay; Amen.
  Lot from burning Sodom on its judgment-day; Amen.

{520}

  Moses from the land of bondage and despair; Amen.
  Daniel from the hungry lions in their lair; Amen.
  And the children three amid the furnace-flame; Amen.
  Chaste Susanna from the slander and the shame; Amen.
  David from Golia and the wrath of Saul; Amen.
  And the two apostles from their prison-thrall; Amen.
  Thecla from her torments; Amen:
            —so, to show thy power,
  Rescue this thy servant in his evil hour.

  GERONTIUS.

  Novissima hora est; and I fain would sleep.
  The pain has wearied me. …Into thy hands,
  Lord, into thy hands. …

  THE PRIEST.

  Proficiscere, anima Christiana de hoc mundo!
  Go forth upon thy journey, Christian soul!
  Go from this world! Go, in the name of God,
  The omnipotent Father, who created thee!
  Go, in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord,
  Son of the Living God, who bled for thee!
  Go, in the name of th' Holy Spirit, who
  Hath been poured out on thee! Go, in the name
  Of angels and archangels; in the name
  Of thrones and dominations; in the name
  Of princedoms and of powers; and in the name
  Of cherubim and seraphim, go forth!
  Go, in the name of patriarchs and prophets;
  And of apostles and evangelists,
  Of martyrs and confessors; in the name
  Of holy monks and hermits; in the name
  Of holy virgins; and all saints of God,
  Both men and women, go! Go on thy course;
  And may thy place to-day be found in peace,
  And may thy dwelling be the holy mount
  Of Sion: through the same, through Christ, our Lord.

§ 2.

  SOUL Of GERONTIUS.

  I went to sleep; and now I am refreshed.
  A strange refreshment: for I feel in me
  An inexpressive lightness, and a sense
  Of freedom, as I were at length myself,
  And ne'er had been before. How still it is!
  I hear no more the busy beat of time,
  No, nor my fluttering breath, nor struggling pulse;
  Nor does one moment differ from the next.
  I had a dream; yes:—some one softly said
  "He's gone;" and then a sigh went round the room.
  And then I surely heard a priestly voice
  Cry "Subvenite;" and they knelt in prayer.

{521}

  I seem to hear him still; but thin and low,
  And fainter and more faint the accents come,
  As at an ever-widening interval.
  Ah! whence is this? What is this severance?
  This silence pours a solitariness
  Into the very essence of my soul;
  And the deep rest, so soothing and so sweet,
  Hath something too of sternness and of pain.
  For it drives back my thoughts upon their spring
  By a strange introversion, and perforce
  I now begin to feed upon myself,
  Because I have naught else to feed upon.

  Am I alive or dead? I am not dead,
  But in the body still; for I possess
  A sort of confidence, which clings to me,
  That each particular organ holds its place
  As heretofore, combining with the rest
  Into one symmetry, that wraps me round,
  And makes me man; and surely I could move,
  Did I but will it, every part of me.
  And yet I cannot to my sense bring home,
  By very trial, that I have the power.
  'Tis strange; I cannot stir a hand or foot,
  I cannot make my fingers or my lips
  By mutual pressure witness each to each,
  Nor by the eyelid's instantaneous stroke
  Assure myself I have a body still.
  Nor do I know my very attitude,
  Nor if I stand, or lie, or sit, or kneel.

  So much I know, not knowing how I know,
  That the vast universe, where I have dwelt,
  Is quitting me, or I am quitting it.
  Or I or it is rushing on the wings
  Of light or lightning on an onward course,
  And we e'en now are million miles apart.
  Yet . … is this peremptory severance
  Wrought out in lengthy measurements of space,
  Which grow and multiply by speed and time?
  Or am I traversing infinity
  By endless subdivision, hurrying back
  From finite toward infinitesimal,
  Thus dying out of the expanded world?

  Another marvel; some one has me fast
  Within his ample palm; 'tis not a grasp
  Such as they use on earth, but all around
  Over the surface of my subtle being,
  As though I were a sphere, and capable
  To be accosted thus, a uniform
  And gentle pressure tells me I am not
  Self-moving, but borne forward on my way.
  And hark! I hear a singing; yet in sooth

{522}

  I cannot of that music rightly say
  Whether I hear or touch or taste the tones.
  Oh what a heart-subduing melody!

  ANGEL.

    My work is done,'
        My task is o er,
            And so I come,
            Taking it home,
    For the crown is won.
            Alleluia,
    For evermore.

    My Father gave
        In charge to me
            This child of earth
            E'en from its birth,
    To serve and save,
            Alleluia,
    And saved is he.

    This child of clay
        To me was given,
            To rear and train
            By sorrow and pain
    In the narrow way,
            Alleluia,
    From earth to heaven.

  SOUL.

  It is a member of that family
  Of wondrous beings, who, ere the worlds were made,
  Millions of ages back, have stood around
  The throne of God:—he never has known sin;
  But through those cycles all but infinite,
  Has had a strong and pure celestial life,
  And bore to gaze on th' unveiled face of God,
  And drank from the eternal fount of truth,
  And served him with a keen ecstatic love.
  Hark! he begins again.

  ANGEL.

    Lord, how wonderful in depth and height,
            But most in man, how wonderful thou art!
    With what a love, what soft persuasive might,
            Victorious o'er the stubborn fleshly heart,
        Thy tale complete of saints thou dost provide,
        To fill the throne which angels lost through pride!

{523}

    He lay a grovelling babe upon the ground,
            Polluted in the blood of his first sire,
    With his whole essence shattered and unsound,
            And, coiled around his heart, a demon dire,
        Which was not of his nature, but had skill
        To bind and form his opening mind to ill.

    Then was I sent from heaven to set right
            The balance in his soul of truth and sin,
    And I have waged a long relentless fight,
            Resolved that death-environed spirit to win,
    Which from its fallen state, when all was lost,
    Had been repurchased at so dread a cost.

    Oh what a shifting parti-colored scene
            Of hope and fear, of triumph and dismay,
    Of recklessness and penitence, has been
            The history of that dreary, lifelong fray!
        And oh the grace, to nerve him and to lead,
        How patient, prompt, and lavish at his need!

    O man, strange composite of heaven and earth!
            Majesty dwarfed to baseness! fragrant flower
    Running to poisonous seed! and seeming worth
            Cloaking corruption! weakness mastering power!
        Who never art so near to crime and shame,
        As when thou hast achieved some deed of name;

    How should ethereal natures comprehend
            A thing made up of spirit and of clay,
    Were we not tasked to nurse it and to tend,
            Linked one to one throughout its mortal day?
        More than the seraph in his height of place,
        The angel-guardian knows and loves the ransomed race.

  SOUL.

  Now know I surely that I am at length
  Out of the body: had I part with earth,
  I never could have drunk those accents in,
  And not have worshipped as a god the voice
  That was so musical; but now I am
  So whole of heart, so calm, so self-possessed,
  With such a full content, and with a sense
  So apprehensive and discriminant,
  As no temptation can intoxicate.
  Nor have I even terror at the thought
  That I am clasped by such a saintliness.

  ANGEL.

    All praise to him, at whose sublime decree
            The last are first, the first become the last;
    By whom the suppliant prisoner is set free,
            By whom proud first-borns from their thrones are cast;
        Who raises Mary to be queen of heaven,
        While Lucifer is left, condemned and unforgiven.

{524}

§ 3.

  SOUL.

  I will address him. Mighty one, my Lord,
  My guardian spirit, all hail!

  ANGEL.

            All hail, my child!
    My child and brother, hail! what wouldest thou?

  SOUL.

  I would have nothing but to speak with thee
  For speaking's sake. I wish to hold with thee
  Conscious communion; though I fain would know
  A maze of things, were it but meet to ask,
  And not a curiousness.

  ANGEL.

            You cannot now
    Cherish a wish which ought not to be wished.

  SOUL.

  Then I will speak. I ever had believed
  That on the moment when the struggling soul
  Quitted its mortal case, forthwith it fell
  Under the awful presence of its God,
  There to be judged and sent to its own place.
  What lets me now from going to my Lord?

  ANGEL.

  Thou art not let; but with extremest speed
  Art hurrying to the just and holy Judge:
  For scarcely art thou disembodied yet.
  Divide a moment, as men measure time,
  Into its million-million-millionth part,
  Yet even less than that the interval
  Since thou didst leave the body; and the priest
  Cried "Subvenite," and they fell to prayer;
  Nay, scarcely yet have they begun to pray.
  For spirits and men by different standards mete
  The less and greater in the flow of time.
  By sun and moon, primeval ordinances—
  By stars which rise and set harmoniously—
  By the recurring seasons, and the swing,
  This way and that, of the suspended rod
  Precise and punctual, men divide the hours,
  Equal, continuous, for their common use.
  Not so with us in th' immaterial world;
  But intervals in their succession

{525}

  Are measured by the living thought alone,
  And grow or wane with its intensity.
  And time is not a common property;
  But what is long is short, and swift is slow,
  And near is distant, as received and grasped
  By this mind and by that, and every one
  Is standard of his own chronology.
  And memory lacks its natural resting-points,
  Of years, and centuries, and periods.
  It is thy very energy of thought
  Which keeps thee from thy God.

  SOUL.

            Dear angel, say,
  Why have I now no fear at meeting him?
  Along my earthly life, the thought of death
  And judgment was to me most terrible.
  I had it aye before me, and I saw
  The Judge severe e'en in the crucifix.
  Now that the hour is come, my fear is fled;
  And at this balance of my destiny,
  Now close upon me, I can forward look
  With a serenest joy.

  ANGEL.

            It is because
  Then thou didst fear, that now thou dost not fear.
  Thou hast forestalled the agony, and so
  For thee the bitterness of death is passed
  Also, because already in thy soul
  The judgment is begun. That day of doom,
  One and the same for the collected world—
  That solemn consummation for all flesh,
  Is, in the case of each, anticipate
  Upon his death; and, as the last great day
  In the particular judgment is rehearsed,
  So now too, ere thou comest to the throne,
  A presage falls upon thee, as a ray
  Straight from the Judge, expressive of thy lot.
  That calm and joy uprising in thy soul
  Is first-fruit to thee of thy recompense,
  And heaven begun.

§ 4.

  SOUL.

          But hark! upon my sense
  Comes a fierce hubbub, which would make me fear,
  Could I be frighted.

(TO BE CONTINUED.)

{526}

From The St. James Magazine

EXTINCT SPECIES

The study of geology teaches us that our planet, has undergone many successive physical revolutions, the crust of it being made up of layer upon layer, after the manner of the successive peels of an onion. Each of these successive depositions constitutes the tomb of animal forms that have lived and passed away. Now it is a fresh-water or a marine shell that the exploratory geologist discloses; now the skeleton, or parts of a skeleton, from the evidence of which a comparative anatomist can reproduce, by model or picture, the exact forms. Occasionally science has to build up her presentment of animals that were, from the scanty evidence of their mere footfalls. As the poacher is guided to the timid hare, crouching in her seat, by the vestiges of her footprints on the snow, so the geologist can in many cases arrive at tolerably certain conclusions relative to the size and aspect of an extinct animal by the evidence of footsteps on now solid rock. And if it be demanded how it happens that now solid rocks can bear the traces of such soft impressions, the reply is simple. There evidently was a time when these rocks, now so hard and solid, were mere agglomerations of plastic matter, comparable for consistence to ordinary clay. It needs not even the weight of a footfall to impress material of temper so soft as this. The plashes of rain are distinctly visible upon many rocks now hard, and which have only acquired their consistence with the lapse of countless ages.

The geologist's notion of the word "recent" comprehends a span of time of beginning so remote that the oldest records of human history fade to insignificance by comparison. Since this world of ours acquired its final surface settlement, so to speak, numerous species have become extinct. The process of exhaustion has gone steadily on. It has been determined by various causes, some readily explicable, others involved in doubt. It is a matter well established, for example, that all northern Asia was at one time, not geologically remote, overrun by herds of mammoth creatures which, as to size, dwarf the largest elephants now existing; and which, among other points distinguishing them from modern elephants, were, unlike these, covered by a crop of long hair. Very much of the ivory manufactured in Russia consists of the tusks of these now extinct mammoths, untombed from time to time.

Tilesius declares his belief that mammoth skeletons still left in northern Russia exceed in number all the elephants now existing upon the globe. Doubtless the process of mammoth extinction was very gradual, and extended over an enormous space of time. This circumstance is indicated by the varying condition in which the tusks and teeth are found. Whereas the gelatine, or soft animal matter, of many specimens remains, imparting one of the characteristics necessary to the being of ivory, other specimens have lost this material, and mineral substances, infiltrating, have taken its place. The gem turquoise is pretty generally conceded to be nothing else than the fossilized tooth of some extinct animal—probably the mammoth.

Curiosity of speculation prompts the mind to imagine to itself the time when the last of these gigantic animals succumbed to influences that were finally destined to sweep them all from the earth. Had men come upon the scene when they roamed their native wilds? Were those wilds the same as now as to climate and vegetable growths? {527} Testimony is mute. Time silently unveils the sepulchred remains, leaving fancy to expatiate as she will on a topic wholly beyond the scope of mortal intelligence.

Inasmuch as bones and tusks of the mammoth are dug up in enormous quantities over tracts now almost bare of trees, and scanty as to other vegetation, certain naturalists have assumed that in times coeval with mammoth or mastodonic life the vegetation of these regions must have been richer than now, otherwise how could such troops of enormous beasts have gained their sustenance?

On this point Sir Charles Lyell bids us not to be too confident affirmatively. He remarks that luxuriance of vegetable growth is not seen at the time being to correspond with the prevalence of the associated fauna. The northern island of the New Zealand group, at the period when Europeans first set foot there, was mostly covered by a luxuriant growth of forest trees, of shrubs and grasses. Admirably adapted to the being of herbivorous animals, the land was wholly devoid of the same. Brazilian forests offer another case in illustration; a stronger case than the wilds of New Zealand, inasmuch as the climate may be assumed as more congenial to the development of animal life. Nowhere on earth does nature teem with an equal amount of vegetable luxuriance; yet Brazilian forests are remarkable for almost the total absence of large animals. Perhaps no present tract is so densely endowed with animal life as that of South Africa, a region where sterility is the prevailing characteristic; where forest trees are rare and other vegetation scant; where water, too, is infrequent.

Present examples, such as these, should make a naturalist hesitate before coming to the conclusion that Siberian wilds, even as now, were wholly incompatible with the existence and support of troops of mammoths or mastodons. Speculating now as to the latest time of the existence of mastodons in Siberia, a circumstance has to be noted that would seem to countenance the belief in the existence of it up to a not very remote period of historic times. In the year 1843, the season being warmer than usual, a mass of Siberian ice thawed, and, in thawing, untombed one of these animals, perfect in all respects, even to the skin and hair. The flesh of this creature furnished repast to wolves and bears, so little alteration had it undergone. Another mastodon was disentombed on the Tas, between the Obi and Yenesei, near the arctic circle, about lat. 66° 30' N., with some parts of its flesh in so perfect a state that the bulb of the eye now exists preserved in the Moscow museum. Another adult carcass, accompanied by an individual of the same species, was found in 1843, in lat. 75° 15' N., near the river Taimyr, the flesh being decayed. Associated with it, Middendorf observed the trunk of a larch tree (Pinus larix), the same wood that now grows in the same neighborhood abundantly.

It is no part of our intention to discuss the causes of mammoth extinction. This result has assuredly not been caused by any onslaught of the destroyer man. The Siberian wilds are scantily populated now, and it has never been suggested that at any anterior period their human denizens were more plentiful. Nature often establishes the balance of her organic life through a series of agencies so abstrusely refined, and acting, beside, over so long a period, that they altogether escape man's cognizance. The believer in the God of nature's adaptation of means to ends will see no reason to make an exception in animal species to what is demonstrated by examples in so many other cases to be a general law. The dogma, that no general law is without exceptions, though one to which implicit credence has been given, may nevertheless be devoid of the universality commonly imputed. On the contrary, the application of this dogma may extend over a very narrow field; may be only referable to the codifications, artificial and wholly {528} conventional, which mankind for their convenience establish, and under a false impression elevate to the position of laws. If logical proof in syllogistic form be demanded as to the proposition that laws established by nature have no exceptions, the fulfilment of demand would not be possible; inasmuch as human reason is too impotent for grasping, and too restricted in its energies for investigating, the multifarious issues which the discussion of such a thesis would involve. As coming events, however, are said by the poet to cast their shadows in advance, so, as heralds and harbingers of truths beyond logical proof, come beliefs, faiths, even moral convictions. Of this sort is the assurance of the balance established by nature at each passing epoch of being in the world.

The naturalist is impressed with the firm belief that the number of animal species existing on the earth, and the number of individuals in each species, are balanced and apportioned in some way and by some mysterious co-relation to the needs of the universe.

Some presumptive testimony in favor of this belief is afforded by the discussion, barely yet concluded, relative to the effect of small bird destruction. Without any more elaborate reasoning on this topic than follows necessarily as the result of newspaper reading, the general concession will be made by any one of unbiased mind, that if small bird destruction could be enacted to its exhaustive limits—if every small bird could be destroyed—the aggregate of vitality thus disposed of would be balanced through the increase of other organisms. Insect life would teem and multiply to an extent proportionate with the removal of an anterior restraining cause.

The nature of the topic on which we are engaged does not force upon us the question whether such proportionate increase of insect life be advantageous or disadvantageous. What we are wholly concerned in placing in evidence is the balance kept up between vital organisms of different species by nature. Nor is the balance of vitality established between different animal species. It also may be traced, and even more distinctly, between the vegetable and animal kingdoms; each regarded in its entirety. Vegetables can only grow by the assimilation of an element (carbon) which animals evolve by respiration, as being a poison. Consideration of this fact well-nigh forces the conclusion upon the mind—if, indeed, the conclusion be not inevitable—that if through any vast cataclysm animated life were to become suddenly extinct throughout the world, vegetable life would languish until the last traces of atmospheric carbon had become exhausted, and then perish.

In maintenance of her vital balance through the operation of some occult law, it often happens that animals that have ceased to be "obviously useful," as taking part in a general economy around them, are seen to die out. Whilst wolves and elks roamed over Ireland the magnificent Irish wolf-dog was common. With the disappearance of wolves the breed of wolf-dogs languished, and has ultimately become extinct. As a matter of zoological curiosity many an Irish gentleman would have desired to perpetuate this gigantic and interesting race of dogs; but the operation, the tendency to vital equilibrium has been over-strong to be contravened—the race of Irish wolf-dogs has fleeted away. Speaking now of the huge Siberian mammoths, from which we diverged, of these faith in nature's balanced adaptation assures us that they died out so soon as they ceased to be necessary as a compensation to some unknown force in the vital economy.

Spans and periods of time, such as those comprehended by the human mind, and compared with the normal period of individual human existence, dwindle to nothingness when attempted to be made the units of measurement in calculations involving the duration of species. Perhaps the data are not available for enabling the most careful investigator to come to an approximate {529} conclusion as to the number of years that must elapse before the race of existing elephants, African and Indian, will become extinct, departing from the earth as mammoths have departed. The time, however, must inevitably arrive for that consummation under the rule of the present course of things.

Without forest for shade and sustenance the race of wild elephants cannot exist; and, inasmuch as elephants never breed in captivity, each tame elephant having been once reclaimed from the forests, it follows, from the consideration of inevitable results, that sooner or later, but some day, nevertheless, one of two possible issues must be consummated—either that man shall cease to go on subduing the earth, cutting down forests and bringing the land into cultivation, or else elephants must become extinct. Who can entertain a doubt as to the alternative issue? Man has gone on conquering and to conquer from the time he came upon the scene. Animals, save those he can domesticate, have gone on fleeting and fleeting away. It is most probable, nevertheless, that one proportionate aggregate of vitality has at every period been maintained.

The most marked examples of the passing away of animal species within periods of time, in some cases not very remote, pronounced of even in a historical sense, is seen in the record of certain gigantic birds. The largest individuals of the feathered tribes now extant are ostriches; but the time was when these plumed denizens of the Sahara were small indeed by comparison with existing species. Some idea of the bulk of the epiornis—an extinct species—may be gathered from a comparison of the bulk of one of its eggs with that of other birds. According to M. Isidore Geoffroy, who some time since presented one of these eggs to the French Academy of Sciences, the capacity of it was no less than eight litres and three-fourths. This would prove it to be about six times the size of the ostrich's egg, 148 times that of an ordinary fowl, and no less than 50,000 times the size of the egg of the humming-bird. The egg exhibited was one of very few that have been discovered; hence nothing tends to the belief that it was one of the largest. The first knowledge of the existence of this gigantic bird was acquired in 1851. The sole remains of the species hitherto found are some egg-shells and a few bones. These suffice, however, for an ideal reproduction of the creature under the synthetical treatment of comparative anatomy. The epiornis inhabited Madagascar. The creature's height could not have been less than from nine to twelve feet, and the preservation of its remains is such as to warrant the belief in its comparatively recent existence.

Of a structure as large as the epiornis, probably larger, though differing from the latter in certain anatomical particulars, according to the belief of Professor Owen, is a certain New Zealand giant bird, called by him the dinornis. As in the case of the Madagascar bird, the evidence relating to this is very recent. Some few years ago an English gentleman received from a relative settled in New Zealand some fragments of large bones that had belonged to some creature of species undetermined. He sent them to Professor Owen for examination, and was not a little surprised at the assurance that the bones in question, although seemingly having belonged to an animal as large as an ox, were actually those of a bird. The comparative anatomist was guided in coming to this conclusion by a certain cancellated structure possessed by the bony fragments, a characteristic of the bones of birds. For a time Professor Owen's dictum was received with hesitation, not to say disbelief, on the part of some people. The subsequent finding of more remains, eggs as well as bones, soon justified the naturalist's verdict, however. Not the slightest doubt remains now upon the mind of any zoologist relative to the past existence of the dinornis; nay, the {530} impression prevails that this feathered monster may be living in some of the more inaccessible parts of the southern island of New Zealand at the present time. Be that as it may, the dinornis can only have become extinct recently, even using this word in a historical sense, as the following testimony will make manifest:—

A sort of mummification prevailed amongst the Maories until Christianity had gained ground amongst them. The process was not exactly similar to that by which Egyptian mummies were formed, but resembled it, nevertheless, in the particular of desiccation. Smoking was the exact process followed; and smoked Maori heads are common enough in naturalists' museums. In a general way Maori heads alone were smoked, certain principles of food economy prompting a more utilitarian treatment for entire bodies. Nevertheless, as a mark of particular respect to some important chief now and then, affectionate survivors exempted his corpse from the oven, and smoking it entire, set it up amongst the Maori lares and penates as an ornament. This explanation is not altogether par parenthèse, for it brings me to the point of narrating some evidence favorable to the opinion that the dinornis cannot have been extinct in New Zealand even at a recent historical period. Not long ago the body of a Maori was found in a certain remote crypt, and resting on one hand was an egg of this bird giant. Contemplate now the bearings of the testimony. The Maori race is not indigenous to New Zealand, but arrived there by migration from Hawai. Not alone do the records of the two groups of Pacific islands in question advert to such migration, but certain radical coincidences of language lend confirmation. It is further a matter of tradition that the migration took place about three hundred years ago. Now, even if the recently discovered specimen of Maori mummy art had been executed on the very first advent of the race, the period elapsed would be, historically speaking, recent. The laws of chance, however, are adverse to any such assumption; and, moreover, the degree of civilization—if the expression may be used—implied by the dedication of an entire human body to an aesthetic purpose, instead of devoting it to one of common utility—could only have been achieved after a certain lapse of time.

According to Professor Owen, there must have been many species of dinornis. The largest individuals of one species, according to him, could not have been less than four yards high. According to the same naturalist, moreover, these birds were not remarkable by their size alone; they had, he avers, certain peculiarities of form establishing a link between them and the cassowary and apteryx: the latter a curious bird still found in New Zealand, but very rare nevertheless.

Of colossal dimensions as were the dinornis and epiornis, the size of both sinks into insignificance by comparison with another giant bird, traces of which, and only traces, are discoverable in North America, at the epoch when the deposit of the conchylian stage of Massachusetts was yet soft enough to yield under the feet of creatures stepping upon its surface. Footsteps, indeed, are the only traces left of these giant birds, and they are found side by side with the imprints of drops of rain which fell on the yielding surface in those early times. Mostly the footmarks only correspond with three toes, but occasionally there are traces of a fourth—a toe comparable to a thumb, only directed forward, not backward. Marks of claws are occasionally found. Every trace and lineament of the Massachusetts bird is marvellously exceptional. The feet must have been no less than fifteen inches long, without reckoning the hinder claw, the length of which alone is two inches. The width must have been ten inches. The intervals between these footmarks correspond evidently with the stride of the monster, which got over the ground by covering successive stages of from {531} four to five feet! When we consider that the stride of an ostrich is no more than from ten to twelve inches, the application of this record will be obvious. Here closes the testimony already revealed in respect of this bird, except we also refer to it—which is apocryphal—certain coprolites or excrementitious matters found in the same formation.

For the preceding facts naturalists are indebted to the investigations of Mr. Hitchcock. The evidence adduced leaves no place for doubt as to the previous existence of a giant bird to which the traces are referable. Naturalists, however, were slow to come to this conclusion; so extraordinary did it seem that a bird should have lived at a period so remote as that when these geological formations were deposited. To gain some idea of the antiquity of that formation, one has only to remember that the conchylian stage is only the fifth in the order of time of the twenty-eight stages of which, according to Alcide D'Orbigny, the crust of the earth is made up, from the period of primitive rocks to the present date. However, many recent facts have tended to prove that several animals, mammalians and saurians amongst others, are far more ancient than had been imagined; after which evidence these giant bird footprints have lost much of the improbability which once seemed to attach to them.

Pass we on now to the traces of another very curious bird, the existence of which has been demonstrated by Professor Owen, according to whom the creature must have lived at the epoch of the schists of Sobenhofen. The name given by Professor Owen to this curious extinct bird is archeopterix. Its peculiarities are so numerous that for some time naturalists doubted whether it should be considered a reptile or a bird; between which two there exist numerous points of similarity. And now, whilst dealing with bird-giants, it would be wrong not to make some reference to a discovery made in 1855, at Bas Meudon, of certain osseous remains, referable to a bird that must have attained the dimensions of a horse; that floated on water like a swan, and poised itself at roost upon one leg. Monsieur Constant Prevost, the naturalist who has most studied the bird, gave to it the name of gastornis Parisiensis. The bony remains of this creature were found in the tertiary formation in a conglomerate associated with chalk, which refers the gastornis to a date more remote than any yet accorded to any other bird.

From a bare record of facts contemplate we now our planet as it must have been when inhabited by the monstrous birds and reptiles and quadrupeds which preceded the advent of man. These were times when animated forms attained dimensions which are now wholly exceptional. That may be described as the age when physical and physiological forces were dominant, as the force of moral agency dominates over the present, and is destined, as appearances tend to prove, to rule even more fully hereafter. Might it not seem that in nature an economy is recognizable similar to the economy of human existence? Can we not recognize an antagonism between the development of brute force and of the quality of mind? Would it not even seem that nature could not at one and the same time develop mental and corporeal giants? The physiological reign has only declined to prepare the advent of moral ascendancy. Giant bodies seem fading from the earth, and giant spirits commencing to rule. Humanity is progressive; is not its progression made manifest by these zoological revelations? The first bone traces of human beings range back to an epoch posterior to the monstrous quadrupeds entombed in the diluvium. Hereafter giants, probably, will only be seen in the moral world, grosser corporeal giant forms having become extinct. The physical gigantesque is not yet indeed banished from the earth, but the period of its {532} banishment would seem to be at hand.

The probability is that all the great birds to which reference has been made were, like the ostrich, incapable of flight. This defect, when contemplated from the point of view suggested by modern classifications, seems one of the most remarkable aberrations of nature of which we have cognizance. For a bird to be deprived of what seems the most essential characteristic of bird-life—to be banished from the region that we have come to regard as the special domain of bird-life—bound to the earth, forced to mingle with quadrupeds—seems to the mind the completest of all possible departures from established type.

Thoughts such as these result from our artificial systems and classifications. Apart from these, the conditions of giant walking birds that were, and to a limited extent are, will be found to harmonize well with surrounding conditions. Suppose we take the case of the ostrich for example; this bird being the chief living representative of giant bird-life remaining to us from the past. In the ostrich, then, do we view a creature so perfectly adapted to conditions which surround it that no need falls short and no quality is in excess. A complete bird in most anatomical characteristics, it borrows others from another type. The sum of the vital elements which normally, had the ostrich been like flying birds, should have gone to endow the wings, has been directed toward the legs and feet, and thereupon concentrated. Bird qualities and beast qualities have mingled, and, as we now perceive, have harmonized. If to the ostrich flying is denied—if it can only travel on foot, yet is it an excellent pedestrian. A quality of which it has been deprived we now find to have been transmuted into another quality—the ostrich has found its equivalent.

Reflecting thus, we cease to pity the ostrich; we begin to see that nature has been supremely wise, our classifications only having led us into error. A new thought dawns upon our apprehension; instead of longer regarding the ostrich as furnishing an example of nature's bird-creative power gone astray, we come to look upon this creature as designed upon the type of ordinary walking animals, and having some bird characteristics added. Assuredly this point of view is better than the other; for whereas the first reveals nature to us through the distorting medium of an abstraction, the other shows us nature herself. It is not a matter of complete certainty that the bird-type, as naturalists explain and define it in their systems, exists; but there can be no doubt as to the existence of the ostrich. In this mode of expression there is nothing paradoxical; and doubtless, when we come to reflect upon it, the case will not fail to seem a little strange that we are so commonly in the habit of testing the inequalities of beings by reference to systems, instead of following the opposite course, viz., that of testing the value and completeness of systems by reference to the qualities of individuals they embrace. Naturalists invent a system and make it their touchstone of truth; whereas the real touchstone would be the creature systematized. The ostrich simply goes to prove that the zoological types imagined by naturalists are endowed with less of the absolute than philosophers in their pride of science had imagined. Animal types are not the strangers to each other that artificial classifications would make them appear.

Nor is flexibility of bird-type only manifested by the examples wherein a bird acquires characteristics of quadrupeds and other walking animals. Wings may even become metamorphosed into a sort of fins, thus establishing a connection between bird-life and fish-life. This occurs in the manchot, a bird not less aquatic in its habits than the seal—of flying and walking almost equally incapable—a bird the natural locomotive condition of which is to be plunged {533} in water up to the neck. Assuredly nothing can be more absurd than the attempt to recognize, in these ambiguous organizations, so many attempts of nature to pass from one type to another.

No matter what religious system one may have adopted, or what philosophical code: the interpretation of nature (according to which she is represented as making essays—trying experiments) is alike inadmissible. Neither God omniscient, nor nature infallible, can be assumed by the philosopher as trying experiments. There are, indeed, no essays in nature but degrees—transitions. Wherefore these transitions? is a question that brings philosophy to bay, and demonstrates her weakness. It is a question that cannot be pondered too deeply. Therein lies the germ of some great mystery.

Reverting to bird-giants, past and present, it is assuredly incorrect to assume, as certain naturalists have assumed, that flying would have been incompatible with their bulk. There exist birds of prey, of whose bodies the specific gravity does not differ much from that of the ostrich, and are powerful in flight nevertheless. Then another class of facts rises up in opposition to the hypothesis, that mere grandeur of dimensions is the limit to winged flying. Neither the apteryx nor the manchot fly any more than the ostrich. Neither is a large bird, nor, relatively to size, a heavy bird. As regards the epiornis, the position is not universally acceded to by naturalists that the creature was like the ostrich, the apteryx, and cassowary, a mere walking bird. An Italian naturalist, Signor Bianconi, has noted a certain peculiarity in the metatarsal bones of the creature which induces him to refer it to the category of winged birds of prey. If this hypothesis be tenable, then a sort of giant vulture the epiornis would have been: one in whose imposing presence the condor of the Andes would have dwindled to the dimensions of a buzzard. Further, if Signor Bianconi's assumption hold good, then may we not have done amiss in banishing the "roc" to the realms of fiction? Old Marco Polo, writing in the thirteenth century, described the roc circumstantially, and the account has been long considered as either a fiction or a mistake. Signor Bianconi, coming to the rescue of his fellow-countryman, thinks that the Italian traveller may have actually described a giant bird of prey extant at the time when he wrote, but which has now become extinct.

A notice of extinct birds would be incomplete without reference to the dodo, the very existence of which had been lately questioned; so completely has it fleeted away from the earth. Messrs. Broderip, Strickland, and Melville, however, have amply vindicated the dodo's claim to be regarded a former denizen of the world we live in. The dodo was first seen by the Dutch when they landed on the Isle of France, at that time uninhabited, immediately subsequent to the doubling of Cape Horn by the Portuguese. These birds were described as having no wings, but in the place of them three or four black feathers. Where the tail should be, there grew instead four or five curling plumes of a grayish color. In their stomachs they were said to have commonly a stone as big as a fist, and hard as the gray Bentemer stone. The boat's crew of the Jacob Van Neck called them Walgh-vogels (surfeit birds), because they could not cook them or make them tender, or because they were able to get so many turtle-doves, which had a much more pleasant flavor, so that they took a disgust to these birds. Likewise, it is said that three or four of these birds were enough to afford a whole ship's company one full meal. Indeed, the sailors salted down some of them, and carried them on the voyage.

Many descriptions of the dodo were given by naturalists after the commencement of the seventeenth century; and the British Museum contains a painting said to have been copied {534} from a living individual. Underneath the painting is a leg still finely preserved; and in respect of this leg naturalists are agreed that it cannot belong to any existing species. The dodo must have been a curious bird, if Mr. Strickland's notion of him be correct; and Professor Reinhardt, of Copenhagen, holds a similar opinion. The dodo, these naturalists affirm, was a vulture-like dove—a sort of ugly giant pigeon—but with beak and claws like a vulture. He had companions or neighbors, at least, not dissimilar in nature. Thus a bird called the solitaire inhabited the small island of Roderigues, three hundred miles east of the Mauritius. Man has exterminated the solitaire, as well as other birds nearly allied, formerly denizens of the Isle of Bourbon.

The dodo will be seen no more; the race has fleeted away. Among birds, the emeu, the cassowary, and the apteryx are species rapidly vanishing; amongst quadrupeds, the kangaroo—the platypus: others slowly, but not less surely. After a while they will be gone from the earth wholly, as bears, wolves, mammoths, and hyenas have gone from our own island. The Bos primigenius, or great wild bull, was common in Germany when Julius Caesar flourished. The race has become wholly extinct, if, indeed, not incorporated with the breed of large tame oxen of northern Europe. The urus would have become extinct but for the care taken by Russian emperors to preserve a remnant in Lithuanian forests. The beaver built his mud huts along the Saone and Rhone up to the last few generations of man; and when Hannibal passed through Gaul on his way to Italy, beavers in Gaul were common. Thus have animals migrated or died out, passed away, but the balance of life has been preserved. Man has gone on conquering: now exterminating, now subjecting. Save the fishes of the sea and the birds of the air, the time will perhaps come when creatures will have to choose between subjection and death. Ostriches would seem to be reserved for the first alternative, seeing that in South Africa, in southern France, and Italy, these birds have lately been bred, domiciled into tame fowls, in behalf of their feathers. Very profitable would ostrich farming seem to be. These giant birds want no food but grass, and the yearly feather yield of each adult ostrich realizes about twenty-five pounds sterling.

{535}

From Chambers's Journal.

A DINNER BY MISTAKE.

"Only one poun'-ten a week, sir, and no extras; and I may say you won't find such cheap airy lodgings anywhere else in the place; not to speak of the sea-view;" and the bustling landlady threw open the door of the tiny sitting-room with an air which would have become a Belgravian lackey. It certainly was a cosy, sunny little apartment, with just such a view of the sea, and of nothing else whatsoever, as is the delight of an inland heart, I was revolving in my mind how to make terms on one most important point, when she again broke forth: "I can assure you, sir, I could have let these same rooms again and again in the last two days, if I had not given my promise to Mrs. Johnson that she should have them next Friday fortnight, and I would never go from my word, sir—never! though this month is our harvest, and it's hard for me to have the rooms standing empty. As I told my niece only yesterday, I won't let forward again, not to please anybody, for it don't answer, and it worrits me out of my life. And I'm sure, sir, if you like to come for the fortnight, I'll do my utmost to make you comfortable; and I always have given satisfaction; and you could not get nicer rooms nowhere."

"No," said I, taking advantage of her pause for breath; "these are very nice. I—I suppose you don't object to smoking?"

The good woman's face assumed a severe expression, though I detected a comical twinkle in her eye. "Why, sir, we always do say—but if it's only a cigar, and not one of them nasty pipes"—

I smiled: "To tell the truth, it generally is a pipe."

"Is it now? Well, sir, if you please, we won't say anything about it now. We have a lady-lodger upstairs, and if she should complain, I can but say that it is against my rules, and that I'll mention it to you. And so, sir, if you please, I'll go now, and see to your portmanteau being taken up;" and thereupon she vanished, leaving me in sole possession.

I threw my bag and rug on to the sofa, pushed a slippery horsehair armchair up to the window, and sat down to rest and inhale the sea-breezes with a certain satisfaction at being in harbor. As I before remarked, the prospect was in the strictest sense of the words a sea-view. Far away to east and west stretched the blue ocean; and beside it, I could see only a steep grass-bank just beneath my window, with a broad shingly path running at its base, evidently designed for an esplanade, though no human form was visible thereon. Away to the right, I just caught a glimpse of shelving beach, dotted with fishermen's boats; and of a long wooden jetty, with half-a-dozen figures slowly pacing from end to end, while the dismal screeching of a brass band told of an attempt at music more ambitious than successful. It was not a lively look-out for a solitary man, and I half wished myself back in my mother's comfortable house at Brompton. However, I was in for it now; and I could but try how far a fortnight of open air and exercise would recruit my wasted strength. I had been reading really hard at Oxford through the last term, and my very unusual industry had been followed by a languor and weariness which so awakened my dear mother's solicitude that she never rested till she had persuaded Dr. Busby to prescribe sea-air and a total separation from my books. She could not come {536} with me, as she longed to do, kind soul! but she packed my properties, and gave endless instructions as to diet, all of which I had forgotten before I had accomplished the first mile of my journey. I don't know why I came to that out-of-the-way watering-place, except that I was too languid to have a will of my own, or to care for the noisy life of country-houses full of sportsmen. So, on the following morning, behold me in gray travelling suit and wide-awake, strolling along the beach, watching the pretty bathers as they dipped their heads under water, and then reappeared, shaking the dripping tresses from their eyes. Then there were the fishermen, brawny, bare-legged Goliahs, setting forth on their day's toil, and launching their boats with such shouts and cries as, to the uninitiated, might indicate some direful calamity. The beach was alive now, for the whole visiting population, such as it was, seemed to have turned out this bright September morning, and were scattered about, sketching, working, and chattering. I scanned each group, envying them their merry laughter and gay talk, and half hoping to recognize some familiar face among those lazy lounging youths and sun-burned damsels; but my quest was fruitless, and I pursued my lonely way apart.

Really, though, the little place improved upon acquaintance. There were fine bold cliffs, just precipitous enough to make a scramble to the top almost irresistible; there were long stretches of yellow sand and shallow pools glittering in the sunlight; and there was a breeze coming straight from the north pole, which quickened my blood, and brought the color into my sallow cheeks, even as I drank it in. I bathed, I walked, I climbed, I made friends with the boatmen, and got them to take me out in their fishing-smacks; but still, with returning vigor, I began to crave not a little for some converse with more congenial spirits than these honest tars and my loquacious landlady. I inscribed my name on the big board at the library; I did all that man could do to make my existence known, but nearly a week passed away, and still my fellow-creatures held aloof. I had been out for the whole of one windy afternoon tossing on the waves, watching the lobster-fishing, and came in at sunset tolerably drenched with spray, and with a terrific appetite. As I opened the door of my little sitting-room, I beheld—most welcome sight—the white dinner-cloth, and lying upon it a card—a large, highly-glazed, most unmistakable visiting-card. With eager curiosity, I snatched it up, but curiosity changed to amazement when I read the name, "Sir Philip Hetherton, Grantham Park." Sir Philip Hetherton! Why, in the name of all that's incomprehensible, should he call on me? I had never even heard his name; I knew no more of him than of the man in the moon. Could he be some country magnate who made it a duty to cultivate the acquaintance of every visitor to Linbeach? If so, he must have a hard time of it, even in this little unfrequented region. My impatience could not be restrained till Mrs. Plumb's natural arrival with the chops; and an energetic pull at the bell brought her at once courtesying and smiling.

"I suppose," began I, holding the card with assumed carelessness between my finger and thumb—"I suppose this gentleman, Sir Philip Hetherton, called here to-day?"

"Oh yes, sir, this afternoon; not an hour ago."

"He inquired for me?"

"Yes, sir; he asked particularly for young Mr. Olifant, and said he was very sorry to miss you. He's a very pleasant-spoken gentleman, is Sir Philip."

"Ah, I see. Is he often in Linbeach? Does he know many people living in the place?"

"Well, I don't think he has many friends here, sir; at least, I never understood so; but he owns some of the {537} houses in the town, and he is very kind to the poor. No one is ever turned away empty-handed from his door, and I've a right to say so, sir, for my brother's widow lives in one of the lodges at Grantham. He put her into it when her husband was drowned at sea, and he's been a good friend to her ever since."

All this was not what I wanted to find out, but I had learned by experience that Mrs. Plumb's tongue must have its swing. I now mildly brought her back to the point: "Does he see anything of the visitors?"

"Not to my knowledge, sir. He sometimes rides in of an afternoon, for Grantham is only four miles from Linbeach; but I don't think he ever stays long."

So it was not apparently an eccentric instance of universal friendliness, but a special mark of honor paid to me. It grew more and more mysterious. However, there was nothing to be gained by pumping Mrs. Plumb further; and as I was discreetly minded to keep my own counsel, I dismissed her. But meditating long and deeply over my solitary dinner, I came at length to the unwelcome conclusion, that Sir Philip Hetherton must have been laboring under some strange delusion, and that I should see and hear no more of him. I was rather in the habit of priding myself on my judgment and discrimination; but in this instance they were certainly at fault, for within three days, I met him face to face. I was strolling slowly along one of the shady country lanes which led inland between cornfields and hedge-rows, when I encountered a portly, gray-haired gentleman, mounted on an iron-gray cob, and trotting soberly toward Linbeach. He surveyed me so inquisitively out of his merry blue eyes, that the thought crossed me, could this be the veritable Sir Philip? I smiled at my own vivid imagination; but I must confess that before I had proceeded another half mile, I faced round, and returned to Linbeach for more briskly than I had left it. I had scarcely stepped into Mrs. Plumb's passage, when that personage herself met me open-mouthed, with a pencil-note in her hand. "Oh, Mr. Olifant, I wish you had come in rather sooner. Sir Philip has been here again, and as he could not see you, he wrote this note, for he had not time to wait. I was quite vexed that it should happen so."

Evidently the good woman was fully impressed with the dignity of the event, and not a little flattered at the honor paid to her lodger. I opened the note, and it contained—oh marvel of marvels!—an invitation to dinner for the following day, coupled with many warm expressions of regard for my family, and regrets at having been hitherto unable to see me.

"I told Sir Philip that I thought you had only gone down to the beach, sir; but he laughed, and said he should not know you if he met you. I suppose you don't know him, do you, sir?" Mrs. Plumb added insinuatingly.

"No." said I; thinking within myself that the baronet need not have been quite so communicative. However, this confession of his, at any rate, threw same light upon the subject, and suggested a solution. He might have known my father or mother. Of course, indeed, he must have known them, or somebody belonging to me. His own apparent confidence began to infect me, and I wrote off an elaborate and gracefully-worded acceptance; and then sat down to my pipe, and a complacent contemplation of all the benefits that might accrue to me through his most praiseworthy cordiality. "After all," I reflected, "'tis no matter where one goes; friends are sure to turn up everywhere;" and thereon arose visions of partridge-shooting in the dewy mornings, to be followed by pleasant little dinners with my host and a bevy of lovely daughters. But on the morrow certain misgivings revisited me, and I came to the conclusion that it would only be the civil thing to ride over to Grantham in the afternoon, and get through {538} the first introductions and explanations before appearing there as a guest. Accordingly, I hired a long-legged, broken-winded hack, the only one to be got for love or money, and set forth upon my way. It was a fruitless journey; the fatal "not at home" greeted my ears, and I could only drop a card, turn the Roman nose of my gallant steed toward home, and resign myself to my fate.

Seven o'clock was the hour named for dinner, and I had intended to be particularly punctual, but misfortunes crowded thick upon me. The first white tie that came to hand was a miserable failure. My favorite curl would not be adjusted becomingly upon my brow; and the wretched donkey-boy who had solemnly promised to bring the basket-carriage punctually to the door, did not appear till ten minutes after the time. Last of all, when I had descended "got up" to perfection, and was on the point of starting, I discovered that I was minus gloves, and the little maid-of-all-work had to be sent fleeing off to the corner shop, where haberdashery and grocery were picturesquely combined. So it fell out that, despite hard driving, it was several minutes past the hour when we drew up under the portico at Grantham. I had no time to compose my nerves or prepare my opening address. A gorgeously-arrayed flunkie appeared at the hall-door; a solemn butler, behind, waved me on to the guidance of another beplushed and bepowdered individual; and before I fully realized my position, I stood in a brilliantly-lighted drawing-room, full of people, and heard my name proclaimed in stentorian tones. The next moment, the florid gentleman whom I had encountered on the previous day came forward with outstretched hands and a beaming face, and a perfect torrent of welcomes burst upon me.

"Glad to see you at last, Mr. Olifant, very glad to see you; I began to think there was a fate against our meeting. Let me introduce you. Lady Hetherton—my daughter—my son Fred. Come this way, this way."

And I was hurried along helpless as an infant in the jovial baronet's hands. How could I—I appeal to any reasonable being—how could I stand stock-still, and, under the eyes of all that company, cross-examine my host as to the why and wherefore of his hospitality? It will be owned, I think, that in what afterward occurred I was not wholly to blame. Lady Hetherton was a quiet well-bred woman, with a mild face and soft voice; she greeted me with a certain sleepy warmth, and after a few placid commonplaces, resumed her conversation with the elderly lady by her side, and left me to the care of her son, a bright, frank young Harrovian, with whom I speedily made friends. Really it was very pleasant to drop in this way into the centre of a genial circle, and I found my spirits rising fast as we talked together, con amore, of cricket, boating, hunting. A fresh arrival, however, soon disturbed the party, and, directly afterward, dinner was announced. Sir Philip, who had been busily engaged in welcoming the last comers, led off a stately dame upon his arm, and we followed in procession, a demure young daughter of the house being assigned to me. We were slowly making our way round the dining-room, when, just as we passed the end of the table, Sir Philip turned and laid his hand upon my shoulder.

"I have scarcely had time for a word yet," he said; "but how are they all in Yorkshire?"

I don't know what answer I gave; some one from behind begged leave to pass, and I was borne on utterly bewildered. Yorkshire! what had I to do with Yorkshire? And then, all at once, the appalling truth burst on me like a thunder-clap—I was the wrong man! Yes; now I recalled a certain Captain Olifant, whom I had once met at a mess-dinner, and who, as I had then heard, belonged to an old Yorkshire family. We could count no sort of kinship with them {539} but here I was, for some inexplicable reason, assumed as one of them, perhaps as the eldest son and heir of their broad acres, and regaled accordingly. My situation was sufficiently unpleasant, and in the first impulse of dismay, I made a dash at a central seat where I might be as far as possible from both host and hostess. But my manoeuvre failed. Lady Hetherton's soft tones were all too audible as she said: "Mr. Olifant, perhaps you will come up here; the post of honor;" and of danger too, in my case; but there was no help for it, and I went. As I unfolded my napkin, striving hard for a cool and easy demeanor, I mentally surveyed my position, and decided on my tactics. I could not and would not there and then declare myself an embodied mistake; I must trust to chance and my own wits to carry me through the evening, and leave my explanations for another season. Alas! my trials full soon began. "We had hardly been seated three minutes, when Lady Hetherton turned to me.

"We were so very glad you were able to come to-night, Mr. Olifant; Sir Philip had quite set his heart upon seeing you here. It is such a great pleasure to him to revive an old friendship; and he was saying that he had almost lost sight of your family."

I murmured something not very coherent about distance and active life.

"Ah, yes, country gentlemen have so much to do that they really are greatly tied at home. I think, though, that I once had the pleasure of meeting a sister of yours in town—Margaret her name was, and she was suffering from some affection of the spine. I hope she is better now?"

"Much better, thank you." And then, in the faint hope of turning the conversation, I asked if they were often in town.

"Not so often as I should wish. Sir Philip has a great dislike to London; but I always enjoy it, for one meets everybody there. By-the-by, Olifant, the Fordes must be near neighbors of yours. I am sure I have heard them speak of Calveston."

I did not dare to say they were not, lest inquiries should follow which might betray my extreme ignorance of Yorkshire geography in general, and the locality of Calveston in particular; so I chose the lesser peril, and answered cheerfully; "Oh yes, quite near within an easy walk of us."

"What charming people they are!" said Lady Hetherton, growing almost enthusiastic. "The two eldest girls were staying here last spring, and we all lost our hearts to them, they were so bright and pleasant; and Katie, too, is growing so very pretty. She isn't out yet, is she?"

"No; I fancy she is to be presented next year," I responded, reflecting that while I was about it I might as well do it thoroughly. "She ought to make a sensation."

"Ah, then," said Lady Hetherton eagerly, "you agree with me about her beauty."

"Oh, entirely. I expect she will be quite the belle of our country balls." And then, in the same breath, I turned to the shy Miss Hetherton beside me, and startled her by an abrupt inquiry whether she liked balls. She must have thought, at any rate, that I liked talking, for her timid, orthodox reply was scarcely uttered, before I plied her with fresh questions, and deluged her with a flood of varied eloquence. Races, archery, croquet, Switzerland, Paris, Garibaldi, the American war, Müller's capture, and Tennyson's new poem, all played their part in turn. For why? Was I not aware that Lady Hetherton's conversation with the solemn old archdeacon opposite flagged from time to time, and that, at every lull, she looked toward me, as though concocting fresh means of torture. But I gained the day; and at length, with secret exultation, watched the ladies slowly defiling from the room. Poor innocent! I little knew what was impending. The last voluminous skirt had scarcely disappeared, when Sir Philip left his chair, and advancing {540} up the table, glass in hand, seated himself in his wife's place at my elbow. I tried to believe that he might intend to devote himself to the arch-deacon, but that good gentleman was more than half inclined to nod, and my left-hand neighbor was deep in a geological discussion; so I sat on, spell-bound, like the sparrow beneath the awful shadow of the hawk. Certainly, there was not much outward resemblance between that bird of prey and Sir Philip's comely, smiling visage, as he leaned forward, and said cheerily: "Well, now, I want to hear all about them."

It was not an encouraging beginning for me, but I had committed myself with Lady Hetherton too far for a retreat. Like Cortes, I had burned my ships. Before I had framed my answer, the baronet proceeded: "I don't know any of you young ones, but your father and I were fast friends once upon a time. Many's the lark we've had together at Harrow, ay, and at Oxford too; for he was a wild-spirited fellow then, was Harry Olifant, though, I daresay, he has settled down into a sober country squire long ago."

It was plain that Sir Philip liked to hear himself talk, and my courage revived.

"Why, yes," I said; "years and cares do work great changes in most men; I daresay you would hardly know him now."

"I daresay not. But he is well, and as good a shot as in the old Oxford days?"

"Just as good. He is never happier than among his turnips." And then I shuddered at my own audacity, as I pictured my veritable parent, a hard-worked barrister, long since dead, and with about as much notion of firing a gun as one of his own briefs.

"Quite right, quite right," exclaimed Sir Philip energetically, "and we can find you some fair sport here, my boy, though the birds are wild this year. Come over as often as you like while you are at Linbeach; or, better still, come and slay here."

I thanked him, and explained that I was staying at Linbeach for the sea-air, and that I must be in town in a few days.

"I'm sorry for that. We ought to have found you out sooner; but I only chanced to see your name at the library last Friday. And so you are at Merton?"

"Yes, I'm at Merton," said I, feeling it quite refreshing to speak the truth.

"Ah, I'm glad your father's stuck to the old college; you could not be at a better one. That boy of mine is wild for soldiering, or I should have sent him there."

The mystery stood revealed. I had recorded my name on the visitors' board as H. Olifant, Merton College, Oxford; and by a strange coincidence, Sir Philip's former friend had belonged to the same college, and owned the same initial. The coincidence was indeed so complete, that it had evidently never dawned upon the baronet that I could be other than the son of his old chum. He sat now sipping his wine, with almost a sad expression on his honest face.

"Ah, my lad," he said presently, "when you come to my age, you'll look back to your old college and your old friends as I do now. But what was I going to ask you? Oh, I remember. Have you seen any of the Fordes lately?"

I glanced round despairingly at the geologists, but they were lost to everything except blue lias and old red sandstone, and there was no hope of effecting a diversion in that quarter.

"Well, no—not very lately," I responded slowly, as though trying to recall the exact date when I last had that felicity. "To tell the truth, I don't go down into those parts so often as I ought to do."

"There's a family for you!" Sir Philip went on triumphantly; "how well they are doing. That young George Forde will distinguish himself one of these days, or I'm much mistaken; and Willie, too—do you know {541} whether he has passed for Woolwich yet?"

I could not say that I did, but the good baronet's confidence in Forde genius was as satisfactory as certainty.

"He's sure to pass, quite sure; never knew such clever lads; and as for beauty—that little Katie"—But here the slumbering archdeacon came to my aid by waking up with a terrific start and a loud "Eh!— what! time to join the ladies."

There was a general stir, and I contrived to make my escape to the drawing-room. If I could only have escaped altogether; but it was not yet half-past nine. The tall footmen and severe butler were lounging in the hall, and I felt convinced that if I pleaded illness, Sir Philip would lay violent hands on me, and insist on my spending the night there. After all, the worst was over, and in the crowded drawing-room, I might with slight dexterity avoid all shoals and quicksands. So I ensconced myself in a low chair, guarded by a big table on one side, and on the other by a comfortable motherly-looking woman in crimson satin, to whom I made myself agreeable. We got on very well together, and I breathed and chatted freely in the delightful persuasion that she at least knew no more of the Fordes than I did. But my malignant star was in the ascendant. I was in the midst of a glowing description of the charms of a reading-party at the lakes, when Sir Philip again assailed me: "Well, Mrs. Sullivan," he said, addressing my companion, "have you been asking after your little favorite?"

"My little favorite?" repeated Mrs. Sullivan inquiringly.

She did not know whom he meant, but I did; I knew quite well.

"Katie Forde, I mean; the little black-eyed girl who used to go into such ecstasies over your roses and ferns—you have not forgotten her yet, have you?"

No, unluckily for me, Mrs. Sullivan had not forgotten her. I was charged with a string of the fond, unmeaning messages which ladies love to exchange; and it was only by emphatically declaring that I should not be in Yorkshire for many months, that I escaped being made the bearer of sundry curious roots and bulbs to the fair Katharine.

But Sir Philip soon interrupted us: "There's a cousin of yours in the next room, Mr. Olifant," he said, evidently thinking that he was making a most agreeable announcement: "she would like to see you, if you will let me take you to her."

I heard and trembled. A cousin. Oh, the Fordes were nothing to this! Why did people have cousins; and why, oh why, should every imaginable evil befal me on this disastrous evening! Such were my agonized reflections while with unwilling steps I followed my host to execution. He led me to a young lady who was serenely examining some prints. "I have brought him to you, Miss Hunter; here's your cousin, Mr. Olifant."

She looked at me, but there was no recognition in her eyes. How could there be, indeed, when we had never met before! What would she do next? What she did do was to hold out her hand with a good-humored smile, and at the same time Sir Philip observed complacently: "You don't know one another, you know." Not know one another; of course we didn't; but I could have hugged him for telling me so; and in the joy of my reprieve, I devoted myself readily to my supposed cousin, a bright, pleasant girl, happily as benighted regarding her real relatives as I was about my imaginary ones. The minutes slipped fast away, the hands of the clock pointed at ten, the guests were beginning to depart, and I was congratulating myself that the ordeal was safely passed, when, happening to turn my head, I saw Sir Philip once more advancing upon me, holding in his hand a photograph book. My doom was sealed! My relentless persecutor was resolved to expose me, and with diabolical craft had planned the certain {542} means. Horrible visions of public disgrace, forcible ejection, nay, even of the pump itself, floated before my dizzy brain, while on he came nearer and ever nearer. "There!" he exclaimed, stopping just in front of me, and holding out the ill-omened book—"There! you can tell me who that is, can't you?"

It was a baby—a baby of a year old, sitting on a cushion, with a rattle in its hand, and it was of course unlike any creature I had ever beheld. "Hm, haw," murmured I, contemplating it in utter desperation; "children are so much alike that really—but"—as a brilliant idea suddenly flashed on me: "surely it must be a Forde!"

"Of course it is," and Sir Philip clapped me on the back in a transport of delight. "I thought you would recognize it. Capital! isn't it? The little thing must be exactly like its mother; and I fancy I see a look of Willie in it too."

I could endure no more. Another such victory would be almost worse than a defeat; and while "my cousin" was rhapsodizing over the infantine charms so touchingly portrayed, I started up, took an abrupt farewell of my host, and despite his vehement remonstrances, went off in search of Lady Hetherton, and beat a successful retreat. As I stepped out into the portico, the pony-trap which I had ordered drove up to the door, and jumping in, I rattled away toward Linbeach, exhausted in body and mind, yet relieved to feel that each succeeding moment found me further and further from the precincts of Grantham. Not till I was snugly seated in the arm-chair in Mrs. Plumb's parlor, watching the blue smoke-wreaths wafted up from my best beloved pipe —not till then could I believe that I was thoroughly safe, and begin to review calmly the events of the evening. And now arose the very embarrassing inquiry: What was next to be done? Sir Philip's parting words had been an energetic exhortation to come over and shoot, the next day, or, in fact, whenever I pleased. "We can't give you the grouse of your native moors," he said as a final thrust, "but we can find you some partridges, I hope;" and I had agreed with a hypocritical smile, while internally resolving that no mortal power should take me to Grantham again. Of one thing there could be no doubt—an explanation was due to the kind-hearted baronet, and it must be given. Of course I might have stolen off from Linbeach still undiscovered, but I dismissed the notion instantly. I had gone far enough already—too far, Sir Philip might not unnaturally think. No; I must write to him, and it had best be done at once. "Heigh-ho," I sighed, as I rummaged out ink and paper, and sat down to the great work; "so ends my solitary friendship at Linbeach." It took me a long time to concoct the epistle, but it was accomplished at last. In terms which I would fain hope were melting and persuasive, I described my birth and parentage, related how I had only discovered my mistaken identity after my arrival at Grantham, and made a full apology for having then, in my embarrassment, perpetuated the delusion. I wound up by the following eloquent and dignified words: "Of course, I can have no claim whatever to continue an acquaintance so formed, and I can only tender my grateful thanks for the warm hospitality of which I have accidentally been the recipient." The letter was sealed and sent, and I was left to speculate how it might be received. Would Sir Philip vouchsafe a reply, or would he treat me with silent contempt? I could fancy him capable of a very tolerable degree of anger, in spite of his bonhomie, and I blushed up to my brows when I pictured quiet Lady Hetherton recalling my remarks about Miss Katie Forde. The second day's post came in and brought me nothing; and now I began to be seized with a nervous dread of encountering any of the Grantham Park party by chance, and this dread grew so {543} unpleasant that I determined to cut short my visit, and return to town at once. My resolution was no sooner made than acted on. I packed my portmanteau, settled accounts with Mrs. Plumb, and went off to take my place by the next morning's coach. Coming hastily out of the booking-office in the dusk, I almost ran against somebody standing by the door. It was Sir Philip, and I stepped hastily back; but he recognized me at once, and held out his hand with a hearty laugh. "Ah, Mr. Olifant, is it you? I was on my way to your lodgings, so we'll walk together;" and not noticing my confusion, he linked his arm in mine, and continued: "I got your letter last evening, when I came in from a long day's shooting, and very much amazed I was, that I must own. I did not answer it at once, for I was half-dead with walking, and, beside, I always like talking better than writing, So now I have come to tell you that I think you've behaved like an honest man and a gentleman in writing that letter; and I'm very glad to have made your acquaintance, though you are not Harry Olifant's son. As for the mistake, why, 'twas my own fault for taking it for granted you must be the man I fancied you. My lady is just the least bit vexed that we should have made such geese of ourselves; but come over and shoot to-morrow, and we'll give you a quiet dinner and a bed in your own proper person; and she will be very glad to see you. Mind I expect you."

After all my resolutions, I did go to Grantham on the following day; and my dinner by mistake was the precursor of a most pleasant acquaintance, which became in time a warm and lasting friendship.

From All the Year Round.

NOAH'S ARKS.

In Kew Gardens is a seldom-visited collection of all the kinds of wood which we have ever heard of, accompanied by specimens of various articles customarily made of those woods in the countries of their growth. Tools, implements, small articles of furniture, musical instruments, sabots and wooden-shoes, boot-trees and shoe-lasts, bows and arrows, planes, saw-handles—all are here, and thousands of other things which it would take a very long summer day indeed even to glance at. The fine display of colonial woods, which were built up into fanciful trophies at the International Exhibition of eighteen hundred and sixty-two, has been transferred to one of these museums; and a noble collection it makes.

We know comparatively little in England of the minor uses of wood. We use wood enough in building houses and railway structures; our carriage-builders and wheelwrights cut up and fashion a great deal more; and our cabinet-makers know how to stock our rooms with furniture, from three-legged stools up to costly cabinets; but implements and minor articles are less extensively made of wood in England than in foreign countries—partly because our forests are becoming thinned, and partly because iron and iron-work are so abundant and cheap. In America, matters are very different. There are thousands of square miles of forest which belong to no one in particular, and the wood of which may be claimed by those who are at the trouble of felling the trees. {544} Nay, a backwoodsman would be very glad to effect a clearing on such terms as these, seeing that the trees encumber the ground on which he wishes to grow corn crops.

The wood, when the trees have been felled and converted into boards and planks, is applied to almost countless purposes of use. Of use, we say; for the Americans are too bustling a people to devote much time to the fabricating of ornaments; they prefer to buy these ready made from Britishers and other Europeans. Pails, bowls, washing-machines, wringing-machines, knife-cleaning boards, neat light vehicles, neat light furniture, dairy vessels, kitchen utensils, all are made by the Americans of clean, tidy-looking wood, and are sold at very low prices. Machinery is used to a large extent in this turnery and wood-ware: the manufacturers not having the fear of strikes before their eyes, use machines just where they think this kind of aid is likely to be most serviceable. The way in which they get a little bowl out of a big bowl, and this out of a bigger, and this out of a bigger still, is a notable example of economy in workmanship. On the continent of Europe the wood-workers are mostly handicraftsmen, who niggle away at their little bits of wood without much aid from machinery. Witness the briar-root pipes of St. Claude. Smart young fellows who sport this kind of smoking-bowl in England, neither know nor care for the fact that it comes from a secluded spot in the Jura mountains. Men and women, boys and girls, earn from threepence to four shillings a day in various little bits of carved and turned work; but the crack wages are paid to the briar-root pipe-makers. England imports many more than she smokes, and sends off the rest to America. M. Audiganne says that "in those monster armies which have sprung up so suddenly on the soil of the great republic, there is scarcely a soldier but has his St. Claude briar-root pipe in his pocket." The truth is, that, unlike cutties and meerschaums, and other clay and earthen pipes, these briar-root productions are very strong, and will bear a great deal of knocking about. The same French writer says that when his countrymen came here to see our International Exhibition, some of them bought and carried home specimens of these pipes as English curiosities: not aware that the little French town of St. Claude was the place of their production.

In Germany the wood-work, so far as English importers know anything of it, is mostly in the form of small trinkets and toys for children. The production of these is immense. In the Tyrol, and near the Thuringian Forest, in the middle states of the ill-organized confederacy, and wherever forests abound, there the peasants spend much of their time in making toys. In the Tyrol, for example, there is a valley called the Grödnerthal, about twenty miles long, in which the rough climate and barren soil will not suffice to grow corn for the inhabitants, who are rather numerous. Shut out from the agricultural labor customary in other districts, the people earn their bread chiefly by wood carving. They make toys of numberless kinds (in which Noah's Ark animals are very predominant) of the soft wood of the Siberian pine—known to the Germans as ziebelnusskiefer. The tree is of slow growth, found on the higher slopes of the valley, but now becoming scarce, owing to the improvidence of the peasants in cutting down the forests without saving or planting others to succeed them. For a hundred years and more the peasants have been carvers. Nearly every cottage is a workshop. All the occupants, male and female, down to very young children, seat themselves round a table, and fashion their little bits of wood. They use twenty or thirty different kinds of tools, under the magic of which the wood is transformed into a dog, a lion, a man, or what not. Agents represent these carvers in various cities of Europe, to dispose of the wares; but they nearly all find their way back again {545} to their native valleys, to spend their earnings in peace.

Many of the specimens shown at the Kew museums are more elaborate than those which could be produced wholly by hand. A turning-lathe of some power must have been needed. Indeed, the manner in which these zoological productions are fabricated is exceedingly curious, and is little likely to be anticipated by ordinary observers. Who, for instance, would imagine for a moment that a wooden horse, elephant, or tiger, or any other member of the Noah's Ark family, could be turned in a lathe, like a ball, bowl, or bedpost? How could the turner's cutting tool, while the piece of wood is rotating in the lathe, make the head stick out in the front, and the ears at the top, and the tail in the rear, and the legs underneath? And how could the animal be made longer than he is high, and higher than he is broad? And how could all the ins and outs, the ups and downs, the swellings and sinkings, be produced by a manipulation which only seems* suitable for circular objects? These questions are all fair ones, and deserve a fair answer. The articles, then, are not fully made in the lathe; they are brought to the state of flat pieces, the outline or contour of which bears an approximate resemblance to the profile of an animal. These flat pieces are in themselves a puzzle; for it is difficult to see how the lathe can have had anything to do with their production. The truth is, the wood is first turned into rings. Say that a horse three inches long is to be fabricated. A block of soft pine wood is prepared, and cut into a slab three inches thick, by perhaps fifteen inches in diameter; the grain running in the direction of the thickness. Out of this circular slab a circular piece is cut from the center, possibly six inches in diameter, leaving the slab in the form of a ring, like an extra thick india-rubber elastic band. While this ring is in the lathe, the turner applies his chisels and gouges to it in every part, on the outer edge, on the inner edge, and on both sides. All sorts of curves are made, now deep, now shallow; now convex, now concave; now with single curvature, now with double. A looker-on could hardly by any possibility guess what these curvings and twistings have to do with each other, for the ring is still a ring, and nothing else; but the cunning workman has got it all in his mind's eye. When the turning is finished, the ring is bisected or cut across, not into two slices, but into two segments or semicircular pieces. Looking at either end of either piece, lo! there is the profile of a horse—without a tail, certainly, but a respectably good horse in other respects. The secret is now divulged. The turner, while the ring or annulus is in the lathe—a Saturn's ring without a Saturn—turns the outer edge into the profile of the top of the head and the back of a horse, the one flat surface into the profile of the chest and the fore legs, and the other flat surface into the profile of the hind quarters and hind legs, and the inner edge of the ring into the profile of the belly, and the deep recess between the fore and hind legs. The curvatures are really very well done, for the workmen have good models to copy from, and long practice gives them accuracy of hand and eye.

An endless ring of tailless horses has been produced, doubtless the most important part of the affair; but there is much ingenuity yet to be shown in developing from this abstract ring a certain number of single, concrete, individual, proper Noah's Ark horses, with proper Noah's Ark tails. The ring is chopped or sawn up into a great many pieces. Each piece is thicker at one end than the other, because the outer diameter of the ring was necessarily greater than the inner; but with this allowance each piece may be considered flat. The thick end is the head of the horse, the thin end the hind quarter; one projecting piece represents the position and profile of the fore legs, but they are not separated; and similarly of the hind {546} legs. Now is the time for the carver to set to work. He takes the piece of wood in hand, equalizes the thickness where needful, and pares off the sharp edges. He separates into two ears the little projecting piece which juts out from the head, separates into two pairs of legs the two projecting pieces which jut out from the body, and makes a respectable pair of eyes, with nostrils and mouth of proper thorough-bred character; he jags the back of the neck in the proper way to form a mane, and makes, not a tail, but a little recess to which a tail may comfortably be glued. The tail is a separate affair. An endless ring of horses' tails is first turned in a lathe. A much smaller slab, smaller in diameter and in thickness than the other, is cut into an annulus or ring; and this ring is turned by tools on both edges and both sides. When bisected, each end of each half of the ring exhibits the profile of a horse's tail; and when cut up into small bits, each bit has the wherewithal in it for fashioning one tail. After the carver has done his work, each horse receives its proper tail; and they are all proper long tails too, such as nature may be supposed to have made, and not the clipped and cropped affairs which farriers and grooms produce.

This continuous ring system is carried faithfully through the whole Noah's Ark family. One big slab is for an endless ring of elephants; another of appropriate size for camels; others for lions, leopards, wolves, foxes, dogs, donkeys, ducks, and all the rest. Sometimes the ears are so shaped as not very conveniently to be produced in the same ring as the other part of the animal; in this case an endless ring of ears is made, and chopped up into twice as many ears as there are animals. Elephant's trunks stick out in a way that would perplex the turner somewhat; he therefore makes an endless ring of trunks, chops it up, and hands over the pieces to the carver to be fashioned into as many trunks as there are elephants. In some instances, where the animal is rather a bullet-headed sort of an individual, the head is turned in a lathe separately, and glued on to the headless body. If a carnivorous animal has a tail very much like that of one of the graminivorous sort, the carver says nothing about it, but makes the same endless ring of tails serve both; or they may belong to the same order but different families—as, for instance, the camel and the cow, which are presented by these Noah's Ark people with tails cut from the same endless ring. Other toys are made in the same way. Those eternal soldiers which German boys are always supposed to love so much, as if there were no end of Schleswig-Holsteins for them to conquer, are—if made of wood (for tin soldiers are also immensely in request)—turned separately in a lathe, so far as their martial frames admit of this mode of shaping; but the muskets and some other portions are made on the endless ring system. All this may be seen very well at Kew; for there are the blocks of soft pine, the slabs cut from them (with the grain of the wood in the direction of the thickness), the rings turned from the slabs, the turnings and curvatures of the rings, the profile of an animal seen at each end, the slices cut from each ring, the animal fashioned from each slice, the ring of tails, the separate tails for each ring, the animal properly tailed in all its glory, and a painted specimen or two to show the finished form in which the loving couples go into the ark—pigs not so much smaller than elephants as they ought to be, but piggishly shaped nevertheless.

All the English toy-makers agree, with one accord, that we cannot for an instant compete with the Germans and Tyrolese in the fabrication of such articles, price for price. We have not made it a large and important branch of handicraft; and our workmen have not studied natural history with sufficient assiduity to give the proper distinctive forms to the animals. {547} The more elaborate productions—such as the baby-dolls which can say "mamma," and make their chests heave like any sentimental damsels—are of French, rather than German manufacture, and are not so much wooden productions as combinations of many different materials. Papier-mache, moulded into form, is becoming very useful in the doll and animal trade; while india-rubber and gutta-percha are doing wonders. The real Noah's Ark work, however, is thoroughly German, and is specially connected with wood-working. Some of the more delicate and elaborate specimens of carving—such as the groups for chimney-piece ornaments, honored by the protection of glass shades—are made of lime-tree or linden-wood, by the peasants of Oberammergau, in the mountain parts of Bavaria. There were specimens of these kinds of work at our two exhibitions which could not have been produced in England at thrice the price; our good carvers are few, and their services are in request at good wages for mediaeval church-work. We should be curious to know what an English carver would require to be paid for a half-guinea Bavarian group now before us—a Tyrolese mountaineer seated on a rock, his rifle resting on his arm, the studded nails in his climbing shoes, a dead chamois at his feet, his wife leaning her hand lightly on his shoulder, his thumb pointing over his shoulder to denote the quarter where he had shot the chamois, his wooden bowl of porridge held on his left knee, the easy fit and flow of the garments of both man and woman— all artistically grouped and nicely cut, and looking clean and white in linden-wood. No English carver would dream of such a thing at such a price. However, these are not the most important of the productions of the peasant carvers, commercially speaking; like as our Mintons and Copelands make more money by everyday crockery than by beautiful Parian statuettes, so do the German toy-makers look to the Noah's Ark class of productions as their main stay in the market, rather than to more elegant and artistic works.

{548}

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

BY CARDINAL WISEMAN.

[In the autumn of last year a communication was made to his eminence the late Cardinal Wiseman by H. Bence Jones, Esq., M.D., as Secretary of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, requesting him to deliver a lecture before that society. The cardinal, with the prompt kindness usual to him, at once assented. The Shakespeare Tercentenary seemed to prescribe the subject, which his eminence therefore selected.

The following pages were dictated by him in the last weeks of his life. The latter part was taken down in the beginning of January; the earlier part was dictated on Saturday the fourteenth of that month. It was his last intellectual exertion, and it overtaxed his failing strength.

The Rev. Dr. Clifford, chaplain to the Hospital of St. John and St. Elizabeth, who acted as his amanuensis, states, from the lips of his eminence, that the matter contained in these pages is the beginning and the ending of what he intended to deliver. We have, therefore, only a fragment of a whole which was never completed except in the author's mind.]

I.

There have been some men in the world's history—and they are necessarily few—who by their deaths have deprived mankind of the power to do justice to their merits, in those particular spheres of excellence in which they had been pre-eminent. When the "immortal" Raphael for the last time laid down his palette, still moist with the brilliant colors which he had spread upon his unfinished masterpiece, destined to be exposed to admiration above his bier, he left none behind him who could worthily depict and transmit to us his beautiful lineaments: so that posterity has had to seek in his own paintings, among the guards at a sepulchre, or among the youthful disciples in an ancient school, some figure which may be considered as representing himself.

When his mighty rival, Michelangelo, cast down that massive chisel which no one after him was worthy or able to wield, none survived him who could venture to repeat in marble the rugged grandeur of his countenance; but we imagine that we can trace in the head of some unfinished satyr, or in the sublime countenance of his Moses, the natural or the idealized type from which he drew his stern and noble inspirations.

And, to turn to another great art, when Mozart closed his last uncompleted score, and laid him down to pass from the regions of earthly to those of heavenly music, which none had so closely approached as he, the science over which he ruled could find no strains in which worthily to mourn him except his own, and was compelled to sing for the first time his own marvelous requiem at his funeral. [Footnote 101]

[Footnote 101: The same may be said of the celebrated Cimarosa.]

No less can it be said that when the pen dropped from Shakespeare's hand, when his last mortal illness mastered the strength of even his genius, the world was left powerless to describe in writing his noble and unrivalled characteristics. Hence we turn back upon himself, and endeavor to draw from his own works the only true records of his genius and his mind. [Footnote 102]

[Footnote 102: Even in his lifetime this seems to have been foreseen. In 1664, in an epigram addressed to "Master William Shakespeare," and first published by Mr. Halliwell, occurred the following lines: "Besides in places thy wit windes like Maeander. When (whence) needy new composers borrow more Thence (than) Terence doth from Plautus or Menander, But to praise thee aright I want thy store. Then let thine owne words thine owne worth upraise And help t' adorne thee with deserved baies." Halliwell's Life of Shakespeare, p. 160.]

{549}

We apply to him phrases which he has uttered of others; we believe that he must have involuntarily described himself, when he says,

          "Take him all in all,
  We shall not look upon his like again;"

or that he must even consciously have given a reflection of himself when he so richly represents to us "the poet's eye in a fine phrenzy rolling." ("Midsummer-Night's Dream," act v., scene 1.)

But in fact, considering that the character of a man is like that which he describes, "as compounded of many simples extracted from many objects" ("As You Like It," act iv., scene 1), we naturally seek for those qualities which enter into his composition; we look for them in his own pages; we endeavor to cull from every part of his works such attributions of great and noble qualities to his characters, and unite them so as to form what we believe is his truest portrait. In truth, no other author has perhaps existed who has so completely reflected himself in his works as Shakespeare. For, as artists will tell us that every great master has more or less reproduced in his works characteristics to be found in himself, this is far more true of our greatest dramatist, whose genius, whose mind, whose heart, and whose entire soul live and breathe in every page and every line of his imperishable works. Indeed, as in these there is infinitely greater variety, and consequently greater versatility of power necessary to produce it, so must the amount of elements which enter into is composition represent changeable yet blending qualities beyond what the most finished master in any other art an be supposed to have possessed.

The positive and directly applicable materials which we possess for constructing a biography of this our greatest writer, are more scanty than have been collected to illustrate the life of many an inferior author. His contemporaries, his friends, perhaps admirers, have left us but few anecdotes of his life, and have recorded but few traits of either his appearance or his character. Those who immediately succeeded him seem to have taken but little pains to collect early traditions concerning him, while yet they must have been fresh in the recollections of his fellow-countrymen, and still more of his fellow-townsmen. [Footnote 103]

[Footnote 103: As evidence of this neglect we may cite the "Journal" of the Rev. John Ward, Incumbent of Stratford-upon-Avon, to which he was appointed in 1662. This diary, which has been published by Doctor Severn, "from the original MSS.," preserved in the library of the Medical Society of London, contains but two pages relating to Shakespeare, and those contain but scanty and unsatisfactory notices. I will quote only two sentences: "Remember to peruse Shakespeare's Plays—bee much versed in them, that I may not bee ignorant in that matter, whether Dr. Heylin does well, in reckoning up the dramatick poets which have been famous in England, to omit Shakespeare" (p. 184). Shakespeare's daughter was still alive when this was written, as appears from the sentence that immediately follows: it seems to us wonderful that so soon after the poet's death a shrewd and clever clergyman and physician (for Mr. Ward was both) should have known so little about his celebrated townsman's works or life. ]

It appears as though they were scarcely conscious of the great and brilliant luminary of English literature which was shining still, or had but lately passed away; and as though they could not anticipate either the admiration which was to succeed their duller perceptions of his unapproachable grandeur, or the eager desire which this would generate of knowing even the smallest details of its rise, its appearance, its departure. For by the biography of Shakespeare one cannot understand the records of what he bought, of what he sold, or the recital of those acts which only confound him with the common mass which surrounded him, and make him appear as the worthy burgess or the thrifty merchant; though even about the ordinary commonplace portions of his life such uncertainty exists, that doubts have been thrown on the very genuineness of that house which he is supposed to have inhabited.

Now, it is the characteristic individualizing quality, actions, and mode of executing his works, to whatever class of excellence he may belong, that we long to be familiar with in order to say that we know the man. What matters it to us that he paid so many marks or {550} shillings to purchase a homestead in Stratford-upon-Avon? The simple autograph of his name is now worth all the sums that he thus expended. One single line of one of his dramas, written in his own hand, would be worth to his admirers all the sums which are known to have passed between him and others. What has become of the goodly folios which must have once existed written in his own hand? Where are the books annotated or even scratched by his pen, from which he drew the subjects and sometimes the substance of his dramas? What vandalism destroyed the first, or dispersed the second of these valuable treasures? How is it that we know nothing of his method of composition? Was it in solitude and sacred seclusion, self-imprisoned for hours beyond the reach of the turmoil of the street or the domestic sounds of home? Or were his unrivalled works produced in scraps of time and fugitive moments, even perhaps in the waiting-room of the theatre, or the brawling or jovial sounds of the tavern?

Was he silent, thoughtful, while his fertile brain was seething and heaving in the fermentation of his glorious conceptions; so that men should have said—"Hush! Shakespeare is at work with some new and mighty imaginings!" or wore he always that light and careless spirit which often belongs to the spontaneous facility of genius; so that his comrades may have wondered when, and where, and how his grave characters, his solemn scenes, his fearful catastrophes, and his sublime maxims of original wisdom, were conceived, planned, matured, and finally written down, to rule for ever the world of letters? Almost the only fact connected with his literary life which has come down to us is one which has been recorded, perhaps with jealousy, certainly with ill-temper, by his friend Ben Jonson—that he wrote with overhaste, and hardly ever erased a line, though it would have been better had he done so with many.

This almost total absence of all external information, this drying-up of the ordinary channels of personal history, forces us to seek for the character and the very life of Shakespeare in his own works. But how difficult, in analyzing the complex constitution of such a man's principles, motives, passions, and affections, to discriminate between what he has drawn for himself, and what he has created by the force of his imagination. Dealing habitually with fictions, sometimes in their noblest, sometimes in their vilest forms—here gross and even savage, there refined and sometimes ethereal, how shall we discover what portions of them were copied from the glass which he held before himself, what from the magic mirrors across which flitted illusive or fanciful imagery? The work seems hopeless. It is not like that of the printer, who, from a chaotic heap of seemingly unmeaning lead, draws out letter after letter, and so disposes them that they shall make senseful and even brilliant lines. It is more like the hopeless labor of one who, from the fragments of a tesselated pavement, should try to draw the elegant and exquisitely tinted figure which once it bore.

This difficulty of appreciating, and still more of delineating, the character of our great poet, makes him, without perhaps an exception, the most difficult literary theme in English letters.

How to reduce the subject to a lecture seems indeed a literal paradox. But when to this difficulty is added that of an impossible compression into narrow limits of the widest and vastest compass ever embraced by any one man's genius, it must appear an excess of rashness in any-one to presume that he can do justice to the subject on which I am addressing you.

It seems, therefore, hardly wonderful that even the last year, dedicated naturally to the tercentenary commemoration of William Shakespeare, should have passed over without any public eulogy of his greatness in this our metropolis. It seemed, indeed, as if the magnitude of that one man's genius was too oppressive for this generation. It was not, I believe, an undervaluing {551} of his merits which produced the frustration of efforts, and the disappointment of expectations, that seemed to put to rout and confusion, or rather to paralyze, the exertions so strenuously commenced to mark the year as a great epoch in England's literary history. I believe, on the contrary, that the dimensions of Shakespeare had grown so immeasurably in the estimation of his fellow-countrymen, that the proportions of his genius to all that had followed him, and all that surround us, had grown so enormously in the judgment and feeling of the country, from the nobleman to the workman, that the genius of the man oppressed us, and made us feel that all our multiplied resources of art and speech were unequal to his worthy commemoration. No plan proposed for this purpose seemed adequate to attain it. Nothing solid and permanent that could either come up to his merits or to our aspirations seemed to be within the grasp either of the arts or of the wealth of our country. The year has passed away, and Shakespeare remains without any monument, except that which, by his wonderful writings, he has raised for himself. Even the research after a site fit for the erection of a monument to him, in the city of squares, of gardens, and of parks, seemed only to work perplexity and hopelessness.

Presumptuous as it may appear, the claim to connect myself with that expired and extinct movement is my only apology for my appearing before you. If, a year after its time, I take upon myself the eulogy of Shakespeare, if I appear to come forward as with a funeral oration, to give him, in a manner, posthumous glory, it is because my work has dropped out of its place, and not because I have inopportunely misplaced it. In the course of the last year, it was proposed to me, both directly and indirectly, to deliver a lecture on Shakespeare. I was bold enough to yield my assent, and thus felt that I had contracted an obligation to the memory of the bard, as well as to those who thought that my sharing what was done for his honor would possess any value. A task undertaken becomes a duty unfulfilled. When, therefore, it was proposed to me to perform my portion of the homage which I considered due to him, though it was to be a month too late, I felt it would be cowardice to shrink from its performance.

For in truth the undertaking required some courage; and to retire before its difficulties might be stigmatized as a dastardly timidity. It is a work of courage at any time and in any place to undertake a lecture upon Shakespeare, more in fact than to venture on the delivery of a series. The latter gives scope for the thousand things which one would wish to say—it affords ample space for apposite illustration—and it enables one to enrich the subject with the innumerable and inimitable beauties that are flung like gems or flowers over every page of his magnificent works. But in the midst of public, or rather universal, celebration of a national and secular festival in his honor, in the presence probably of the most finished literary characters in this highly-educated country, still more certainly before numbers of those whom the nation acknowledges as deeply read in the works of our poet as the most accomplished critic of any age has been in the writings of the classics—men who have introduced into our literature a class-name—that of "Shakespearian scholars"—to have ventured to speak on this great theme might seem to have required, not courage, but temerity. Why, it might have been justly asked, do none of those who have consumed their lives in the study of him, not page by page, but line by line, who have pressed his sweet fruits between their lips till they have absorbed all their lusciousness, who have made his words their study, his thoughts their meditation,—why does not one at least among them stand forward now, and leave for posterity the record of his matured observation? Perhaps I may assign the reason which I have before, that they {552} know, too, the unapproachable granduer of the theme, and the rare powers which are required to grasp and to hold it.

Be it so; but at any rate, if in the presence of others so much more capable it would have been rash to speak, to express one's thoughts, when there is no competition, may be pardonable at least.

And yet, when everybody else is silent, it may be very naturally asked, Have I a single claim to put forward upon your attention and indulgence? I think I may have one; though I fear that when I mention it, it may be considered either a paradox or a refutation of my pretensions. My claim, then, to be heard and borne with is this—that I have never in my life seen Shakespeare acted; I have never heard his eloquent speeches declaimed by gifted performers; I have not listened to his noble poetry as uttered by the kings or queens of tragedy; I have not witnessed his grand, richly-concerted scenes endowed with life by the graceful gestures, the classical attitudes, the contrasting emotions, and the pointed emphasis of those who in modern times may be considered to have even added to that which his genius produced; I know nothing of the original and striking readings or renderings of particular passages by masters of mimic art; I know him only on his flat page, as he is represented in immovable, featureless, unemotional type.

Nor am I acquainted with him surrounded, perhaps sometimes sustained, but, at any rate, worthily adorned and enhanced in accessory beauty, by the magic illusion of scenic decorations, the splendid pageantry which he simply hints at, but which, I believe, has been now realized to its most ideal exactness and richness—banquets, tournaments, and battles, with the almost deceptive accuracy of costume and of architecture. When I hear of all these additional ornaments hung around his noble works, the impression which they make upon my mind creates a deeper sense of amazement and admiration, how dramas written for the "Globe" Theatre, wretchedly lighted, incapable of grandeur even from want of space, and without those mechanical and artistical resources which belong to a later age, should be capable of bearing all this additional weight of lustre and magnificence without its being necessary to alter a word, still less a passage, from their original delivery. [Footnote 104 ] This exhibits the nicely-balanced point of excellence which is equally poised between simplicity and gorgeousness; which can retain its power and beauty, whether stript to its barest form or loaded with exuberant appurtenances.

[Footnote 104: The chorus which serves as a prologue to "King Henry V.," shows how Shakespeare's own mind keenly felt the deficiencies of his time, and almost anticipatingly wrote for the effects which a future age might supply:

          "But pardon, gentles all,
    This flat unraised spirit that hath dar'd,
    On this unworthy scaffold, to bring forth
    So great an object. Can this cock-pit hold
    The vasty fields of France? Or may we cram
    Within this wooden O the very casques
    That did affright the air at Agincourt.
    …
    Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts;
    Into a thousand parts divide one man,
    And make imaginary puissance:
    Think, when we talk of horses, that ye see them
    Printing their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth;
    For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings."]

After having said thus much of my own probably unenvied position, I think I shall not be wrong in assuming that none of Shakespeare's enthusiastic admirers, one of whom I profess myself to be, and that few of my audience, are in this exceptional position. They will probably consider this a disadvantage on my side; and to some extent I must acknowledge it—for Shakespeare wrote to be acted, and not to be read.

But, on the other hand, is it not something to have approached this wonderful man, and to have communed with him in silence and in solitude, face to face, alone with him alone; to have read and studied and meditated on him in early youth, without gloss or commentary, or preface or glossary? For such was my good or evil fortune; not during the still hours of night, but during that stiller portion of an Italian {553} afternoon, when silence is deeper than in the night, under a bright and sultry sun when all are at rest, all around you hushed to the very footsteps in a well-peopled house, except the unquelled murmuring of a fountain beneath orange trees, which mingled thus the most delicate of fragrance with the most soothing of sounds, both stealing together through the half-closed windows of wide and lofty corridors. Is there not more of that reverence and that relish which constitute the classical taste to be derived from the concentration of thought and feelings which the perusal of the simple unmarred and unoverlaid text produces; when you can ponder on a verse, can linger over a word, can repeat mentally and even orally with your own deliberation and your own emphasis, whenever dignity, beauty, or wisdom invite you to pause, or compel you to ruminate?

In fact, were you desired to give your judgment on the refreshing water of a pure fountain, you would not care to taste it from a richly-jewelled and delicately-chased cup; you would not consent to have it mingled with the choicest wine, nor flavored by a single drop of the most exquisite essence; you would not have it chilled with ice, or gently attempered by warmth. No, you would choose the most transparent crystal vessel, however homely; you would fill at the very cleft of the rock from which it bubbles fresh and bright, and drink it yet sparkling, and beading with its own air-pearls the walls of the goblet. Nay, is not an opposite course that which the poet himself censures as "wasteful, ridiculous excess?"

  "To gild refined gold, to paint the lily;
  To throw a perfume on the violet.
  …
  Or with a taper light
  To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to varnish."
            ("King John" act iv., scene 2.)

You will easily understand, from long and almost apologetic preamble, in the first place, that I take it for granted that I am addressing an audience which is not assembled to receive elementary or new information concerning England's greatest poet. On the contrary, I believe myself to stand before many who are able to judge, rather than merely accept, my opinions, and in the presence of an assembly exclusively composed of his admirers, thoroughly conversant with his works. A further consequence is this, that my lecture will not consist of extracts—still less of recitations of any of those beautiful passages which occur in every play of Shakespeare. The most celebrated of these are present to the mind of every English scholar, from his school-boy days to his maturer studies.

II.

It would be superfluous for a lecturer on Shakespeare to put to himself the question, What place do you intend to give to the subject of your discourse in the literature of England or of Europe? Whatever difference of opinion may exist elsewhere, I believe that in this country only one answer will be given. Among our native writers no one questions that Shakespeare is supremely pre-eminent, and most of us will probably assign him as lofty a position in the whole range of modern European literature. Perhaps no other nation possesses among its writers any one name to which there is no rival claim, nor even an approximation of equality, to make a balance against it. Were we to imagine in England a Walhalla erected to contain the effigies of great men, and were one especial hall to contain those of our most eminent dramatists, it must needs be so constructed as to have one central niche. Were a similar structure prepared in France, it would be natural to place in equal prominence at least two figures, or, in classical language, two different muses of Tragedy and of Comedy would have to be separately represented. But in England, assign what place we may to those who have excelled in either branch in mimic art, {554} the highest excellence in both would be found centered in one man; and from him on either side would have to range the successful cultivators of the drama.

But this claim to so undisputed an elevation does not rest upon his merits only in this field of our literature. Shakespeare has established his claim to the noblest position in English literature on a wider and more solid basis than the mere composition of skilful plays could deserve. As the great master of our language, as almost its regenerator, quite its refiner—as the author whose use of a word stamps it with the mark of purest English coinage—whose employment of a phrase makes it household and proverbial—whose sententious sayings, flowing without effort from his mind, seem almost sacred, and are quoted as axioms or maxims indisputable—as the orator whose speeches, not only apt, but natural to the lips from which they issue, are more eloquent than the discourses of senators or finished public speakers—as the poet whose notes are richer, more wondrously varied than those of the greatest professed bards—as the writer who has run through the most varied ways and to the greatest extent through every department of literature and learning, through the history of many nations, their domestic manners, their characteristics, and even their personal distinctives, and who seems to have visited every part of nature, to have intuitively studied the heavens and the earth—as the man, in fine, who has shown himself supreme in so many things, superiority in any one of which gains reputation in life and glory after death, he is preeminent above all, and beyond the reach of envy or jealousy.

And if no other nation can show us another man whose head rises above all their other men of letters, as Shakespeare does over ours, they cannot pretend, by the accumulation of separated excellences, to put in competition with him a type rather than a realization of possible worth.

Until, therefore, some other writer can be produced, no matter from what nation, who unites in himself personally these gifts of our bard in an equally sublime degree, his stature overtops them all, wherever born and however celebrated.

The question, however, may be raised, Is he so securely placed upon his pedestal that a rival may not one day thrust him from it?—is he so secure upon his throne that a rebel may not usurp it? To these interrogations I answer unhesitatingly, Yes.

In the first place, there have only been two poets in the world before Shakespeare who have attained the same position with him. Each came at the moment which closed the volume of the period past and opened that of a new epoch. Of what preceded Homer we can know but little; the songs by bards or rhapsodists had, no doubt, preceded him, and prepared the way for the first and greatest epic. This, it is acknowledged, has never been surpassed; it became the standard of language, the steadfast rule of versification, and the model of poetical composition. His supremacy, once attained, was shaken by no competition; it was as well assured after a hundred years as it has been by thousands. Dante again stood between the remnants of the old Roman civilization and the construction of a new and Christian system of arts and letters. He, too, consolidated the floating fragments of an indefinite language, and with them built and thence himself fitted and adorned that stately vessel which bears him through all the regions of life and of death, of glory, of trial, and of perdition.

A word found in Dante is classical to the Italian ear; a form, however strange in grammar, traced to him, is considered justifiable if used by any modern sonneteer. [Footnote 105] He holds the place in his own country which Shakespeare does in ours; not only is his terza rima considered inimitable, {555} but the concentration of brilliant imagery in our words, the flashes of his great thoughts and the copious variety of his learning, marvellous in his age, make his volume be to this day the delight of every refined intelligence and every polished mind in Italy.

[Footnote 105: Any one acquainted with Mastrofini's "Dictionary of Italian Verbs" will understand this.]

And he, too, like Homer, notwithstanding the magnificent poets who succeeded him, has never for a moment lost that fascination which he alone exercises over the domain of Italian poetry. He was as much its ruler in his own age as he is in the present.

In like manner, the two centuries and more which have elapsed since Shakespeare's death have as completely confirmed him in his legitimate command as the same period did his two only real predecessors. No one can possibly either be placed in a similar position or come up to his great qualities, except at the expense of the destruction of our present civilization, the annihilation of its past traditions, the resolution of our language into jargon, and its regeneration, by a new birth, into something "more rich and strange" than the powerful idiom which so splendidly combines the Saxon and the Norman elements. Should such a devastation and reconstruction take place, whether they come from New Zealand or from Siberia, then there may spring up the poet of that time and condition who may be the fourth in that great series of unrivalled bards, but will no more interfere with his predecessor's rights than Dante or Shakespeare does with those of Homer.

But further, we may truly say that the legislator of a people can be but one, and, as such, can have no rival beyond his own shores. Solon, Lycurgus, and Numa are the only three men in profane history who have reached the dignity of this singular title. The first seized on the character of the bland and polished Athenians, and framed his code in such harmony with it, that no subsequent laws, even in the periods of most corrupt relaxation, could efface their primitive stamp, cease to make the republic proud of their lawgiver's name.

Lycurgus understood the stern and almost savage hardihood and simplicity of the Spartan disposition, and perpetuated it and regulated it by his harsh and unfeeling system, of which, notwithstanding, the Lacedaemonian was proud. And so Numa Pompilius comprehended the readiness of the infant republic, sprung from so doubtful and discreditable a parentage, to discover a noble descent, and connect its birth and education with gods and heroes; took hold of this weakness for the sanction of his legislation; and feigned his conferences with the nymph Egeria as the sources of his wisdom. No; whatever may become of kings, legislators are never dethroned.

And so is Shakespeare the unquestioned legislator of modern literary art. No one will contend that, without certain detriment, it would be possible for a modern writer, especially of dramatic fiction, to go back beyond him and endeavor to establish a pre-Shakespearian school of English literature, as we have the pre-Raphaelite in art. Struggle and writhe as any genius may—even if endowed with giant strength it—will be but as the battle of the Titans against Jove. Huge rocks will be rolled down upon him, and the lightning from Shakespeare's hand will assuredly tear his laurels, if it do not strike his head. Byron could not appreciate the dramatic genius of Shakespeare; perhaps his sympathies ranged more freely among corsairs and Suliotes than among purer and nobler spirits. Certainly he speaks of him with a superciliousness which betrays his inability fully to comprehend him. [Footnote 106] And yet, would "Manfred" have existed if the romantic drama and the spirit-agency of Shakespeare {556} had not given it life and rule? So in other nations. I shall probably quote to you the sentiments of foreign writers of highest eminence concerning Shakespeare, not as authorities, but as illustrations of what I may say.

[Footnote 106: Lord Byron thus writes to Mr. Murray, July 14, 1821: "I trust that Sardanapalus will not be mistaken for a political play . . . . You will find all this very unlike Shakespeare; and so much the better, in one sense, for I look upon him to be the worst of models, though the most extraordinary of writers."—Moore's Life of Lord Byron.]

Singularly enough, the greatest of German modern writers has nowhere recorded a full and deliberate opinion on our poet. But who can doubt that "Götz von Berlichingen with the Iron Hand," and even the grand and tender "Faust," and no less Schiller's "Wallenstein," belong to the family of Shakespeare, are remotely offsprings of his genius, and have to be placed as tributary garlands round his pedestal. To imagine Shakespeare even in intention removed from his sovereignty would be a treachery parallel only to that of Lear dethroned by his own daughters.

But still more may we say that, in all such positions as that which we have assigned to Shakespeare, there has always been a culminating point to which succeeds decline—if not downfall. It is so in art. Immediately after the death of Raphael, and the dispersion of his school, art took a downward direction, and has never risen again to the same height. And while he marks the highest elevation ever reached in the arts of Europe, a similar observation will apply to their particular schools. Leonardo and Luini in Lombardy; the Carracci in Bologna; Fra Angelico in Umbria; Garofalo in Ferrara, not only take the place of chiefs in their respective districts, but mark the period from which degeneracy has to date. And so surely is it in our case, whatever may have been the course of literature which led up to Shakespeare, without pronouncing judgment on Spenser, or "rare Ben Jonson," it is certain that after him, although England has possessed great poets, there stands not one forward among them as Shakespeare's competitor. Milton, and Dryden, and Addison, and Rowe have given us specimens of high dramatic writing of no mean quality; others as well, and even these have written much and nobly, in lofty as in familiar verse; yet not one has the public judgment of the nation placed on a level with him. The intermediate space from them to our own times has left only the traces of a weak and enervated school. It would be unbecoming to speak disparagingly of the poets of the present age; but no one, I believe, has ventured to consider them as superior to the noble spirits of our Augustan age. The easy descent from the loftiest eminence is not easily reclimbed.

Surely, then, we may consider Shakespeare, as an ancient mythologist would have done, as "enskied" among "the invulnerable clouds," where no shaft, even of envy, can assail him. From this elevation we may safely predict that he never can be plucked.

III.

The next point which seems to claim attention is the very root of all that I have said or shall have still to say. To what does Shakespeare owe this supremacy, or whence flow all the extraordinary qualities which we attribute to him? You are all prepared with the answer in one single word his GENIUS.

The genius of Shakespeare is our familiar thought and ready expression when we study him, and when we characterize him. Nevertheless, simple and intelligible as is the word, it is extremely difficult to analyze or to define it. Yet everything that is great and beautiful in his writings seems to require an explanation of the cause to which it owes its origin.

One great characteristic of genius, easily and universally admitted, is, that it is a gift, and not an acquisition. It belongs inherently to the person possessing it; it cannot be transmitted by heritage; it cannot be infused by parental affection; it cannot be bestowed by earliest care; neither can it be communicated by the most finished {557} culture or the most studied education. It must be congenital, or rather inborn to its possessor. It is as much a living, a natural power, as is reason to every man. As surely as the very first germ of the plant contains in itself the faculty of one day evolving from itself leaves, flowers, and fruit, so does genius hold, however hidden, however unseen, the power to open, to bring forth, and to mature what other men cannot do, but what to it is instinctive and almost spontaneous. It may begin to manifest itself with the very dawn of reason; it may remain asleep for years, till a spark, perhaps accidentally, kindles up into a sudden and irrepressible splendor that unseen intellectual fuel which has been almost unknown to its unambitious owner.

In our own minds we easily distinguish between the highest abilities or the most rare attainments, when the fruit of education and of application, and what we habitually distinguish as the manifestation of genius. But still we do not find it so easy to reduce to words this mental distinction; the one, after all, however gracefully and however brightly, walks upon the earth, adorning it by the good or fair things which it scatters on its way; the other has wings, and flies above the surface—it is like the aurora of Homer or of Thorwaldsen, which, as it flies above the plane of mortal actions, sheds down its flowers along its brilliant path upon those worthy to gaze upward toward it. We connect in our minds with genius the ideas of flashing splendor and eccentric movement. It is an intellectual meteor, the laws of which cannot be defined or reduced to any given theory. We regard it with a certain awe, and leave it to soar or to droop, to shine or disappear, to dash irregularly first in one direction and then in another; no one dare curb it or direct it; but all feel sure that its course, however inexplicable, is subject to higher and controlling rule. But in order to define more closely what we in reality understand by genius, it may be well to consider its action in divided and more restricted spheres of activity. For although we habitually attribute this singular quality to many, and often but on light grounds, it is seldom that we do so seriously and deliberately without some qualifying epithet. We speak of a military genius, of a mechanical genius, of a poetical genius, of a musical genius, or of an artistic genius. All these expressions contain a restrictive clause. We do not understand when we use them that the person to whom they were attributed possessed any power beyond the limits of a particular sphere. We do not mean by the use of the word genius that the soldier knew anything of poetry, or the printer of mechanism. We understand that each in his own profession or stage of excellence possessed a complete elevation over the bulk of those who followed the same pursuits; a superiority so visible, so acknowledged, and so clearly individual, that no one else considered it inferiority, still less felt shame at not being able to rise to the same level. They gather round them acknowledged disciples and admirers, who rather glory to have been guided by their teaching, and formed on their example.

And in what consisted that complete though limited excellence? If I might venture to express a judgment, I would say that genius in these different courses of science or art may be defined a natural sympathy with all that relates to each of them, with the power of giving full and certain execution to the mental conception. The military genius is one who, either untrained by studious preparation, or else starting out of the lines in which many were ranged level with himself, seizes the staff of command, and receives the homage of comrades and superiors. While others have been plodding through the long drill of theory and of practice, he is found to have discovered a new system of the science, bold, irregular, but successful. But to possess this genius, there must be a universal sympathy with all that relates {558} to its own peculiar province. The military genius of which we are speaking must embrace or acquire that which relates to the soldier's life and duty, from the dress of a single soldier, from his duties in the sentry-box, or on the picquet, to the practice of the regiment and the evolutions of a field-day; from the complete command of tens of thousands on the battle-field, with an eagle's eye and a lion's heart, to the scientific planning, on the chessboard of an empire, of the campaign, which he meditates, move by move and check by check, till the final victory is crowned in the capital city. He who has not given proof of his being equal to all this, has not made good his claim to military genius. But such a one will find, wherever he puts his hand, generals and marshals, each able to command a host, or to take his place in his roughest of enterprises.

I need not pass through other forms of genius to reach similar results; Stephenson, from the labor of the mine, creating that system of mechanical motion, which may be said to have subdued the world, and bound the earth in iron links; Mozart giving concerts at the age of seven that astonished gray-headed musicians; Raphael, before the ordinary age of finished pupilage, master of every known detail in art of oil or fresco, drawing, expression, and grand composition; Giotto, caught in the field as a young shepherd by Cimabue, drawing his sheep upon a stone, and soon becoming the master of modern art. [Footnote 107] These and many others repeat to us what I have said of the military genius—an inborn capacity, comprehensive and complete, with the power of fully carrying out the suggestions of mind. Had there been a single portion of their pursuits in which they did not excel, if the result of their work had not exhibited the happy union and concord of the many qualities requisite for its perfection, they never would have attained the attribution of genius.

[Footnote 107: The early manifestation of artistic power is so frequent and well known, that it would be superfluous to enumerate other instances. The expression "anch' io son pittore" is become proverbial. One of the Carracci, on being translated from an inferior profession to the family studio, was found at once to possess the pictorial skill of his race. At the present, Mintropp at Düsseldorf, and Ackermann at Berlin, are both instances of very high artists, the one in drawing, the other in sculpture, both originally shepherds.]

If this sympathy with one branch of higher pursuits passes beyond it and associates with it a similar facility of acquisition and execution in some other and distinct art or science, it is clear that the claim to genius is higher and more extensive. Raphael was before the world a painter, but he could scarcely have been so without embracing every other department of art. Before the science of perspective was matured or popularly known, when, in consequence, defects are to be found in the disposition of figures, and in the adjustment of aerial distances, [Footnote 108] his architecture shows an instinctive familiarity with its rules and proportions; a proof that he possessed an architectural eye. And consequently the one statue which he is supposed to have carved, and the one palace which he is said to have built, show how easily he could have undertaken and executed beautiful works in either of those two classes of art. In Orcagna and Michelangelo we have the three branches of art supremely united; and the second of these adds poetry and literature to his artistic excellence. In like manner, Leonardo has left proof of most varied and accurate mechanical as well as literary genius.

[Footnote 108: See Mr. Lloyd's article on "Raphael's School of Athens," in Mr. Woodward's Fine Art Quarterly Review, January, 1864, p. 67.]

It is evident, however, that while a genius has its point of concentration, every remove from this, though wider, will be fainter and less complete. We may describe it as Shakespeare himself describes glory, and say:

  "Genius is like a circle in the water,
  Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself,
  Till, by broad spreading, it disperse to naught."
        ("Henry VI.," act i., scene 3.)

The sympathies with more remote subjects and pursuits will be rather the means of illustration, adornment, and {559} pleasing variety, than for the essential requirements of the principal aim. But though less minute in their application, in the hand of genius they will be wonderfully accurate and apt.

IV.

All that I have been saying is applicable in the most complete and marvellous way to Shakespeare's genius. His sympathies are universal, perfect in their own immediate use, infinitely varied, and strikingly beautiful, when they reach remoter objects. And hence, though at first sight he might be classified among those who have displayed a literary genius, he stretches his mind and his feelings so beyond them on every side, that to him, almost, perhaps, beyond any other man, the simple distinctive, without any qualification, belongs. No one need fear to call Shakespeare simply a grand, a sublime genius.

The centre-point of his sympathies is clearly his dramatic art. From this they expand, for many degrees, with scarce perceptible diminution, till they lose themselves in far distant, and, to him, unexplored space. This nucleus of his genius has certainly never been equalled before or since. Its essence consists in what is the very soul of the dramatic idea, the power to throw himself into the situation, the circumstances, the nature, the acquired habits, the feelings, true or fictitious, of every character which he introduces. This forms, in fact, the most perfect of sympathies. We do not, of course, use the word in that more usual sense of harmony of affection, or consent of feeling. Shakespeare has sympathy as complete for Shylock or Iago as he as for Arthur or King Lear. For a time he lives in the astute villain as in the innocent child; he works his entire power of thought into intricacies of the traitor's brain; he makes his heart beat in concord with the usurer's sanguinary spite, and then, like some beautiful creature in the animal world, draws himself out of the hateful evil, and is himself again; and able, even, often to hold his own noble and gentle qualities as a mirror, or exhibit the loftiest, the most generous, and amiable examples of our nature. And this is all done without study, and apparently without effort. His infinitely varied characters come naturally into their places, never for a moment lose their proprieties, their personality, and the exact flexibility which results from the necessary combination in every man of many qualities. From the beginning to the end each one is the same, yet reflecting in himself the lights and shadows which flit around him.

This extraordinary versatility stands in striking contrast with the dramatic productions of other countries. The Greek tragedian is Greek throughout—his subjects, his mythology, his sentences, play wonderfully indeed, but yet restrictedly, within a given sphere. And Rome is but the imitator in all its literature of its great mistress and model.

  "Graiis eloquium, Gratis dedit ore rotundo, Musa loqui."

Even through the French school, with the strict adhesion to the ancient rule of the unities, seems to have descended the partiality for what may be called the chastely classical subjects. Not so with Shakespeare.

Who, a stranger might ask, is the man, and where was he born, and where does he live, that not only his acts and scenes are placed in any age, or in any land, but that he can fill his stage with the very living men of the time and place represented; make them move as easily as if he held them in strings; and make them speak not only with general conformity to their common position, but with individual and distinctive propriety, so that each is different from the rest? Did he live in ancient Rome, strolling the Forum, or climbing the Capitol; hear ancient matrons converse with modest dignity; listen to conspirators among the columns of its porticos; mingle among senators around Pompey's {560} statue; or with plebeians crowding to hear Brutus or Anthony harangue? Was he one accustomed to idle in the piazza of St. Mark, or shoot his gondola under the Rialto? Or was he a knight or even archer in the fields of France or England during the period of the Plantagenets or Tudors, and witnessed and wrote down the great deeds of those times, and knew intimately and personally each puissant lord who distinguished himself by his valor, by his wisdom, or even by his crimes? Did he live in the courts of princes, perchance holding some office which enabled him to listen to the grave utterances of kings and their counsellors, or to the witty sayings of court jesters? Did he consort with banished princes, and partake of their sports or their sufferings? In fine, did he live in great cities, or in shepherds' cottages, or in fields and woods; and does he date from John and live on to the eighth Henry—a thread connecting in himself the different epochs of mediaeval England? One would almost say so; or multiply one man into many, whose works have been united under one man.

This ubiquity, if we may so call it, of Shakespeare's sympathies, constitutes the unlimited extent and might of his dramatic genius. It would be difficult to imagine where a boundary line could at length have been drawn, beyond which nothing original, nothing new, and nothing beautiful, could be supposed to have come forth from his mind. We are compelled to say that his genius was inexhaustible.

V.

This rare and wonderful faculty becomes more interesting if we follow it into further details.

I remember an anecdote of Garrick, who, in company with another performer of some eminence, was walking in the country, and about to enter a village. "Let us pass off," said the younger comedian to his more distinguished companion, "as two intoxicated fellows." They did so, apparently with perfect success, being saluted by the jeers and abuse of the inhabitants. When they came forth at the other end of the village, the younger performer asked Garrick how he had fulfilled his part. "Very well," was the reply, "except that you were not perfectly tipsy in your legs."

Now, in Shakespeare there is no danger of a similar defect. Whatever his character is intended to be it is carried out to its very extremities. Nothing is forgotten, nothing overlooked. Many of you, no doubt, are aware that a controversy has long existed whether the madness of Hamlet is intended by Shakespeare to be real or simulated. If a dramatist wished to represent one of his persons as feigning madness, that assumed condition would be naturally desired by the writer to be as like as possible to the real affliction. If the other persons associated with him could at once discover that the madness was put on, of course the entire action would be marred, and the object for which the pretended madness was designed would be defeated by the discovery. How consummate must be the poet's art, who can have so skilfully described, to the minutest symptoms, the mental malady of a great mind, as to leave it uncertain to the present day, even among learned physicians versed in such maladies, whether Hamlet's madness was real or assumed.

This controversy may be said to have been brought to a close by one of the ablest among those in England who have every opportunity of studying the almost innumerable shades through which alienation of mind can pass. [Footnote 109] And so delicate are the changeful characteristics which Shakespeare describes, that Dr. Conolly considers that a twofold form of {561} disease is placed before us in the Danish prince. He concludes that he was laboring under real madness, yet able to put on a fictitious and artificial derangement for the purposes which he kept in view. Passing through act by act and scene by scene, analyzing, with experienced eye, each new symptom as it occurs, dividing and anatomatizing, with the finest scalpel, every fibre of his brain, he exhibits, step by step, the transitionary characters of the natural disease in a mind naturally, and by education, great and noble, but thrown off his pivot by the anguish of his sufferings and the strain of aroused passion. And to this is superadded another and not genuine affection, which serves its turn with that estranged mind when it suits it to act, more especially that part which the natural ailment did not suffice for. Now, Dr. Conolly considers these symptoms so accurately as well as minutely described, that he throws out the conjecture that Shakespeare may have borrowed the account of them from some unknown papers by his son-in-law, Dr. Hall.

[Footnote 109: "A Study of Hamlet," by John Conolly, M.D., London, 1863. In p. 52 the author quotes Mr. Coleridge and M. Killemain as holding the opinion that Shakespeare has "contrived to blend both (feigned and real madness) in the extraordinary character of Hamlet; and to join together the light of reason, the cunning of intentional error, and the involuntary disorder of a soul."]

But let it be remembered that in those days mental phenomena were by no means accurately examined or generally known. There was but little attention paid to the peculiar forms of monomania, or to its treatment, beyond restraint and often cruelty. The poor idiot was allowed, if harmless, to wander about the village or the country, to drivel or gibber amidst the teasing or ill-natured treatment of boys or rustics. The poor maniac was chained or tied in some wretched out-house, at the mercy of some heartless guardian, with no protector but the constable. Shakespeare could not be supposed, in the little town of Stratford, nor indeed in London itself, to have had opportunities of studying the influence and the appearance of mental derangement of a high-minded and finely-cultivated prince. How then did Shakespeare contrive to paint so highly-finished and yet so complex an image? Simply by the exercise of that strong sympathetic will which enabled him to transport, or rather to transmute, himself into another personality. While this character was strongly before him he changed himself into a maniac; he felt intuitively what would be his own thought, what his feelings, were he in that situation; he played with himself the part of the madman, with his own grand mind as the basis of its action; he grasped on every side the imagery which he felt would have come into his mind, beautiful even when dislorded, sublime even when it was grovelling, brilliant even when dulled, and clothed it in words of fire and of tenderness, with a varied rapidity which partakes of wildness and of sense. He needed not to look for a model out of himself, for it cost him no effort to change the angle of his mirror and sketch his own countenance awry. It was but little for him to pluck away the crown from reason and contemplate it dethroned.

Before taking leave of Dr. Conolly's most interesting monography, I will allow myself to make only one remark. Having determined to represent Hamlet in this anomalous and perplexing condition, it was of the utmost importance to the course and end of this sublime drama, that one principal incident should be most decisively separated from Hamlet's reverse of mind. Had it been possible to attribute the appearance of the Ghost, as the Queen, his mother, does attribute it in the fifth act, to the delusion of his bewildered phantasy, the whole groundwork of the drama would have crumbled beneath its superincumbent weight. Had the spectre been seen by Hamlet, or by him first, we should have been perpetually troubled with the doubt whether or not it was the hallucination of a distracted, or the invention of a deceitful brain. But Shakespeare felt the necessity of making this apparition be held for a reality, and therefore he makes it the very first incident in his tragedy, antecedent to the slightest symptom {562} of either natural or affected derangement, and makes it first be seen by two witnesses together, and then conjointly by a third unbelieving and fearless witness. It is the testimony of these three which first brings to the knowledge of the incredulous prince this extraordinary occurrence. One may doubt whether any other writer has ever made a ghost appear successively to those whom we may call the wrong persons, before showing himself to the one whom alone he cared to visit. The extraordinary exigencies of Shakespeare's plot rendered necessary this unusual fiction. And it serves, moreover, to give the only color of justice to acts which otherwise must have appeared unqualified as mad freaks or frightful crimes.

What Dr. Conolly has done for Hamlet and Ophelia, Dr. Bucknill had previously performed on a more extensive scale. In his "Psychology of Shakespeare" [Footnote 110] he has minutely investigated the mental condition of Macbeth, King Lear, Timon, and other characters. On Hamlet he seems inclined to take a different view from Dr. Conolly; inasmuch as he considers the simulated madness the principal feature, and the natural unsoundness which it is impossible to overlook as secondary. But this eminent physician, well known for his extensive studies of insanity, bears similar testimony to the extraordinary accuracy of Shakespeare's delineations of mental diseases; the nicety with which he traces their various steps in one individual, the accuracy with which he distinguishes these morbid affections in different persons. He seems unable to account for the exact minuteness in any other way than by external observation. He acknowledges that "indefinable possession of genius, call it spiritual tact or insight, or whatever term may suggest itself, by which the great lords of mind estimate all phases of mind with little aid from reflected light," as the mental instrument through which Shakespeare looked upon others at a distance or within reach of minute observation. Still he seems to think that Shakespeare must have had many opportunities of observing mental phenomena. I own I am more inclined to think that the process by which the genius of Shakespeare reached this painful yet strange accuracy was rather that of introversion than of external observation. At any rate, it is most interesting to see eminent physicians maintaining by some means or other that Shakespeare arrived by some sort of intuition at the possession of a psychological or even medical knowledge, fully verified and proved to be exact by the researches two centuries later of distinguished men in a science only recently developed. Mrs. Jameson has well distinguished the different forms of mental aberration in Shakespeare's characters, when she says that "Constance is frantic, Lear is mad, Ophelia is insane." [Footnote 111]

[Footnote 110: Pages 58 and 100.]

[Footnote 111: "Characteristics of Women." New York 1833, p. 142.]

VI.

This last quotation may serve to introduce a further and a more delicate test of Shakespeare's insight into character. That a man should be able to throw himself into a variety of mind and characters among his fellow-men, may be not unreasonably expected. He has naturally a community of feelings, of passions, of temptations, and of motives with them. He can understand what is courage, what ambition, what strength or feebleness of mind. Inward observation and matured experience help much to guide him to a conception and delineation of the character of his fellow-men. But of the stronger emotions, the wilder passions, the subdued gentleness and tenderness, the heroic endurance, the meek bearing, and the saintly patience of the woman, he can have had no experience. Looking into himself for a reflection, he will probably find a blank.

{563}

It has often been said that in his female characters Shakespeare is not equal to himself. The work to which I have just alluded meets, I think completely, this objection, which, I believe, even Schlegel raises. It required a lady, with mind highly cultivated, with the nicest powers of discrimination, and with happiness of expression, to vindicate at once Shakespeare and her sex. The difficulty of this task can hardly be appreciated without the study of its performance. Its great difficulty consists in the almost family resemblance of the different portraits which make up Shakespeare's female gallery. There is scarcely any room for events, even for incident, still less for actions, say for bold and unfeminine deeds. Several of the heroines of Shakespeare are subjected to similar persecutions, and almost the same trials. In almost every one the affections and their expression have alone to interest us. From Miranda, the desert-nurtured child in the simplicity of untempted innocence, to Isabella in her cloistered virtue, or Hermione in her unyielding fortitude—there are such shades, such varying yet delicate tints, that not two of these numerous conceptions can be said to resemble another. And whence did Shakespeare derive his models? Some are lofty queens, others most noble ladies, some foreigners, some native; different types in mind and heart, as in the lineament or complexion. Where did he find them? Where did he meet them? In the cottages of Stratford, or in the purlieus of Blackfriars? Among the ladies of the court, or in the audience in his pit? No one can say—no one need say. They were the formations of his own quickened and fertile brain, which required but one stroke, one line, to sketch him a portrait to which he would give immortality. Far more difficult was this success, and not less completely was it achieved, in that character which medical writers seem hardly to believe could be but a conception. We may compare the mind of Shakespeare to a diamond pellucid, bright, and untinted, cut into countless polished facets, which, in constant movement, at every smallest change of direction or of angle caught a new reflection, so that not one of its brilliant mirrors could be for a moment idle, but by a power beyond its control was ever busy with the reflection of innumerable images, either distinct or running into one another, or repeated each so clearly as to allow him, when he chose, to fix it in his memory.

VII.

We may safely conclude that, in whatever constitutes the dramatic art in its strictest sense, Shakespeare possessed matchless sympathies with all its attributes. The next and most essential quality required for true genius is the power to give outward life to the inward conception. Without this the poet is dumb. He may be a "mute, inglorious Milton;" he cannot be a speaking, noble Shakespeare. I should think that I was almost insulting such an audience, were I to descant upon Shakespeare's position among the bards and writers of England, and of the modern world. Upon this point there can scarcely be a dissentient opinion. His language is the purest and best, his verses the most flowing and rich; and as for his sentiments, it would be difficult without the command of his own language to characterize them. No other writer has ever given such periods of sententious wisdom.

…

I have spoken of genius as a gift to an individual man. I will conclude by the reflection that that man becomes himself a gift; a gift to his nation; a gift to his age; a gift to the world of all times. That same Providence which bestows greatness, majesty, abundance, and grace, no less presents, from time to time, to a people or a race, these few transcendent men who mark for it {564} periods no less decisively, though more nobly, than victories or conquests. On England that supreme power has lavished the choicest blessings of this worldly life; it has made it vast in dominion, matchless in strength; it has made it the arbiter of the earth, and mistress of the sea; it has made it able to stretch its arm for war to the savage antipodes, and, if it chose, its hand for peace to the utter civilized west; it has brought the produce of north and south to its feet with skill and power, to transform and to refashion in forms graceful or useful, to send them back, almost as new creations, to its very source. Industry has clothed its most barren plains with luxuriant crops, and with Titan boldness hollowed its sternest rocks, to plunder them of their ever-hidden treasures. Its gigantic strength seems but to play with every work of venturesome enterprise, till its cities seem to the stranger to overflow with riches, and its country to be overspread with exuberant prosperity.

Well, these are great and magnificent favors of an over-ruling, most benignant Power; and yet there is a boast which belongs to our country that may seem to be overlooked. Yet it is a double gift that that same creating and directing rule has made this country the birthplace and the seat of the two men who, within a short period, were made the rulers each of a great and separate intellectual dominion, never to be deposed, never to be rivalled, never to be envied. To Newton was given the sway over the science of the civilized world; to Shakespeare the sovereignty over its literature.

The one stands before us passionless and grave, embracing in his intellectual grandeur every portion of the universe, from the stars, to him invisible, to the rippling of the tiny waves which the tide brought to his feet. The host of heaven, that seemed in causeless dispersion, he marshalled into order, and bound in safest discipline. He made known to his fellow-men the secret laws of heaven, the springs of movement, and the chains of connection, which invariably and unchangeably impel and guide the course of its many worlds.

In this aspect one's imagination figures him as truly the director of what he only describes—as the leader of a complicated army, who, with his staff, seems to draw or to send forward the wheeling battalions, intent on their own errands, combining or resolving movements far remote; or, under a more benign and pleasing form, we may contemplate him, like a great master in musical science, standing in the midst of a throng, in which are mingled together the elements of sublimest harmonies, confused to the eye, but sweetly attuned to the ear, mingling into orderly combination and flowing sequence, as they float through the air, which, though he elicit not nor produce, he seems by his outstretched hand to direct, or, at least, he proves himself fully to understand. For what each one separately does, unconscious of what even his companion is doing, he from afar knows, and almost beholds, understanding from his centre the concerted and sure results of their united action. And so Newton, from his chamber on this little earth, without being able more than the most helpless insect to add power or give guidance to one single element in the composition of this universe, could trace the orbits of planet or satellite, and calculate the oscillations and the reciprocal influences of celestial spheres.

Then his directing wand seems to contract itself to a space within his grasp. It becomes that magic prism with which he intercepts a ray from the sun on his passage to earth; and as a bird seizes in its flight the bee laden with its honey, and robs it of its sweet treasure—even so he compels the messenger of light to unfold itself before us, and lay bare to our sight the rich colors which the rainbow had exhibited to man since the deluge, and which had lain concealed since creation, in every sunbeam that had passed through our atmosphere. And further still, he bequeathes that wonderful alembic of light {565} to succeeding generations, till, in the hand of new discoverers, it has become the key of nature's laboratory, in which she has been surprised melting and compounding, in crucibles huge as ocean, the rich hues with which she overlays the surfaces of suns and stars, yet, at the same time, breathes its delicate blush upon the tenderest petals of the opening rose.

And all the laws and all the rules which form his code of nature seem engraved, as with a diamond point, upon a granite surface of the primitive rocks—inflexible, immovable, unchangeable as the system which they represent.

Beside him stands the Ruler of that world, which, though even sublimely intellectual, is governed by him with laws in which the affections, even the passions, the moralities, and the anxieties of life have their share; in which there is no severity but for vice, no slavery but for baseness, no unforgivingness but for calculating wickedness. In his hand is not the staff of authority, whether it take the form of a royal sceptre or of a knightly lance, whether it be the shepherdess's crook or the fool's bauble, it is still the same, the magician's wand. Whether it be the divining rod with which he draws up to light the most hidden streams of nature's emotions, or the potential instrument of Prospero's spells, which raises storms in the deep or works spirit-music in the air, or the wicked implement with which the witches mingle their unholy charm, its cunning and its might have no limit among created things. But it is not a world of stately order which he rules, nor are the laws of unvarying rigor by which it is commanded. The wildest paroxysms of passion; the softest delicacy of emotions; the most extravagant accident of fortune; the tenderest incidents of home; the king and the beggar, the sage and the jester, the tyrant and his victim; the maiden from the cloister and the peasant from the mountains; the Italian school-child and the Roman matron; the princes of Denmark and the lords of Troy—all these and much more are comprised in the vast embrace of his dominions. Scarcely a rule can be drawn from them, yet each forms a model separately, a finished group in combination. Unconsciously as he weaves his work, apparently without pattern or design, he interlaces and combines in its surface and its depth images of the most charming variety and beauty; now the stern mosaic, without coloring, of an ancient pavement, now the flowing and intertwining arabesque of the fanciful east; now the rude scenes of ancient mediaeval tapestry like that of Beauvais, and then the finished and richly tinted production of the Gobelins loom.

And yet through this seeming chaos the light permeates, and that so clear and so brilliant as equally to define and to dazzle. Every portion, every fragment, every particle, stands forth separate and particular, so as to be handled, measured, and weighed in the balance of critic and poet. Each has its own exact form and accurate place, so that, while separately they are beautiful, united they are perfect. Hence their combinations have become sacred rules, and have given inviolable maxims not only to English but to universal literature. Germany, as we have seen, studies with love and almost veneration every page of Shakespeare; national sympathies and kindred speech make it not merely easy but natural to all people of the Teutonic family to assimilate their literature to that its highest standard. France has departed, or is fast departing, from its favorite classical type, and adopting, though with unequal power, the broader and more natural lines of the Shakespearian model. His practice is an example, his declarations are oracles.

Still, as I have said, the wide region of intellectual enjoyment over which our great bard exerts dominion, is not one parcelled out or divided into formal and state-like provinces. While the student of science is reading in his {566} chamber the great "Principia" of Newton, he must keep before him the solution of only one problem. On that his mind must undistractedly rest, on that his power of thought be intensely concentrated. Woe to him if imagination leads his reason into truant wanderings; woe if he drop the thread of finely-drawn deductions! He will find his wearied intelligence drowsily floundering in a sea of swimming figures and evanescent quantities, or floating amidst the fragments of a shipwrecked diagram. But over Shakespeare one may dream no less than pore; we may drop the book from our hand and the contents remain equally before us. Stretched in the shade by a brook in summer, or sunk in the reading chair by the hearth in winter, in the imaginative vigor of health, in the drooping spirits of indisposition, one may read, and allow the trains of fancy which spring up in any scene to pursue their own way, and minister their own varied pleasure or relief; and when by degrees we have become familiar with the inexhaustible resources of his genius, there is scarcely a want in mind or the affections that needs no higher than human succor, which will not find in one or other of his works that which will soothe suffering, comfort grief, strengthen good desires, and present some majestic example to copy, or some fearful phantom. But when we endeavor to contemplate all his infinitely varied conceptions as blended together in one picture, so as to take in, if possible, at one glance the prodigious extent of his prolific genius, we thereby build up what he himself so beautifully called the "fabric of a vision," matchless in its architecture as in the airiness of its materials. There are forms fantastically sketched in cloud-shapes, such as Hamlet showed to Polonius, in the midst of others rounded and full, which open and unfold ever-changing varieties, now gloomy and threatening, then tipped with gold and tinted with azure, ever-rolling, ever-moving, melting the one into the other, or extricating each itself from the general mass. Dwelling upon this maze of things and imaginations, the most incongruous combinations come before the dreamy thought, fascinated, spell-bound, and entranced. The wild Ardennes and Windsor Park seem to run into one another, their firs and their oaks mingle together; the boisterous ocean boiling round "the still vexed Bermoothes" runs smoothly into the lagoons of Venice; the old gray porticos of republican Rome, like the transition in a dissolving view, are confused and entangled with the slim and fluted pillars of a Gothic hall; here the golden orb, dropped from the hand of a captive king, rolls on the ground side by side with a jester's mouldy skull—both emblems of a common fate in human things. Then the grave chief-justice seems incorporated in the bloated Falstaff; King John and his barons are wassailing with Poins and Bardolph at an inn door; Coriolanus and Shylock are contending for the right of human sensibilities; Macbeth and Jacques are moralizing together on tenderness even to the brute. And so of other more delicate creations of the poet's mind—Isabella and Ophelia, Desdemona and the Scotch Thane's wife, produce respectively composite figures of inextricable confusion. And around and above is that filmy world, Ariel and Titania and Peas-blossom and Cobweb and Moth, who weave as a gossamer cloud around the vision, dimming it gradually before our eyes, in the last drooping of weariness, or the last hour of wakefulness.

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MISCELLANY.

ART.

Domestic.—The south gallery of the new academy is the largest and best lighted of the several exhibition rooms, and contains some of the most ambitious pictures of the year. As the visitor, pausing for a moment to survey the paintings, drawings, studies, architectural designs, and miscellanea which are hung around the four sides of the open corridor at the head of the grand staircase, turns naturally into the great gallery, through whose wide entrance he catches glimpses of the art treasures within, so do we propose to conduct the reader thither without further parley. Here confront us specimens of almost every subject legitimate to the art, and of some not legitimate—great pictures and little pictures, grave pictures and gay pictures, landscape and genre, history and portraiture, beasts, birds, fishes, and flowers. At either end of the room hangs a full-length portrait of a gentleman of note, which challenges the visitor's attention, be he never so reluctant. No. 464, the late Governor Gamble, of Missouri, by F.T.L. Boyle, belongs to a family only too numerous among us (we speak of the picture only), and whose acquaintance one feels strongly inclined to cut in the present instance. But that is impossible. There stands the familiar lay-figure in the old conventional attitude, which we feel sure the governor never assumed of his own accord. The marble columns, the draped curtain, the library table and the books—all the stock accessories in fine—are there; and either for the purpose of pointing a moral, of instituting a personal comparison, or of calling attention to its workmanship, the governor blandly directs your attention to a bust of Washington. He might be intending to do any one or all of these things so far as the expression of his face affords an indication. The idea on which the portrait is painted is thoroughly false, and ought to be by this time discarded; but year after year artists continue to mint these modish, stiff, and ridiculous figures, when with a little regard to common sense they could produce portraits which all would recognize as natural and effective. Especially is this the case with the present picture, which evinces considerable executive ability. The other portrait to which we alluded, No. 412, a full length of Ex-Governor Morgan, painted by Huntington, for the Governor's Room in the City Hall, is one of the least creditable works ever produced by that artist, cold and repulsive in color, awkward in attitude, and unsatisfactory as a likeness.

Occupying a less prominent position than either of these pictures, but conspicuous enough to attract a large share of attention, is the full-length portrait of Archbishop McCloskey, No. 438, by G.P.A. Healy. Mr. Healy, though never very happy as a colorist and often disposed to sacrifice characteristic expression to a passion for painting brocades and draperies, has generally succeeded in imparting a refined air to his portraits, however feeble they might be as likenesses. The present work is coarse in expression, and untrue as a likeness. It is a mistake to suppose that a free, rapid touch is adapted to every style of face. The small and delicate features of the archbishop, with their shrewd, yet refined and benevolent expression, cannot be dashed off with a few strokes of the brush, but require careful painting, and, above all, patient painting. Mr. Healy's portrait of Dr. Brownson in last year's exhibition, though of little merit as a painting, was much better than this. No. 448, a portrait of the late Peletiah Perit, by Hicks, is one of the most creditable specimens of that very unequal painter that we have recently seen. Mr. Perit is sitting easily and naturally in his library chair, and is not made to assume the attitude of a posture-master for the time being, in order that posterity may know how he did not look in life. The likeness is not remarkable; but the accessories are carefully painted and agreeably colored. No. 423, portrait of a lady, by R.M. Staigg, is exactly what it assumes to be—a lady. In the refined air of the gentlewoman which the artist has so happily conveyed, he recalls some of the female heads of Stuart, though in the present instance he had no wide scope for the display {568} of Stuart's charming gift of color. The resemblance is more in the general sentiment than in any technical qualities. Almost adjoining this work is another portrait of a lady, No. 425, by W.H. Furness, a forcible example of the naturalistic school, of great solidity of texture and purity of color. There is intelligence, earnestness, and strength in this face, and in the attitude, though the latter, as well as the accessories, is studiously simple. Baker and Stone contribute some attractive portraits to this room. No. 454, a lady, by the latter, is a good specimen of a style neither strong nor founded on true principles, but which, on account of a certain conventional gracefulness, which amply satisfies those who look no deeper than the surface of the canvas, will always find admirers. No. 458, a portrait of Capt. Riblett, of the New York 7th Regiment, by Baker, is a clever work, noticeable for the easy pose of the figure, the clear fresh coloring, and the firm handling.

Two other portrait pieces may be noticed in this room, of very opposite degrees of merit. They illustrate a method of treating this branch of the art which has become popular of late years, and which seeks to combine portraiture with genre; that is to say, the figures represent real personages, but to the uninitiated seem merely the actors in some little domestic scene. Any subject verging on the dramatic is of course inappropriate to this method. Thus the stiffness too often inseparable from portraiture and its unsympathetic character to a stranger are avoided, and the "gentlemen" and "ladies" who have monopolized so much space on the walls awaken an interest in a wider circle than when appearing simply in their proper persons. No. 441, "A Picnic in the Highlands," by Rossiter, presents us with portraits of some twenty ladies and gentlemen, including a fair proportion of generals, who have been ruthlessly summoned from the pleasures of the rural banquet or of social intercourse to place themselves in attitudes which a travelling photographer would blush to copy, and be thus handed down to posterity. In submitting to this dreadful process Generals Warren and Seymour afforded a new proof of courage under adverse circumstances; and one scarcely knows whether they deserve most to be pitied, or the artist to be denounced for putting brave men in so ridiculous a position. The picture is simply disgraceful, and would naturally be passed over in silence had it not been hung in a position to challenge attention, while many works of merit are placed far above the line. Thirty or forty years ago, when the academy was glad to enroll painters of the calibre of Mr. Rossiter among its members, such productions were perhaps acceptable on the line. But have hanging committees no appreciation that there is such a thing as progress? The other picture above alluded to is No. 435, "Claiming the Shot," by J.G. Brown. It represents a hunting scene in the Adirondacks, and though thinly painted, with no merit in the landscape, and of a general commonplace character, tells its story with humor and point. We have not the pleasure of knowing the party of amateur hunters whose good-natured altercation forms the subject of Mr. Brown's picture, but their faces are perfectly familiar to us, and may be seen any day on Broadway, until the shooting season summons them to a purer atmosphere than our civic rulers permit us to breathe. That good-looking and well-dressed young man, with the incipient aristocratic baldness, and the languid, gentleman-like air, reclining in a not ungraceful attitude on a stump, and whose incredulous shake of the head denotes that he will not resign his claim to the successful shot—is he not a type of our jeunesse dorée? And who has not met the portly, florid gentleman, his face beaming with good nature and good living, who claps our young friend on the back and advises him to give it up? The earnest expression of the half-kneeling hunter, clinching the argument as he identifies his bullet-hole in the side of the slain buck, is well rendered, as is also that of another florid gentleman who looks on, a quiet but highly amused witness of the dispute. In the background are a party of guides and boatmen engaged in preparing supper for the disputants, over whose perplexity they appear to be indulging in a little quiet "chaff." We imagine that the faces of the principal actors in this group are good likenesses, and we feel sure that to see them thus depicted amidst scenes suggesting healthful out-door sports will be pleasant to their friends.

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From portraits we pass naturally to figure pieces, and first pause with astonishment before No. 394, "The Two Marys at the Sepulchre," by R.W. Weir. Here is a work which has doubtless cost much thought and patient labor, but which is so hopelessly beneath the dignity of the subject as to seem almost like a caricature. When will modern painters recognize that sacred history is a branch of their art not to be attempted except under very peculiar and favorable circumstances?—that the artist must feel and believe what he paints, unless he wishes to degenerate into insipidity? We do not desire to impugn Mr. Weir's sincerity, but a work so cold, lifeless, and void of propriety shows that he is either hiding his light under a bushel, or is incapable of feeling, perhaps we should say of reflecting, the religious fervor which should be associated with so awful a scene. Had he even stuck to the conventional forms and accessories which have satisfied six centuries of Christian painters, he might have produced something of respectable mediocrity. But modern realism would not permit this, and therefore the Virgin is represented as a commonplace middle-aged woman, who might as well be Mr. Weir's housekeeper, and whose mawkish expression is positively repulsive. Of St. Mary Magdalen the attitude, figure, and expression are not less inappropriate. Surely these personages are raised above the level of ordinary women—no believer in Christianity will deny that—and cannot the painter so represent them? In other respects the picture has little merit, being stiff and mannered in the drawing and of a mixture of dull gray and salmon in its local coloring.

The most conspicuous landscape in this room is Bierstadt's immense view of the Yo Semite Valley in California, No. 436, which occupies the place of honor in the middle of the south wall. For months past the artist has been announced as at work on this picture, and in view of the great merits recognized in his "Rocky Mountains," public expectation has been raised to a high pitch. But public expectation has been doomed to disappointment this time, for the Yo Semite is much inferior to its predecessor, though, in several respects, both works show the same characteristics in equal perfection. They have breadth of drawing, admirable perspective, and convey an idea of the solemn grandeur of nature in the virgin solitudes of the west. But while in the older work Mr. Bierstadt succeeded in forgetting for a time the academic mannerisms which he brought with him from Germany, in the present one he has, unconsciously, perhaps, lapsed into them again, and produced something of great mechanical excellence, and with about as much nature as can be seen through the atmosphere of a Düsseldorf studio. Yellow appears to be his weakness, and the canvas is accordingly suffused with yellow tints of every gradation of tone; not a luminous yellow which the eye may rest upon with pleasure, but a hard, dusty-looking pigment, without warmth, or transparency, or depth; such a yellow as never tinged the skies of California or any other part of the world, but is begotten of men who derive their ideas of nature from copying pictures of landscapes, instead of going directly to nature. The grass and the foliage which receive the sunlight are of a dirty, yellowish green, those in the shadow of the great mountain ridge on the right of the scene of a yellowish black, the very rocks and water are yellow, and if Indians or emigrants had been introduced into the foreground, we feel convinced they would have received the prevailing hue. Only in the mountain peaks, checkered with sunlight and shadow, does the artist seem to escape from this thraldom to one color, and paint with force and truthfulness. The picture is therefore a failure; and yet viewed from the head of the great stair-case, across the open space, and through the entrance to the exhibition-room, it has a mellowness of tone and truthfulness of perspective which almost induce us to retract our criticism. Approach it, however, and the illusion vanishes. Another Californian scene by Bierstadt, in this room, No. 472, "the Golden Gate," shows the artist's predominant fault even more conspicuously, and is not only unworthy of him, but absolutely unpleasant to look at. No. 487, "Among the Alps," by Gignoux, is a solidly, though coarsely painted work, and notwithstanding a prevalent cold, leaden tone, tolerably effective. The idea of solemn repose is well conveyed, although scarcely one of the details is truthfully rendered. The water of the mountain lake is not water, but an opaque mass, the trees and rocks are so slurred in the drawing as to be {570} unrecognizable by the naturalist, and the shadows are unnecessarily deep and sombre. Such painting, however, pleases the multitude, who do not care much for absolute truth, provided effect is obtained; and Mr. Gignoux's picture is considered very fine indeed. No. 466, "A Mountain Lake in the Blue Ridge," by Sonntag, is a fine piece of scene painting, and, if properly enlarged, would form an excellent design for a stage drop-curtain. As a representation of nature it is false in nearly every detail. And yet no landscape painter deals more readily and dexterously with the external forms of American forest scenery, or perhaps has more neatness of touch; and none, it may be added, has wandered further from the true path.

No. 465, "Greenwood Lake," by Cropsey, is a pleasanter picture than we commonly see from this artist, who, to judge from his productions, scarcely ever saw a cloudy day, and has a very indifferent acquaintance with shadows. Here is a still, serene summer afternoon, in the foreground a newly-mown hayfield, with a group of mowers and rakers, just pausing from their labor, and beyond the placid bosom of the lake. Despite its somewhat monotonous uniformity of tone, the picture is pervaded by an agreeable sentiment of repose, characteristic of midsummer; and as an honest attempt to portray a pleasing phase of nature it is welcome. No. 493, "Afternoon in the Housatonic Valley," by J.B. Bristol, represents the period of the day selected by Mr. Cropsey, but the tone of his picture is lower and cooler, and the coloring more harmonious. Its most noticeable feature is a noble mountain in the background, whose wooded sides afford fine contrasts of light and shadow. No. 494, "A Foggy Morning—Coast of France," by Dana, evinces more desire to catch the secret of rich coloring than success. It is not by scattering warm pigments about, without regard to harmony or gradation, that Mr. Dana can attain his end; and so far as color is concerned he shows no improvement upon his work of former years. In composition he wields, as usual, a graceful pencil, and his children are pleasingly and naturally drawn.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

THE ILIAD OF HOMER RENDERED INTO ENGLISH BLANK VERSE. By Edward, Earl of Derby. 2 vols. 8vo., pp. 430 and 457. New York: Charles Scribner & Company.

There have been several translations of the Iliad into English verse, but, practically, only three have hitherto been much in vogue. The first of these, by Chapman, is a work of considerable spirit, of a rude, fiery kind; but it is unfaithful, and has long been antiquated. Pope's brilliant and thoroughly un-Homeric version will always be popular as a poem, though anything more widely different from the original was probably never published as a translation. Cowper is verbally accurate, but tame and tiresome. A translation in blank verse, by William Munford, of Richmond, Va., appeared in Boston some twenty years ago, but does not seem to have attracted the attention it deserved.

Lord Derby appears to have avoided nearly all the defects and combined nearly all the merits of his predecessors. He has aimed "to produce a translation and not a paraphrase; not, indeed, such a translation as would satisfy, with regard to each word, the rigid requirements of accurate scholarship, but such as would fairly and honestly give the sense and spirit of every passage and of every line, omitting nothing and expanding nothing, and adhering as closely as our language will allow, even to every epithet which is capable of being translated, and which has, in the particular passage, anything of a special and distinctive character." The testimony of critics is almost unanimous as to the success with which he has carried out his design. His translation is incomparably more faithful than either of those we have mentioned. He almost invariably perceives the delicate shades of meaning which Pope was {571} not scholar enough to notice, and he is often wonderfully happy in expressing them in English. His language is dignified and pure; his style animated and idiomatic; and his verse has more of the majestic flow of Homer than that of any previous translator. He has produced by all odds the best version of the Iliad in the English language.

That a statesman should have succeeded in a task of this sort, where Pope and Cowper failed, is strange indeed. But let our readers judge for themselves: we give first a somewhat celebrated passage from Pope—the bivouac of the Trojans, at the end of the eighth book—premising that Pope prefixes to it four lines which have no equivalent in the Greek, and which are not only an interpolation but a positive injury to the sense:

  "The troops exulting sat in order round,
  And beaming fires illumined all the ground.
  As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night,
  O'er heaven's clear azure spreads her sacred light,
  When not a breath disturbs the deep serene,
  And not a cloud o'ercasts the solemn scene;
  Around her throne the vivid planets roll,
  And stars unnumbered gild the glowing pole,
  O'er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed,
  And tip with silver every mountain's head;
  Then shine the vales, the rocks in prospect rise,
  A flood of glory bursts from all the skies;
  The conscious swains, rejoicing in the sight,
  Eye the blue vault, and bless the useful light.
  So many flames before proud Ilion blaze,
  And lighten glimmering Xanthus with their rays:
  The long reflections of the distant fires
  Gleam on the walls, and tremble on the spires;
  A thousand piles the dusky horrors gild,
  And shoot a shady lustre o'er the field,
  Full fifty guards each flaming pile attend,
  Whose umbered arms, by fits, thick flashes send,
  Loud neigh the coursers o'er their heaps of corn,
  And ardent warriors wait the rising morn."

This is not a faultless passage, but no one can help admiring the felicitous imagery, the vivid word-painting, the wonderful harmony of the versification. Yet what reader of Homer will hesitate to prefer Lord Derby's simpler and almost strictly literal rendering?

  "Full of proud hopes, upon the pass of war,
  All night they camped; and frequent blazed their fires.
  As when in heaven, around the glittering moon
  The stars shine bright amid the breathless air;
  And every crag, and every jutting peak
  Stands boldly forth, and every forest glade;
  Ev'n to the gates of heaven is opened wide
  The boundless sky; shines each particular star
  Distinct; joy fills the gazing shepherd's heart.
  So bright, so thickly scattered o'er the plain,
  Before the walls of Troy, between the ships
  And Xanthus' stream, the Trojan watchfires blazed.
  A thousand fires burnt brightly; and round each
  Sat fifty warriors in the ruddy glare;
  With store of provender before them laid,
  Barley and rye, the tethered horses stood
  Beside the cars, and waited for the morn."

Take now the description of Vulcan serving the gods at a banquet, from the conclusion of the first book. Cowper gives it as follows:

  "So he; then Juno smiled, goddess white-armed,
  And smiling still, from his unwonted hand
  Received the goblet. He from right to left  [Footnote 112]
  Rich nectar from the beaker drawn, alert
  Distributed to all the powers divine.
  Heaven rang with laughter inextinguishable,
  Peal after peal, such pleasure all conceived
  At sight of Vulcan in his new employ.
    So spent they in festivity the day,
  And all were cheered; nor was Apollo's harp
  Silent, nor did the muses spare to add
  Responsive melody of vocal sweets.
  But when the sun's bright orb had now declined,
  Each to his mansion, wheresoever built
  By the same matchless architect, withdrew.
  Jove also, kindler of the fires of heaven,
  His couch ascending as at other times
  When gentle sleep approached him, slept serene,
  With golden-sceptred Juno by his side."

[Footnote 112: Just the reverse,—from left to right, Cowper's blunder is serious, because to proceed from right to left was looked upon by the Greeks as unlucky.]

{572}

Cowper is better than Pope here; but Lord Derby is the most literal and by far the best of the three. His lines have a dignified simplicity not unworthy the father of poetry himself; yet the translation is nearly verbatim:

  "Thus as he spoke, the white-armed goddess smiled,
  And smiling from his hand received the cup,
  Then to th' immortals all in order due
  He ministered, and from the flagon poured
  The luscious nectar; while among the gods
  Rose laughter irrepressible, at sight
  Of Vulcan hobbling round the spacious hall.
    Thus they till sunset passed the festive hours;
  Nor lacked the banquet aught to please the sense,
  Nor sound of tuneful lyre, by Phoebus touched,
  Nor muses' voice, who in alternate strains
  Responsive sang; but when the sun was set,
  Each for his home departed, where for each
  The cripple Vulcan, matchless architect,
  With wondrous skill a noble house had reared.
    To his own couch, where he was wont of old,
  When overcome by gentle sleep, to rest,
  Olympian Jove ascended; there he slept,
  And by his side the golden-thronèd queen."

If our space permitted we might easily extend these comparisons, and show that Lord Derby excels other translators in every phase of his undertaking—in the rude shock of war, the touching emotions of human sentiment, the debates of the gods, and the beauties and phenomena of nature. We cannot refrain, however, from quoting a few passages of conspicuous excellence.

Hector's assault on the ships in the fifteenth book is thus spiritedly rendered:

  "Fiercely he raged, as terrible as Mars
  With brandished spear; or as a raging fire
  'Mid the dense thickets on the mountain side.
  The foam was on his lips; bright flashed his eyes
  Beneath his awful brows, and terribly
  Above his temples waved amid the fray
  The helm of Hector; Jove himself from heaven
  His guardian hand extending, him alone
  With glory crowning 'mid the host of men,
  But short his term of glory; for the day
  Was fast approaching, when, with Pallas' aid
  The might of Peleus' son should work his doom.
  Oft he essayed to break the ranks, where'er
  The densest throng and noblest arms he saw;
  But strenuous though his efforts, all were vain;
  They, massed in close array, his charge withstood;
  Firm as a craggy rock, upstanding high
  Close by the hoary sea, which meets unmoved
  The boist'rous currents of the whistling winds,
  And the big waves that bellow round its
  So stood unmoved the Greeks, and undismayed.
  At length, all blazing in his arms, he sprang
  Upon the mass; so plunging down as when
  On some tall vessel, from beneath the clouds
  A giant billow, tempest-nursed, descends:
  The deck is drenched in foam; the stormy wind
  Howls in the shrouds; th' affrighted seamen quail
  In fear, but little way from death removed;  [Footnote 113]
  So quailed the spirit in every Grecian breast."

[Footnote 113: We are particularly struck with the excellence of Lord Derby's translation of this magnificent image when we contrast it with Mr., Munford's:

  "As on a ship a wat'ry mountain falls,
  Driven from the clouds by all the furious winds;
  With foam the deck is covered, pitiless
  The deafening tempest roars among the shrouds;
  The sailors, whirled along by raging waves.
  Tremble, confused and faint; immediate death
  Appears before them."

Yet, no less an authority than the late President Felton, of Harvard, pronounced Munford's the best of all English metrical versions of the Iliad.]

In book sixth Hector is accosted by his mother on his return from the battle-field. She offers him wine, wherewith to pour a libation to Jove and then to refresh himself. Lord Darby's translation of his answer is very neat and very close to the original:

{573}

  "No, not for me, mine honored mother, pour
  The luscious wine, lest thou unnerve my limbs
  And make me all my wonted prowess lose.
  The ruddy wine I dare not pour to Jove
  With hands unwashed; nor to the cloud-girt son
  Of Saturn may the voice of prayer ascend
  From one with blood bespattered and defiled."

We close our extracts with a few lines from book third. Priam, sitting with "the sage chiefs and councillors of Troy" at the Scaean gate watching the hostile armies, thus addresses Helen:

  "'Come here, my child, and sitting by my side,
  From whence thou canst discern thy former lord,
  His kindred and his friends (not thee I blame,
  But to the gods I owe this woful war),
  Tell me the name of yonder mighty chief
  Among the Greeks a warrior brave and strong:
  Others in height surpass him; but my eyes
  A form so noble never yet beheld,
  Nor so august; he moves, a king indeed.'
  To whom in answer, Helen, heav'nly fair:
  'With rev'rence, dearest father, and with shame
  I look on thee: oh, would that I had died
  That day when hither with thy son I came,
  And left my husband, friends, and darling child,
  And all the loved companions of my youth:
  That I died not, with grief I pine away.
  But to thy question; I will tell thee true;
  Yon chief is Agamemnon, Atreus' son,
  Wide-reigning, mighty monarch, ruler good,
  And valiant warrior; in my husband's name,
  Lost as I am, I called him brother once.'"

LIFE OF MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO. By William Forsyth, M.A., Q.C., author of "Hortensius," "Napoleon at St. Helena and Sir Hudson Lowe," "History of Trial by Jury," etc., and late fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Two volumes, 8vo., pp. 364 and 341. New York: Charles Scribner & Co.

Mr. Forsyth has a very correct notion of the business of a biographer. His object has been not only to tell Cicero's history but to describe his private life—to make us acquainted with minute details of his domestic habits, and to represent him as far as possible in the same manner as he would a man of the present generation. "The more we accustom ourselves," he says, "to regard the ancients as persons of like passions as ourselves, and familiarize ourselves with the idea of them as fathers, husbands, friends, and gentlemen, the better we shall understand them." He has therefore carefully gathered up from the letters and other writings of the Roman orator those little bits of personal allusion, domestic history, and unconsidered trifles which indicate, more clearly sometimes than important actions, the bent of one's mind or the inmost character of one's heart; and he has arranged them with great skill, and a good eye for effect. He shows but slight literary polish; his style is not elegant, nor always clear, nor even dignified; but he has a logical way of putting things, a happy knack of arrangement, and a habit of keeping to the point and throwing aside superfluous matter, for which we dare say he is indebted to his training as a pleader in the courts. As a lawyer, too, he is specially qualified to give the history of the causes in which Cicero's orations were delivered; and this he does better than we have ever seen it done before, explaining the narrative by copious illustrations from modern jurisprudence. But if in some respects he writes like a lawyer, in another very important point his practice as an advocate seems not to have affected him. He is thoroughly impartial. He sums up Cicero's character more like a judge than a queen's counsel. He admires him but not blindly; holding the safe middle path between the excessive veneration shown by Middleton and Niebuhr and the unreasonable animosity of Drumann and Mommsen. He admits that Cicero was weak, timid, and irresolute; but these defects were counter-balanced by the display, at critical periods of his life, of the very opposite qualities. In the contest with Catiline and the final struggle with Antony he was as firm and brave as a man need be. One principal cause of his irresolution was an anxiety to do what was right. If he knew that he had acted wrongly, he instantly felt all the agony of remorse. His standard of morality was as high as it was perhaps possible to elevate it by the mere light of nature. The chief fault of his moral character was a want of sincerity. In a different sense of the words from that expressed by St. Paul, he wished to become all things to all men, if by any means he might win some. His private correspondence and {574} his public speeches were often in direct contradiction with each other as to the opinions he expressed of his contemporaries. His foible was vanity. He was never tired of speaking of himself. As a philosopher he had no pretensions to originality, but he was the first to make known to his countrymen the philosophy of Greece, which until he appeared may be said to have spoken to the Romans in an unknown tongue. He adhered to no particular sect, but affected chiefly the school of the new academy. He was a firm believer in a providence and a future state. As an orator his faults are coarseness in invective, exaggeration in matter, and prolixity in style. "Many of his sentences are intolerably long, and he dwells upon a topic with an exhaustive fulness which leaves nothing to the imagination. The pure gold of his eloquence is beaten out too thin, and what is gained in surface is lost in solidity and depth."

The position of Cicero with respect to the political parties into which the republic was divided in his time is not so well described as his personal character. While Mr. Forsyth displays industry and good judgment in collecting and arranging the little traits which go to make up a life-like portrait, he lacks the comprehensive and philosophical view with which Merivale has recently surveyed the same period of history. Forsyth writes as one who, having mingled with the busy crowd in the forum, should come away and tell us what he had seen and heard, and describe the men with whom he had talked. Merivale surveys the scene from a distance; and though his perception of individual objects is less distinct than Forsyth's, his view is broader and takes in better the relative situations and proportions of the various features spread out before him. Both are excellent in their kind: the historian is the more instructive, the biographer the more entertaining.

BEATRICE. By Julia Kavanagh, author of "Nathalie," "Adele," "Queen Mab," etc., etc. Three volumes in one. 12mo., pp. 520. New York: D. Appleton & Company.

The readers of "Adele" and "Nathalie" will hardly be prepared for what awaits them in the novel now upon our table. Miss Kavanagh has won a high reputation by her delicate pictures of quiet home life, and thorough analyses of female character. But lately the prevailing thirst for sensational stories appears to have enticed her away from the old path, and led her to attempt a style of novel which will no doubt please the majority of readers better than her earlier efforts, though as a work of art it is inferior to them. It is by no means however a merely sensation story. The heroine is painted with all Miss Kavanagh's accustomed clearness and skill; although the uninterrupted series of plots and counterplots, the dramatic terseness of the dialogue, and the effectiveness of the situations, tempt one to forget sometimes, in the absorbing interest of the narrative, the higher merit of vivid and truthful drawing of character. That of Beatrice is charmingly conceived, and admirably worked out, recalling those delightful heroines who first gave Miss Kavanagh a hold upon the popular heart. Beatrice is a spirited, proud, natural, warm-hearted girl, born in poverty and fallen heiress unexpectedly to great wealth. Her guardian and step-father, Mr. Gervoise, subjects her to innumerable wrongs in order that he may get possession of the property. Poison even and a mad-house are hinted at. The book is principally a narrative of battle between the defenceless girl and this villain. Our readers who may wish to know how the struggle ends are referred to the book itself; they will have no reason to regret the time they may spend in reading it.

GRACE MORTON; OR, THE INHERITANCE. A Catholic Tale. By M.L.M. 12mo., pp. 324.

THE CONFESSORS OF CONNAUGHT; OR, THE TENANTS OF A LORD BISHOP. A Tale of our Times. By M. L. M., author of Grace Morton, etc. 12mo., pp.319. Philadelphia: Peter F. Cunningham. New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Company.

These are both religious stories. The first is inscribed to the Catholic youth of America, and the scene is laid in Pennsylvania. The second is founded upon the evictions in 1860, in the parish of Partry, Ireland, of a number of tenants of the Protestant bishop of Tuam, who had refused to send their children to proselytizing schools. The well-known missionary, Father Lavelle, is a {575} prominent figure in the book, slightly disguised under the name of Father Dillon.

A GENERAL HISTORY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH: FROM THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA UNTIL THE PRESENT TIME. By M. l'Abbé J.E. Darras. First American from the last French edition. With an Introduction and Notes, by the Most Rev. M.J. Spalding, D.D., Archbishop of Baltimore. Numbers 6, 7, and 8. 8vo. pp. (each) 48. New York: P. O'Shea.

We are pleased to learn that two valuable appendices are to be added to the American translation of this important work; one by an eminent Jesuit on the history of the Church in Ireland, the other by the Rev. C.I. White, D.D., on the history of the Church in America. The English version of the book ought thus to be far superior to the original French. The numbers appear with great promptness, and present the same neat and tasteful appearance which we took occasion to praise in noticing some of the earlier parts.

LIFE OF THE CURÉ D'ARS. From the French of the Abbé Alfred Monnin. 12mo., pp. 355. Baltimore: Kelly & Piet.

It is only six years since Jean Baptist Marie Vianney, better known as the Curé of Ars, closed his mortal life in that little village near Lyons which will probably be henceforth for ever associated with his name. "A common consent," says Dr. Manning, in a preface to the book before us, "seems to have numbered him, even while living, among the servants of God; and an expectation prevails that the day is not far off when the Church will raise him to veneration upon her altars." He was the son of a farmer of Dardilly, near Lyons, and appears to have inherited virtue from both his parents. God gave him neither graces of person nor gifts of intellect. His face was pale and thin, his stature low, his gait awkward, his manner shy and timid, his whole air common and unattractive. His education was so defective that his teachers hesitated to recommend him for ordination. But the want of human learning seems to have been supplied by supernatural illumination. When he went to Ars, virtue was little known there. To say that he speedily wrought an entire reformation is but a faint expression of the extraordinary effect of his ministry. Drunkenness and quarreling were soon unknown. At the sound of the midday Angelus the laborers would stop in their work to recite the Ave Maria with uncovered head. Men and women used to repair to the church after their work was done, and often came again to pray at two or three o'clock in the morning. The curé himself, it may be said, never left the church except to discharge some function of his ministry, to take one scanty meal a day, of bread or potatoes, and to sleep two or three hours. In the seventh year of his ministry he founded an asylum for orphan or destitute girls which he called "The Providence." It is believed that he was miraculously assisted in providing food and clothing for these poor children. Once the stock of flour was exhausted, except enough to make two loaves. "Put your leaven into the little flour you have," said the curé to the baker, "and to-morrow go on with your baking as usual." "The next day," says this person, "I know not how it happened, but as I kneaded, the dough seemed to rise and rise under my fingers; I could not put in the water quick enough; the more I put in, the more it swelled and thickened, so that I was able to make, with a handful of flour, ten large loaves of from twenty to twenty-two pounds each, as much, in fact, as could have been made with a whole sack of flour."

It was in consequence partly of circumstances of this nature connected with the Providence, and partly of the reputation of M. Vianney as a spiritual director, that a stream of pilgrims set in toward Ars that has continued to flow ever since. Before the close of his life, as many as eighty thousand persons are said to have visited him in a single year, by a single route. Most of them came to confess; many to be cured of deformities or disease; others to ask advice in special difficulties. The number of cures effected at his hands was prodigious. His labors in the confessional were almost beyond belief; for thirty years he spent in this severest of all the duties of a parish priest sixteen or eighteen hours a day. Penitents were content to await their turn in the church all night, all the next day—even two {576} days. Devout persons were so eager to get relics of him during his life, that whenever he laid aside his hat or his surplice the garment was immediately appropriated. So after a time he never put on a hat, and never took off his surplice.

It seemed at last that his humility could no longer endure the veneration that was paid him. He resolved to retire to a quiet place, and spend the rest of his life in prayer. He attempted to escape secretly by night; but one of his assistant priests discovered his purpose, and contrived to delay him, until the alarm was sounded through the village. The inhabitants were roused at the first stroke. The clangor of the bell was soon mingled with confused cries of "M. le curé!" The women crowded the market-place and prayed aloud in the church; the men armed themselves with whatever came first to hand; guns, forks, sticks, and axes. M. Vianney made his way with difficulty to the street door, but the villagers would not let him open it. "He went from one door to another," says his old servant, "without getting angry; but I think he was weeping." At last he reached the street, and stood still for a moment, considering how to escape. His assistant made a last effort to persuade him to remain. The populace fell at his feet, and cried, with heart-rending sobs, "Father, let us finish our confession; do not go without hearing us!" And thus saying, they carried rather than led him to the church. He knelt before the altar and wept for a long time. Then he went quietly into his confessional as if nothing had happened.

We would gladly quote the whole of the beautiful scene of which we have attempted to give an outline; but our space forbids. We must pass over also the graphic description of the abbé's death and funeral, as well as the narrative of the extraordinary sufferings which made his life one long purgatory. Let our readers get the book, and they will find it as interesting as a romance.

THE LIFE OF JOHN MARY DECALOGNE, STUDENT IN THE UNIVERSITY OF PARIS. Translated from the French. 18mo., pp. 162. Baltimore: Kelly & Piet.

This edifying narrative of the short and almost angelic career of a school-boy who died in the odor of sanctity, in his seventeenth year, was a great favorite with our fathers and grandfathers, but we believe has long been out of print. Its re-publication is a praiseworthy adventure, which we hope will have the success it deserves. The book is especially recommended to lads preparing for their first communion.

The New Path, for June (New York: James Miller, publisher), is devoted wholly to the fortieth annual exhibition of the National Academy of Design. Our spicy little contemporary has no mercy on the artists.

Trübner's American and Oriental Literary Record, the first number of which was published in London last March, is "a monthly register of the most important works published in North and South America, in India, China, and the British Colonies; with occasional notes on German, Dutch, Danish, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian books." We believe it is the first systematic attempt to bring the young literature of America and the East before the public of Europe. We commend it to the attention of our book-writing and publishing friends.

The American News Company issue a little pamphlet on The Russo-Greek Church, by a former resident of Russia. Its aim is to expose the absurdity of the attempts at union between the Russian and Protestant Episcopal Churches.

BOOKS RECEIVED.

History of England from the fall of Wolsey to the death of Elizabeth. By James Anthony Froude, M.A. New York: Charles Scribner & Company.

The History of the Protestant Reformation, etc. By M.J. Spalding, D.D., Archbishop of Baltimore. Fourth revised edition. Baltimore: John Murphy & Company.

Ceremonial for the use of the Catholic Churches in the United States of America. Third edition, revised and enlarged. Baltimore: Kelly & Piet.

Meditations and Considerations for a Retreat of One Day in each Month. Compiled from the writings of Fathers of the Society of Jesus. Baltimore: Kelly & Piet.

The Year of Mary. Translated from the French of the Rev. M. d'Arville, Apostolic Prothonotary. Edited and in part translated by Mrs. J. Sadlier. Philadelphia: Peter F. Cunningham.

{577}

THE CATHOLIC WORLD,

VOL. I., NO. 5. AUGUST, 1865.

Translated from Études Religieuses, Historiques, et Littéraires, par des Pères de la Compagnie de Jésus.

DRAMATIC MYSTERIES OF THE FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES.

BY A. CAHOUR, S. J.

The drama of the Middle Ages ends with a sort of theatrical explosion. Everything disappears at once, under all forms and on every side. It included, like that of earlier times, "mysteries" drawn from the Old and the New Testament; "miracles" and plays borrowed from legends, tragedies inspired by the acts of the martyrs and by chivalric romances, by ancient history and by modern history; "moralities" whose allegorical impersonations represent the vices and the virtues; pious comedies like those of Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre, upon the Nativity of Jesus Christ, upon the Adoration of the Magi, upon the Holy Family in the desert; profane comedies like those of the "Two Daughters" and the "Two Wives" by the same princess; ludicrous farces like that of Patelin the Advocate; licentious farces ad nauseam; finally, the "Soties," satirical plays in which the Clercs de la Basoche and the Enfants sans souci renewed the audacity of Aristophanes without reviving his talent. There were representations for all solemn occasions, for the patron-feasts of cities and parishes, for the assemblies of a whole country, for the "joyous entry" of kings and princes. There were also scenic entremets for banquets; and nearly all these displays were made with proportions so gigantic, with so much pomp and expense, that everybody must have participated in them, priests and magistrates, lords and citizens, carpenters and minstrels. The representation of a "mystery" became the affair of a whole city, of a whole province. The hangings of the theatre, the costume of the actors, exhibited the most beautiful tapestries, the richest dresses, the most precious jewels of the neighboring chateaux, and even the ornaments of the churches—copes for the eternal Father, dalmatics for the angels.

One of our most ingenious and learned critics, whom it is impossible not to cite frequently when writing upon the dramatic poetry of the sixteenth century, M. Sainte-Beuve, in speaking of this prodigious fecundity, has remarked, that "when things are close to their end they often have a final season of remarkable brilliancy—it is their autumn—their vintage; {578} or it is like the last brilliant discharge in a piece of fireworks." Perhaps there is no better illustration of this phenomenon than that of a pyrotechnic display, which multiplying its jets of light, and illuminating the entire horizon at the very moment of its extinction, disappears into the night and leaves naught behind but its smoke. What is there left, in fact, after all this theatrical effervescence? One natural and truly French inspiration alone—the immortal farce of Patelin, dating from the second half of the fifteenth century, and revived at the commencement of the eighteenth by Brueys and Palaprat.

However, despite its poverty, this dramatic epoch merits our close attention. In giving us a picture of the public amusements of our forefathers, it will indicate, on the one hand, the nature of their morality and their literary tastes, and on the other, the causes of the decline of the old Christian drama at the verge of the revolution which delivered over the French stage to the ideas and the philosophy of paganism.

If we wished to give a catalogue of the productions of the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries, we might easily compile it from the history of the brothers Parfait, the "Recherches" of Beauchamps, and the "Bibliothèque" of the Duke de la Vallière. Such a task, however abridged, would require a long chapter, and we neither have time to undertake it nor are we sorry at being obliged to omit it. Passing straight to our goal, let us occupy ourselves with the tragic dramas alone, and even here we must put bounds to our inquiry under penalty of losing ourselves in endless and uninteresting details. All that which characterizes the Melpomene of the fifteenth and the commencement of the sixteenth centuries is found in the two great works, "The Mystery of the Passion," and "The Mystery of the Acts of the Apostles." In these, and we may almost say in these only, shall we study its power and its originality.

"The Mystery of the Passion" is the work of two Angevin poets, named alike Jehan Michel. The first, born toward the end of the fourteenth century, after having been a canon and at the same time secretary of Queen Yolande of Aragon, mother of the good King René, Count of Anjou and of Provence, became bishop of Angers, February 19, 1438, and died in the odor of sanctity, September 12, 1447. The second Jehan Michel, a very eloquent and scientific doctor, as la Croix du Maine informs us, was the chief physician of King Charles VIII., and died in Piedmont, August 22, 1493. He edited and printed, in 1486, the work of his namesake.

This mystery was played at Metz and at Paris in 1437, and at Angers three years afterward upon the commencement of the episcopacy of its first author. It is a gigantic trilogy, into which are fused and co-ordinated all the dramatic representations borrowed for three centuries from the canonical and apocryphal gospels.

"It is," remarks M. Douhaire, in his eleventh lecture on the History of Christian Poetry before the Renaissance,—"it is a great central sea into which flow all the streams of a common poetic region. From the refreshing pictures of the patriarchal life of Joachim and Ann to the sublime scenes of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the saints of the ancient law, all, or nearly all, that has caught our eyes before is here found anew, sometimes as a reminiscence, sometimes in the lifelike and spirited form of a dialogue. The legend of the death of the Holy Virgin, the legends of the apostles, of Pilate, and of the Wandering Jew, have alone been omitted; whether because they appeared to the authors of the mystery to break the theological unity of their work, or because their length excluded them from a composition already swollen far beyond reasonable limits."

The mystery opens with a council held in heaven upon the redemption {579} of the human race. On the one side Mercy and Peace, in allegorical character, implore pardon for our first parents and their posterity. On the other, Justice and Truth demand the eternal condemnation of the guilty. To conciliate them, there must be found a man without sin who will freely die for the salvation of all. They go forth to seek him on the earth. To the council of heaven succeeds that of hell. Lucifer in terror convokes his demons to oppose the redemption of the world. During their tumultuous deliberation the four virtues return in despair to heaven. They have failed to find the generous and pure victim necessary for expiation. The Son of God offers himself, and the mystery of the incarnation is decreed. [Footnote 114] St. Joachim espouses St. Ann, and Mary is born of the union so long sterile. Then follows the scenic display of all the legendary and gospel narratives of her education, her marriage with St. Joseph, the incarnation of the Word, the birth of Jesus Christ, and all the wonders of his infancy up to his dispute in the temple with the doctors. It is at this point that the great drama completes its first part, which is entitled "The Mystery of the Conception." It is adapted, after the style of the time, for ninety-seven persons.

[Footnote 114: This is the idea of St. Bernard dramatized. In festo Annunciationis B.M.V. Sermo primus, No. 9; vol. i., p. 974.]

The second part, which has given its name to the entire drama, is the "Mystery of the Passion of Jesus Christ." It is divided into four "days," each of which has its appropriate actors. The first day, which is for eighty-seven persons, extends from the preaching of St. John the Baptist, in the wilderness, to his beheading. The second requires a hundred persons. It comprises the sermons and miracles of our Saviour, and ends with the resurrection of Lazarus. The third commences with the triumphal entry of Jesus Christ into Jerusalem and ends with Annas and Caiphas. This day is for eighty-seven persons, like the first. The fourth requires five hundred. It is the representation of all the scenes in the tribunal of Pilate and at the court of Herod, at Calvary and at the holy sepulchre.

The third part, entitled "The Resurrection," represents Jesus Christ manifesting himself to his disciples in different places after he has risen from the tomb; then his ascension and entrance into heaven in the midst of concerts of angels; and finally, the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles assembled together in an upper chamber. We have two different forms of this third part. One is in three days; the other in one. The former has only forty-five persons; one hundred and forty are needed for the latter.

These three dramas, of which the trilogy of the Passion is composed, were played for a century and a half, sometimes together, sometimes separately. When represented at Paris, in 1437, at the entrance of Charles VII., they closed with a spectacle of the final judgment. [Footnote 115] There are even found amplifiers who carry it back as far as the origin of the world. It will be difficult to say how much time the performance of this agglomeration of dramas required. Some idea, however, can be formed from a representation of the Old Testament, arranged about 1500, which set out with the creation of the angels and did not arrive at the nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ until after twenty-two days. Was the trilogy of the two Angevin poets sometimes preceded by this immense prelude? We cannot tell. But the length of the spectacle would render this conjecture incredible, since the "Triumphant Mystery of the Acts of the Apostles," played at Bruges, in 1536, lasted forty days, morning and afternoon. {580} These spectacles commenced ordinarily at nine in the morning. Then at eleven o'clock the people went to dinner, and returned again two hours after.

[Footnote 115: "All along the great Rue St. Denis," according to Alain Chartier, "to the distance of a stone's throw on both sides, were erected scaffoldings of great and costly construction, where were played The Annunciation of Our Lady, The Nativity of our Lord, his Passion, his Resurrection, Pentecost, and the Last Judgment, the whole passing off quite well." (Beauchamps' Recherches sur les théâters de France, t. i., p. 254-256).]

This drama, thirty or forty times longer than our longest classical tragedies, contains, at the least, sixty-six thousand verses. It was printed for the first time, in 1537, in two volumes folio, and proved its popularity by three different editions within four years. The emphasis of its title attests, moreover, the immense success of its representation at Bruges the year before. It was the composition of two brothers, Arnoul and Simon Greban, born at Compiegne. Arnoul, by whom it was conceived and commenced about 1450, was a canon of Mans. He died before he had finished versifying it. Simon, monk of St. Riquier, in Ponthieu, completed it during the reign of Charles VII., and, consequently, before 1461. Their dramatic composition is divided into nine books. They have left to the "directors" of the spectacle the care of dividing it into more or fewer days, according to circumstances.

The first book commences with the assembling of the disciples in the upper chamber, and represents the election of St. Matthias, the descent of the Holy Spirit, and the earlier preaching of the apostles when braving the persecutions of the synagogue. The second book extends from the martyrdom of St. Stephen to the conversion of St. Paul. The third is filled with the legendary traditions concerning the apostleship of St Thomas in India. The fourth brings back the spectacle to Jerusalem, where Herod dies after having cut off the head of St. James the Greater; then the scene is transferred to Antioch, where St. Peter, at the solicitation of Simon the Magician, is put into prison, and obtains his liberty by restoring to life the son of the prince of that city who had been dead ten years. The fifth book contains, first, the preaching of St. Paul at Athens, where he converts St. Denis, the future apostle of France; then, the death of the Blessed Virgin, at which the apostles are present, brought together suddenly by a miracle. The sixth book is consecrated to the apostleship and martyrdom of St. Matthew in Ethiopia, of St. Barnabas in the Isle of Cyprus, of St. Simon and St. Jude at Babylon, and, finally, of St. Bartholomew, whom Prince Astyages flayed alive. In the seventh book, St. Thomas ends his apostleship in India, slain by the sword; St. Matthias is stoned to death by the Jews; St. Andrew is crucified by the provost of Achaia; the Emperor Claudius dies and Nero succeeds him. In the eighth book, St. Philip and St. James the Less suffer martyrdom at Hierapolis. The two princes combine with the apostles against Simon the Magician and bring his miracles to naught. St Paul recalls Patroclus to life, who had fallen from a high window while sleeping over the apostolic sermon. In the ninth and last book, Simon the Magician, availing himself of his most powerful enchantments in order to deceive the Romans, having caused himself to be lifted into the air by the demons, falls at the voice of St. Peter and is killed. Nero avenges him by imprisoning St. Peter and St. Paul—puts to death Proces and Martinian, their gaolers, whom they had converted and by whom they were set at liberty—arrests the two apostles anew, and condemns one to be crucified, the other to be beheaded. Then, terrified by the successive apparitions of the two martyrs, who announce to him the vengeance of heaven, he invokes the demons, demands their counsel, kills himself, and the devils bear away his soul to hell.

When we add that each book is filled with striking conversions, that some terminate with the baptism of a whole city or a whole people, and that the apostles insure the triumph of the gospel even in death, a sufficient idea will have been given of the historic procession and the moral unity of this drama, or rather of this epic worked up in dialogue and arranged for the {581} stage. But in order to get a clearer notion of its theatrical power and poetic features, it is necessary to direct our attention, in the first place, to the interest of the legends which are here blended constantly with history; and, in the second place, to the fairy art and the magnificence of the spectacle.

Here, for instance, is an example of the legendary poetry interwoven in the piece. We borrow it from the third book. Gondoforus, king of India, wishes to build a magnificent palace; but he is in want of architects, and therefore sends his provost Abanes to Rome in search of one. The messenger mounts at once on a dromedary: he is followed by a servant leading a camel. In three and a half hours they are at Caesarea in Palestine, where the apostle St. James is dwelling. St. Michael had descended from heaven to anticipate the arrival of Abanes, and commands the apostle, in the name of our Lord, to offer himself as architect. Directed by the archangel, he accosts Abanes and tells him that he is the man he seeks. They breakfast together and set out, not this time on a dromedary and a camel, but in a ship conducted by Palinurus, who had just arrived, bringing St. James, the son of Zebedee, from Spain to Palestine. While they are making the voyage, the king of Andrinopolis is holding counsel upon the manner of celebrating the nuptials of his daughter Pelagia, who is espoused to the young chevalier Denis; and the result of this deliberation is that he must invite everybody who can come. The apostle and the Provost disembark at Andrinopolis at very moment when the herald the proclamation, in the name of the king, summoning to the banquet citizens of all conditions and even rangers—pilgrims and wayfarers. St. Thomas consequently is present at the nuptial feast. A young Jewess chants a roundelay:

  There is a God of Hebrew story.
  Dwelling in eternal glory
  Who first of all things claims our love:
  Who made the earth, sea, sky above,
  And taught the morning stars to sing.
  High would I laud this virtuous king,
  And blaming naught, his praises ring
  Through every hall, through every grove.
  There is a God of Hebrew story,
  Dwelling in eternal glory,
  Who first of all things claims our love.  [Footnote 116]

[Footnote 116: She commences in Hebrew: A sarahel zadab aheboin, Aga sela tanmeth thavehel Elyphaleth a der deaninin, etc. Then she translates her roundelay into French.]

St. Thomas, charmed with this song, begs that it may be repeated, and the king's butler boxes his ears.

  Ere the morrow shall be through,
  Thy hand its fault will sorely rue,

says the apostle, adding—

  'Twere better for thy purgatory,
  To suffer anguish transitory.

This prediction is not tardy of accomplishment. The butler is sent to the fountain by the cup-bearer. A lion comes up, and with a snap of his teeth bites off the guilty hand, while the poor man dies repentant and commending his soul to God. In the banquet hall all is gay confusion, when presently a dog enters with the dissevered hand. The king, informed of the prophecy and its accomplishment, prostrates himself with his whole family at the feet of the apostle, who blesses him. All at once there appears a branch of palm covered with dates. The wedded couple eat of it and then fall asleep. In their dreams angels counsel them to preserve their virginity. After having baptized the king of Andrinopolis and all his household, St. Thomas renews his journey with his guide, and arrives in India.

Gondoforus and his brother Agatus salute the architect whom Abanes has brought. "Well, master, at what school did you study your art?" "My master surpasses all others in excellence." "And of whom did he learn his science?"

  "Master and teacher had he none,
  He learneth from himself alone."

"Where is he?"

  "In a country far away,
  He lives and ruleth regally:
  The sons of men his servants be,
  His twelve apprentices are we."

{582}

The king, amazed at the knowledge of the stranger, gives him a vast sum of gold, for the construction of his palace. But it was not an earthly edifice that the apostle proposed to build—it was a heavenly and spiritual edifice whose materials were alms and good works. He therefore distributes among the beggars whom he meets all the money which has been given him. At the end of two years, Gondoforus comes to see the building, and not finding it, he thus addresses St. Thomas and Abanes:

  "Scoundrels without conscience born,
  Where has all my money gone?
  My trust in you has cost me dear.

THOMAS

  Sire, therewith I did uprear
  A palace fair, of rare device
  For you—

AGATUS.

  Where is't?

THOMAS.

  In Paradise."

The Indian king, who does not understand that style of architecture, throws St. Thomas and Abanes into prison. Scarcely has he returned home with his followers, when Agatus suddenly dies. The angels descend in haste to bear his soul to heaven. [Footnote 117] "What do I see?" he cries. "The palace which Thomas has made for thy brother," replies Raphael. "Great God, but I am not pure enough to be its porter!" "Thy brother," said Uriel, "has made himself unworthy of it. But if thou desirest, we will supplicate our Lord to restore thee to earth, and this palace shall be thine when thou hast repaid the king his money." The soul of Agatus joyfully agreed to this, and was restored to its body by Uriel. Then Agatus, as soon as life returned, arose and told Gondoforus all that he had seen, proposing to reimburse him for all the expenses of this heavenly palace the possession of which he desired. The amazed king, wishing to secure the beautiful palace for himself, goes and flings himself at the feet of St. Thomas, beseeching baptism for himself and court.

[Footnote 117: "Although the arts of the middle ages," says Father Cahier, "did not adopt an absolutely invariable form for the representation of souls, the most ordinary symbol is that of a small, nude figure escaping from the mouth, like a sword drawn from the sheath." Monagraphie de la Cathédrale de Bourges, p. 158, note 2.]

When the "Mystery of the Acts of the Apostles" was played at Bruges in 1536, so perfect was the representation of this legend and the other marvels of the piece, says the old historian Du Berry, that many of the hearers thought it real and not feigned. They saw, among a thousand other wondrous sights, the provost of the king of the Indies enter riding on a huge dromedary, very well constructed, which moved its head, opened its mouth, and ran out its tongue. When the butler was punished, they saw a lion steal up and bite off the hand, and a dog who bore it still bleeding into the midst of the feasters. These were not the only animal prodigies that passed under the eyes of the spectators. In the representation of the sixteenth book, for example, two sorcerers, irritated against St. Matthew, caused a multitude of serpents to appear, and the apostle summoned forth from the earth a very terrible dragon which devoured them. In another part of this same book, St. Philip, having been led before the god Mars, makes a dragon leap forth from the mouth of the idol, which kills the son of the pagan bishop, two tribunes, and two varlets. In the course of the seventh book, a still more extraordinary automaton appears. St. Andrew delivers Greece from a monstrous serpent fifty cubits long. "Here," says the note introduced for the ordering of the mystery, "an oak must be planted, and a serpent must be coiled beneath the said oak, glaring, and must vomit forth a great quantity of blood and then die."

The marvels of the art multiply themselves infinitely and in all directions. We see, for example, idols crumbling into powder at the voice of the apostles, and temples crushing the pagans in their fall. We see Saul {583} struck down from his horse by a great light out of heaven; St. Thomas walking over red-hot iron; St. Barnabas fast bound upon a cart-wheel over a pan of live coals, which burn him to cinders. [Footnote 118] We see, also, the apostles borne through the air to assist at the death of the Virgin. "Here lightning must be made in a white cloud, and this cloud must float around St. John, who is preaching at Ephesus, and he must be borne in the cloud to the gates of Notre Dame." A moment after, "thunder and lightning must burst forth from a white cloud which shall veil over the apostles as they preach in different countries, and bear them before the gates of Notre Dame." While the apostles are carrying the body of the Holy Virgin to the tomb, chanting In exitu Israel de Egypto, "a rosy cloud in shape like a coronet must descend, on which should be many holy saints holding naked swords and darts." A mob of Jews come to lay hands on the shrine. "As soon as they touch it, their hands must be glued to the litter and become withered and black; and the angels in the cloud must cast down fire upon them and a storm of darts." The sacrilegious Jews are struck with blindness. Some of them are converted and recover their sight. Five remain obstinate. The devils come to torment them, and finally strangle them. "Here their souls rise in the air and the devils bear them away." Lastly, we have the Assumption of the Holy Virgin. "Here Gabriel puts a soul into the body of Mary, after Michael has rolled away the stone. And the Virgin Mary rises to her knees, a halo of glory round her like the sun. Then a grand pause of the organ or anthem, while Mary is being placed in the cloud on which she will ascend. The angels should sing as they disappear Venite ascendamus, and the angels ought to surround the Virgin and bear her above Gabriel and the other angels." Lifted thus above nine choirs of angels, she elicits vast admiration, and beholding from the height of heaven St. Thomas, who could not arrive in time to assist at her death and receive her last benediction, she throws him her girdle.

[Footnote 118: "Daru will pretend to burn Barnabas, and will burn a feigned body, and will lower Barnabas under the earth."]

Thus in this drama, requiring forty days and five hundred and thirty persons [Footnote 119] for its performance, heaven, air, earth, hell, all participated in the movement and the spectacle. What kind of a theatre was required for such scenic action? In the sixteenth century men saw theatres with two stages for the miracles of Notre Dame. The Mysteries of the Acts of the Apostles and of the Passion required three. Heaven was on high, hell below, earth in mid-space. Let us attempt to build anew these theatres before the eyes of our readers.

[Footnote 119: This is the number of actors employed in the representation made at Bruges in 1536, according to the calculation of M. Chevalier de Saint-Amand. Cahier, "Monographie de la Cathédrale de Bourges," p. 153. We find only 484 persons in the "Repertoire, des noms contenus au jeu des actes des apôtres." See the edition of this "Mystery" published at Paris in 1541 by Arnoul and Charles les Angliers, under this title: "Les catholiques OEuvres et Actes des Apôtres."]

Paradise was an amphitheatre in form. High above appeared the Deity, seated upon a golden throne and overlooking all—the stage and the audience. At the four corners of his throne sat four persons representing Peace, Mercy, Justice, Truth. At their feet were nine choirs of angels ranged by hierarchies upon the steps. There was space also for the blessed spirits and for the organ which accompanied the celestial chants. Everything flashed and glittered. The painter and the carver were prodigal of their wonders. Of this we can form a judgment from a description of the paradise displayed at Bruges on the representation of the "Triumphant Mystery of the Acts of the Apostles." According to a contemporary narrative, five hundred and odd actors, sallying forth from the abbey of St. Sulpice on Sunday afternoon, April 30, 1536, bore with them in great pomp the apparatus of a spectacle which they were about to give at the amphitheatre of the Arènes. {584} They had a paradise twelve feet long, and eight feet wide. "It had all around it open thrones painted to resemble passing clouds, and both without and within were little angels as cherubim and seraphim, powers and dominations, in bas-relief, their hands joined and always moving. In the middle was a seat fashioned like a rainbow, upon which was seated the Godhead—Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; and behind were two gold suns revolving continuously in opposing orbits. At the four corners were seats on which reposed Justice, Peace, Truth, and Mercy, richly clothed; and beside the said Godhead were two small angels chanting hymns and canticles to the music of the players on the flute, the harp, the lute, the rebec, and the viol, who circled about the paradise."

The same account describes a hell fourteen feet in length and eight in width. "It was made in the fashion of a rock, upon which was raised a tower always burning and sending forth flames. At the four corners of the said rock were four small towers, within which appeared spirits undergoing diverse torments, and on the fore-edge of the rock writhed a great serpent, hissing and emitting fire from his mouth and ears and nostrils; and along the passages of the said rock twined and crawled all kinds of serpents and great toads."

"The form and dimensions of this fiery cavern varied according to the exigencies of the dramatic action; but its place was invariably in the lower part of the theatre. In this were assembled all the diablerie, usually comprising a dozen principal personages; and from thence issued a terrible storm of howls and shrieks. Lucifer was there, and Satan, Belial, Cerberus, Astaroth, Burgibus, Leviathan, Proserpine, and other devils great and small. The gate through which they passed when coming to earth to torment mankind, appeared in shape like the enormous jaws of a dragon, and was called hell's mouth." [Footnote 120]

[Footnote 120: At the representation of the "Mystery of the Passion" at Metz, in July, 1437. "The mouth of hell was exceedingly well made, for it opened and shut when the devils wished to enter or go forth, and it had a great steel under-work." Chronique de Metz, MS.; composed by a curé of St. Eustache, cited by Beauchamps, in the Recherches sur les theatres.'']

Limbo, when demanded by the peculiar features of the play, as in the Mystery of the Resurrection, was placed below hell, and was symbolized by a huge tower with slits and gratings on all sides, in order that the spectators might catch glimpses of the spirits confined there. As these spirits were only statuettes, there was stationed behind the tower a body of men who howled and shrieked in concert, and when anything was to be said to the audience, a strong and lusty voice spoke in the name of all. [Footnote 121] When a purgatory was needed, it was located and constructed after nearly the same manner.

[Footnote 121: "Mysteres inèdits du XVe siècle" published by Achille Jubinal, t.i., preface, p. xlii. (Paris, 1837). Let us remark here in passing, that M. Jubinal, who is better acquainted with the manuscripts of the middle ages than with his catechism, has confounded limbo with purgatory. ]

The stage, properly so called, which was on a level with the audience, represented earth—that is, the different countries to which the dramatic action was successively transferred. It therefore required a vastly greater space than hell or paradise; the one symbolized by a cavern, and the other by an amphitheatre. It was divided into compartments, and inscriptions indicated the countries and the cities. This division was effected by scaffolds entirely separate, when there was room enough. Thus at the "Mystery of the Passion," represented at Paris in 1437, at the entrance of King Charles VII., the scaffolds occupied the whole of the Rue St. Denis for a distance of a stone's throw on either side, and the more remote stage, on which the last judgment was exhibited, was before Le Chatelet. The spectators were obliged to travel from one part to the other with the actors. But they remained seated, and could see the whole without change of place, at the performance of the same mystery, given the same year at Metz, in the {585} plain of Veximiel. For the vast semicircle destined for the assembly had nine rows of seats, and behind were the grand chairs for the lords and dames assembled from all parts of the province, and even from Germany. It was the same at Bruges on the preceding year at the representation of the "Acts of the Apostles." The enclosure occupied the whole space of the ancient amphitheatre, commonly called the Ditch of the Arènes. It had two stages, and vast pavilions protected the spectators from the inclemency of the weather and the heat of the sun.

But three years after, in 1541, when the burgesses of Paris played that immense drama in the hall of l'Hotel de Flandre, or when the Fraternity of the Passion gave their representations for a century and a half, at their theatre of the Trinity, in a hall one hundred and twenty-nine feet long and thirty-six feet deep, how were local distinctions indicated? Then the stage, in default of space, was divided by simple partitions, and inscriptions, indicating beyond mistake the houses, cities, and diverse countries, were more indispensable than ever. We may remark, finally, that in the great mysteries, divided by days, it was easy during the temporary suspension of the play to give a new aspect to the stage by a change of scenery. Sometimes, also, as in the preceding century, the actors were obliged to inform the audience that they were transported from one place to another by saying, "Here we come to Bethlehem—to Jerusalem. We are making sail for Rome—for Athens, etc." And the illusion was kept up, as far as could be, by the cessation of the music, in the interval during which, to use an expression of M. Sainte-Beuve, the mighty train swept on across space and time.

Passing from the architecture of the theatre to the physiognomy of the actors, let us study the manner in which they were recruited. There were stock companies, and extemporized companies. Of the first description were the "Fraternity of the Passion," so celebrated in the history of the representations of the "mysteries" at the end of the middle ages. There were also the burgesses of Paris, artisans of all handicrafts, who, at the end of the fourteenth century, assembled at the village of St. Maur, near Vincennes, to give on festal days their pious spectacles. Interdicted June 3, 1398, by ordinance of the provost of Paris, who mistrusted this novelty, they obtained from King Charles VI., by letters patent of December 4, 1402, permission to play even at Paris, and at the same time their society was elevated into a permanent fraternity, under the title of De la Passion de Notre Seigneur, and was installed near the gate St. Denis in the ancient hospital of the Trinity, then for some time disused.

It would appear that in certain provinces, cities, and even parishes, had, like Paris, their association of miracle-players. But, most commonly, these companies were improvised, and consisted of volunteers. This was the case at the gigantic representations of the Mystery of the Acts of the Apostles at Bruges and at Paris. We have still "the cry and public proclamation made at Paris, Thursday, the sixteenth of December, 1540, by the command of our lord the king, Francis I. by name, and monsieur the provost of Paris, summoning the people to fill the parts necessary for the playing of said mystery." At eight o'clock of the morning there were assembled at the Hotel de Flandre, where the "mystery" was to be performed, all those who were charged with its management, rhetoricians, gentlemen of the long robe and the short, lawyers and commoners, clergymen and laity, in vast numbers. They paraded through the streets in fine apparel, all well mounted according to their estate and capacity, preceded by six trumpeters and escorted by numerous sergeants of the provost, who kept the crowd in check. They halted at every square, and, after a triple flourish of trumpets, a public crier made the proclamation, which was in bad rhyme. Ten days {586} after, on St. Stephen's day, the large hall of the Hotel de Flandre—the usual place, says the narrative, for making the records and holding the rehearsals of the mysteries, was filled with a crowd of burgesses and merchants, clergy and laity, who came to exhibit their talents in the presence of the commissioners and lawyers deputed to hear the voice of each person, retaining and remunerating them according to the measure of their excellence in the parts required. The selections having been made, the rehearsals commenced and continued every day until the performance of the mystery, which was played at the beginning of the next year.

Whoever deemed himself of any value responded generously to these appeals, not only among the bourgeois and gentlemen—artisans and magistrates—but also the curés and their vicars, the canons, and sometimes even the friars. Women alone were excluded, the female parts being always filled by men. The participation of the clergy in these scenic diversions is readily accounted for, when one considers the moral aim and the religious character of the plays. All these dramas represent the mysteries and history of Christianity. All commence, either with readings from the Holy Scripture or by the chanting of the hymns of the Church, or by the recitation of the Ave Maria—the whole assemblage kneeling and joining in the services. All ended, moreover, as in preceding centuries, with the Te Deum. The spectacle was frequently interrupted by preaching, and more than once, at the end of a dramatic day, actors and spectators might be seen wending their way to church to offer up thanks to heaven. Beside, did not the clergy find themselves on their own ground, in these plays, instituted in order to increase the solemnity of their sacred days, and evincing unquestionable traces of a liturgic origin? Let us add finally, with Dom Piolin, that a distinction was rigorously maintained between profane pieces and those whose aim was the edification and the instruction of the faithful; that while zealously keeping in check all acting which could possibly be turned to license, the clergy furthered with all their power the exhibiting of the "mysteries." The learned Benedictin presents to us the chapter of St. Julien at Mans preventing, in 1539, the ringing of the cathedral bells in order not to interrupt a representation of the Miracle of Theophilus; and stopping them again, in 1556, and, in addition, hastening the morning offices and delaying those of evening, in order to accommodate them to the time of the performance of the "Mystery of the Conception of the most Holy Virgin."

After the distribution of parts, all the actors were obliged on the spot to pledge themselves by oath and under penalty of a fine never to be absent from the rehearsals. A second appeal to the public good-will was necessary to secure a wardrobe for the hundreds of players, who on the day of exhibition wore sometimes the richest jewels and the most beautiful stuffs of a whole province. The magnificence of the spectacle at Bruges, in 1536, would strike us as incredible, if the author of the narrative which has preserved us the details, had not taken the precaution to forewarn his readers at the start that he kept within the truth. As illustrating its splendor, take the following examples, gathered here and there from the volume.

St. James the Lesser wore a scarf estimated at 450 gold crowns. The girdle of St. Matthew was valued at more than 500 crowns sterling. Queen Dampdeomopolis, who was mounted on an ambling pad which was covered with a housing of black velvet and had a gold fringed harness, wore a petticoat of cloth of gold, beneath a robe of crimson damask bordered with gold chains, while down the front ran a rich beading of precious stones, rubies and diamonds, of the value of more than 2,000 crowns. This is not all. From head to foot gold and jewels glittered {587} on her person. Her head-dress was surmounted by a white feather, and on her forehead hung by a little thread of black silk a huge oriental pearl. The wife of Herod Agrippa had for her girdle a great gold chain of more than 1,000 crowns in value; from which hung chaplets carved in facets. She had on her neck another great chain and a collar of pearls, whence hung a ring and sprig of four diamonds, and on her stomacher was a dorure which bore a gold dog having a great ruby hanging from its neck, and a great pearl suspended to the tail.

All these princesses—and they could be counted by dozens—had with them their maids, their squires, and their pages, handsomely clothed. There were likewise princes, kings, and emperors, who came from all quarters of the world.

Nothing approaches to the magnificence of Nero. It would carry us too far out of our way if we should mention in detail the numerous and brilliant cortege which preceded the formidable emperor when the actors issued from the abbey of St. Sulpice, where they robed themselves before entering the theatre. First came a troop of musicians composed of a fifer, six trumpeters, and four players on the tamborine; next the grand provost of Rome, mounted on a splendid horse caparisoned with violet-colored satin, fringed with white silk; then four cavaliers attending the ensign-bearer of Nero; presently four companies of Moors crowned with laurels and bearing, some, masses of gilded silver, others, vases of silver and gold or cornucopiae filled with fleurs de lis—or the armorial bearings of the empire inter-worked on triumphal hats. Lastly, a horse appeared covered to the ground with flesh-colored velvet, bordered with tracery of gold, into which were woven the devices of Nero. This horse, conducted by two lackeys clothed also with flesh-colored velvet, bore a cushion of silk and cloth-of-gold in Turkish work, on which lay three crowns, the first, solid gold; the second, all pearls; the third, composed of every kind of precious stone of marvellous beauty and richness—and these three crowns formed the imperial head-gear.

Next there came into sight another horse, whose harness and caparison were of blue satin, fringed with gold and bestrewn with stars made of embroidery of gold stuff on a violet field. The two lackeys who led it by the bridle, had their heads uncovered and were clothed with velvet of a violet crimson, purfled with gold, slashed with broad slashes, through which the lining of white satin showed itself in folds. This was the saddle-horse of the emperor.

Afterward came six players on the hautboy clothed in sarcinet of a violet crimson.

Nero appeared last, borne on a high tribunal eight feet wide and ten long, and covered to the earth with cloth-of-gold, strewn with large embroidered eagles, "copied as closely as possible from the life." The chair on which he was seated was entirely covered with another cloth-of-gold crimped. His sagum, or military cloak, was of blue velvet all purfled with gold, with large flowers in needle-work after the antique; the sleeves slashed, and displaying beneath the undulating folds of the lining, which was of gold stuff on a violet field. His robe, a crimson velvet, adorned with flowers and interlaced with gold thread, was lined with velvet of the same color. The cape was serrated, the points interblending, and was bestrewn with a profusion of great pearls, and at each point hung a great tassel of other pearls. His hat, of Persian velvet and of a tyrannical fashion, was bordered with chains of gold and strewn with a great quantity of rings. His gold crown, with its triple branches, was filled with gems so numerous, so varied, and of so great a price that it is impossible to specify them. And his collar was not less garnished. His buskins, of Persian velvet, with small slashes, were laced with chains of gold, and some rings hung from his {588} garters. He placed one of his feet upon a casket which enclosed the imperial seal and was covered with silver cloth sown with gems, thus symbolizing that the power of the empire was his, and that all things were submissive to him. In his hand was a battle-axe well gilded. His port was haughty and his mien very magnificent. The tribunal, with the monarch upon it, was borne by eight captive kings, the drapery concealing from the audience everything save their heads, on which rested crowns of gold. A troupe of musicians followed with trumpets, clarions, tamborines, and fifes. The procession was closed by twenty-four cavaliers, captains, chevaliers, squires, cup-bearers—some wearing the imperial livery, others clad according to their pleasure; and by chariots which were loaded with the emperor's baggage and vivanderie, and were drawn by eighteen or twenty horses.

Nero's sagum, with its splendid flower-work after the antique, his hat of tyrannical fashion, his battle-axe, the eagles embroidered on the drapery which covered his tribunal, the laurel crowns which begirt the brows of his Moorish guards, the cornucopiae, the vases of gold and silver which they carried, all indicate a tendency toward historical costume. This is also seen in the robes of the seventy-two disciples approaching the ancient manner—the caps of the high priests, Josephus and Abiachar, made according to the Jewish manner—the dagger of Polemius, king of Armenia, the golden handle of which was prepared after the antique—the robe, fashioned after the Hebrew manner, which was worn by the young Jew whom we saw singing at the marriage of Pelagia and Denis. But apart from these examples and some others which are found here and there in the pompous catalogue of the actors of Bruges, everybody used great liberty and much fancifulness in the choice of habiliments. Each person took the most beautiful things he could lay hands on. The cortege of Nero closed, as we have seen, by cavaliers dressed after their own pleasure. The marechal of Migdeus, king of Greater Ynde, and his valet, had taffeta clothes while bearing on their shoulders bars of iron and mallets. The lord of Quantilly, author of the relation from which we have derived our details, after having spoken of a group of eighteen or twenty persons blind, halt, demoniac, lepers and vagabonds, confesses that they were too well clad to accord with their condition.

Thus far we have concerned ourselves with the history of the mysteries and their representation; we shall now proceed to a critical retrospect of the subject.

The trilogy of the "Mystery of the Passion" and the "Triumphant Mystery of the Acts of the Apostles," deserve an important place in the history of French dramatic art, not only because they characterize the epoch of which they were the two chief works, but also because they have an intimate and an essential connection with the tragic masterpieces of the eighteenth century—a connection also which has been little noticed. We propose to consider the literary value and the influence of those two plays, commencing with an estimate of the mise en scène and the spectacle whose fairy-like pomp and immense popularity we have just taken in view.

The dramatic writers and the managers of the "mysteries" were well aware that to move the multitude the eye is of greater power than the ear. We have seen that they directed all their energies to the marvels of stage effect. But they did not listen to the precept of the poet, a precept founded on the very nature of art, which enjoins that only those things should be interwoven into the composition which can be witnessed without incredulity and without disgust. If the devils intervene, they must be introduced with their bat-shaped wings ever moving, and fire issuing from their nostrils, their mouth, and their ears, while they held in their hands {589} fiery distaffs shaped like serpents; that Cerberus, porter of hell, should have on his helmet three heads emitting flame, and that the keys he carried in his hand should seem to have just issued from a furnace, they sparkled so; that the long and hideous breasts of Proserpine should drip incessantly with blood, and with jets of fire at intervals; that Lucifer should have a casque vomiting forth flames unceasingly, and should hold in his grasp handfuls of vipers which moved in fiery twists. It was then everywhere fire, and, above all, real fire—for the contemporary authority who furnishes us with the details is particular to tell us, two several times, that there were people employed to feed this fire.

The fire thus carried about by the devils in all their goings and comings, and ever bursting from the mouth of hell when opened, became naturally the occasion of numerous accidents. We have an example of this nature which might have been tragical, but by good luck was only ludicrous, in the performance of the "Mystery of St. Martin" at Seurre, in 1496. At the commencement of the spectacle, which lasted three days, and opened with a scene of diablerie, the man who held the rôle of Satan having wished, says an official report of this epoch, to ascend to earth, caught fire in his nether garments, and was severely burnt. But he was so suddenly rescued and reclothed, that, without any one being aware of the accident, he went through with his part and then retired to his house. The affair had occurred in the morning between seven and eight o'clock. When he returned at one in the afternoon, the interval allowed, according to usage, for the audience to dine in being now over, he addressed to Lucifer, who was the cause of his misadventure, four impromptu verses that the public applauded exceedingly, but their grossness prevents our reproducing them.

These material imitations of physical nature and these exaggerations of the spectacle appear everywhere. When they wished, for example, to represent a martyr, it was necessary that the victim should be visibly tortured. We have even, in the representation of the "Mystery of the Acts of the Apostles," St. Barnabas disappearing adroitly and leaving his counterfeit presentment in the hands of the executioner, who binds it upon a wheel and sets it revolving over a burning brazier before the eyes of the spectators. When St. Paul was decapitated, it was requisite that his head, as it fell to the ground, should leap three times, and that at each bound, in accordance with the tradition, a fountain should gush forth. When they represented the crucifixion of our Lord, and the despair of Judas, it was necessary that the Saviour of the world should be seen nailed to the cross for the space of three hours, and that the traitor be hung miserably from a tree. On the performance of the "Mystery of the Passion" before the people of Lorraine in 1437, God, according to a chronicler of the time, was impersonated by "Sir Nicole don Neuf-Chastel, who was curé of St. Victor at Metz, and would have nearly died on the cross, had he not been succored; and another priest had to be put in his place to perfect the representation of the crucifixion. The next day the said curé, after having reposed, played the resurrection and bore his part superbly. Another priest, who was called Messire Jehan de Nicey, and who was chaplain of Metrange, acted Judas, and was almost killed by hanging, for his heart failed him, and he was right speedily cut down."

The taste of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for these materialistic representations was such that for the scenic features of the longer mysteries they contented themselves sometimes with a simple pantomime. Indeed, on September 8, 1424, at the solemn entry of the Duke of Bedford, the English Regent of France, the children of Paris, to adopt the expression of Sauval, played the Mystery of the Old and New Testament without {590} speech or sign, as if they had been images carved on a frieze.

The infancy of art, which appeared everywhere at this epoch in the representation of the "Mysteries," was especially visible in their style and in their composition. A rapid examination of its literary faults will suffice to show that the French drama of the middle ages, progressive, if not as regards its truthfulness, at least in the pomp of its spectacle, was in rapid decline in respect to poetry.

The first and gravest literary fault of this drama in its decadence—that which includes all the others—is the absence of all that makes the soul and life of the drama—of everything which distinguishes it most essentially from history. There is neither plot, nor peripetia, nor characters, nor passions. In the thirteenth century, Ruteboeuf, in the Miracle of Theophilus, bestows on his hero a passionate nature, and develops the action not by events in their ordinary sequence, but by the stormy struggles of the heart and the agitations of conscience. One principal personage is put upon the stage, and a single incident carries the play rapidly forward to a unique denouement. Jean Bodel, in the "Play of St. Nicholas," less skilled than his contemporaries in making his intrigue keep step to the movements of passion, consoled himself with laying violent hands on the legend, to which he gives an entirely new form. In the fourteenth century we find no longer, it is true, in the anonymous authors of the "Miracles of Notre Dame" either that creating power, or those passionate intrigues, or that simple and rapid movement, but at least we meet with some true pathos in certain scenes, and in a great number of monologues there are pronounced and well-sustained characters in the female parts, especially while the dramatic interest concentrates on one person. Open the two most celebrated works of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries—the "Mystery of the Passion" of the two Jehan Michels, and the "Triumphant Mystery of the Acts of the Apostles" of the brothers Greban—there is nothing more than a pure and simple mise en scène of history or of legend, unrolling itself slowly as the events arrive in their chronological order. There is no unity either of time or of place, as in the past; nor is there unity of action. Personal interest has ceased; the passions have ceased; vigorous characterizations have ceased. Everybody speaks frigidly from one end of the piece to the other, and for forty days, and one can scarcely find throughout the plays a terse or impassioned line. There is no progression in the movement; no advance in intrigue; no fresh complication; the tiresome dramatist jogs along without troubling himself about denouement.

This drama, which has no longer a dramatic art save in its dialogue and its spectacle—is it then absolutely without poetry? Some critics seem to have thought so, since they dwelt only on its absurdities and its literary poverty. And it must be avowed that puerility, triviality, indecency even, so dominate there, that it is easy, when approaching it, to give one's self over to a universal disgust. Others, recognizing its poverty as a whole, have found some redeeming features. Of this number are M. Onesime Le Roy, whose patriotic admiration of the Artesian works has perhaps led him too far, and M. Douhaire, who has better controlled his enthusiasm. M. Douhaire is, in our opinion, the critic who was not only the first to study, but has also most clearly comprehended the religious beauties of the later mediaeval "mysteries." "We appeal," he says in 1840, in his lectures on the History of Christian Poetry,—"we appeal to the memory and the emotions of the reader. Who is there that does not recall with the most ineffable sentiments of joy those graceful scenes of the gospel of the Nativity of our Lady, the interior of the house of Joachim, his retirement among the shepherds, the triumphal song of St. Ann after the birth of Mary, the life of the {591} Virgin in the temple? Who has not present in his memory the grand pictures of the Gospel of Nicodemus, the conversations of the patriarchs in limbo, the descent of Jesus Christ into hell, the silent apparition of Charinus and Leucius in the Sanhedrim, the terrible portrayal of the last days of Pilate, and that personification of the Jew in Ahasuerus whose grandeur surpasses the loftiest conceptions of profane poetry? But it is not alone for its depth, it is also for its form, or at least for the arrangement and effect of its combinations, that our mysteries are remarkable. Doubtless in respect to theatrical art they are more than defective. They have indeed, to speak truly, no art at all. The events are not co-ordinated with a preconceived idea, and distributed in a manner to lead forward to a catastrophe or to a final peripetia. The order of facts is habitually that of time. They are historic dialogues and nothing more. But as in history the divine and the human, the supernatural and the real, are almost always blended together, the composers of the 'mysteries' have diligently worked out this interrelation. Aided by the construction of their theatres, which permitted them to move many scenes, they combined these actions in a manner to elicit extraordinary effects, unfolding simultaneously to the eye of the spectator heaven, earth, hell. They initiated him into the secret of life, showed to him the mysterious warfare of souls, and by this spectacle made his spirit pass through terrors that any other drama would be powerless to produce."

Subscribing entirely, and it is an easy thing for us, to the judgment of the author of the "Course upon Christian Poetry," let us guard ourselves from going too far by extending the conclusion beyond the premises. Where does M. Douhaire find these poetical beauties which he offers for our admiration? In the trilogy of the "Mystery of the Passion." Now this vast dramatic composition is nothing more, in fact, than an agglomeration of the "mysteries" which preceded the work of the two Jehan Michels. These charming scenes, these grand pictures, which are met with here and there, are only the fragments of a more ancient poetry, that have been gathered up anew. When the dramatists of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries enter upon original composition, the decline of poetry is seen everywhere, in the detail as well as in the whole, in the style as in the conception. We know of but one merit which truly belongs to them—it is the happy development they have given to stage effect by a simultaneous presentation of heaven, hell, and the earth—shadowing forth by this triple theatrical action the incessant intervention of the supernatural powers in the destinies of humanity. But while this conception is majestic, its literary execution is wretched. We have a proof in the "Triumphant Mystery of the Acts of the Apostles," written from beginning to end without verve, or coloring, or nobleness, by the two most celebrated dramatic poets of their age, whom Marot calls—

"The two Grebans of high-resounding line."

Having noticed the literary poverty of the dramatic poetry of this epoch, we will now point out the principal sources of its faults. They are two. The first is a misconception of the dramatists respecting the nature of the types proposed for the imitation of art. The second is a consequence of the popularity and the indefinite length of their spectacles.

It is impossible to compare the meagreness, the languor, and the stupidity of the two brothers Greban with the bright and graceful vivacity of the writer who praises them, without being amazed at the eulogies he bestows, and demanding what can be the reason of this misjudgment on the part of a poet, the most spiritual and the most delicate of the reign of Francis I. It comes from the false idea which the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries formed of the dramatic style, or, to speak more {592} exactly, of the entire dramatic art. In place of seeking the ideal, they sought reality, and, what is worse, it was in the commonest realities that the dramatists of that time searched after the type of their language and the morals of their heroes. We have already remarked the same aberration of public taste in the far too materialistic imitations of the spectacle.

"Under a literary and dramatic point of view," says M. Sainte-Beuve, "that which is the essential characteristic of the mysteries of the sixteenth century is its low vulgarity and its too minute triviality. The authors had but one aim. They sought to portray in the men and events of other times the scenes of the common life which went on under their eyes. With them the whole art was reduced to this imitation, or rather to this faithful facsimile. If they exhibited a populace, it was recognizable at once as that of the market-places or of the city. Every tribunal was a copy of the Châtelet or of the Parliament. The headsmen of Nero, of Domitian, Daru, Pesart, Torneau, Mollestin, seemed taken from the Place du Palais de Justice or from Montfaucon. … What the public above all admired, was the perfect conformity of the dialogue, and of the other features of the play, with everyday realities. The good townsmen could not cease gazing at and listening to so natural an imitation of their daily customs and their domestic bickerings. All contemporary praise bears upon this exact resemblance. It is in this way that common and uncultured minds—strangers to the intimate and profound joys of art—readily accept false coin, and content themselves with pleasures at a low price."

This habitual imitation of the common life and of everything trivial is found even in scenes of a wholly ideal nature in heaven and in hell. The language of God and of paradise is vulgar; that of the devils is grotesque, sometimes even indecent. At the commencement of the mysteries of the brothers Greban, while the apostles have assembled together in an upper chamber to elect St. Matthias, Lucifer orders the demons to wander over the earth, and before going the evil spirits request his benediction. He replies to them:

  "Devils damned, in malediction
  O'er you each, with power blighted,
  My paw I stretch, of God accursed,
  From sins and misdeeds all absolving,
  Up! Set forth!" etc.

When Satan and Astaroth bring the souls of Ananias and Saphira to hell, Lucifer is so transported with joy that he bids the demon hosts exult:

  "Let the crowd of the damned,
  Here, before my tribunal,
  Sing an anthem infernal!"

Belial and Burgibus, he adds, will lead the treble: Berits, Cerberus, and some others, the tenor; Astaroth and Leviathan, the bass. At once they all begin to chant in chorus:

  "The more he has, the more he asks for
  Our grand devil, Lucifer.
  Does he wish the sky to pour
  Souls by thousands running o'er?
  The more they come, he longs for more,
  For his appetite is sore.
  The more he has, the more he asks for,
  Our grand devil, Lucifer."

Lucifer, deafened by their hubbub, stops his ears, and tries to silence them. Impossible! "On with the song!" cries Belial, and the uproar continues.

The "Mystery of the Passion" also commences with a scene in hell, the tone of which appears still more singular. God is in consultation with the heavenly court upon the redemption of the human race. Lucifer, alarmed, convokes his assembly.

  "Devils of hell-fire, horned and terrible,
  Infamous dogs, why sit ye idle?
  Start up, ye fat ones, young, old, and naked;
  Serpents atrocious, hump-backed and twisted."

The devils hastily assemble. Satan is the first to respond to the gracious appeal.

  "What is't thou wishest, bull-dog outrageous—
  Fetid, infected, abhorrent, mendacious?
  For thee we have forfeited heaven and all,
  To suffer such evils as no one can measure—
  And now, is cursing your only pleasure?"

Belial calls Lucifer a bag full of rottenness, whose only food is toads, and {593} complains also that it is his nature to torment them.

"This constant habit with the mystery-makers of representing the demons as insulting each other in their colloquies," says M. Douhaire, "is born of a profound thought. We are told that the wicked despise each other. It is this which the Christian dramatists put into action. Nothing can give a more terrible idea of hell than these disputes, where the demons mutually accuse each other of sufferings which cannot be abated."

Here is a reflection full of justice, and indispensable for a right interpretation of the moral aim of the "mysteries." But there still remains the literary and philosophical remark of M. Saint-Beuve upon the general tendency of this epoch to a reproduction of the morals and language of the most common and vulgar life. For the dramatists might have represented the wickedness of the demons—the horror and disorder of hell—without seeking their phrases in a vocabulary of the lowest stamp.

The frequent change from seriousness to buffoonery, from the beautiful to the burlesque, has a similar origin in the tastes of our ancestors for the actualities of ordinary life, where these transitions are habitual. But it also rose out of the necessity of keeping up the interest of a spectacle which continued many days, sometimes many weeks. Variety was a necessity. That popular assembly would consent to weep or even to be serious morning and evening for a month? Let us take an example where triviality, liveliness, and morality are all united together, We borrow it from M. Onesime Le Roy, who found it in an unedited "Mystery of the Passion." and published it in 1837.

The anonymous dramatist, after having depicted in beautiful and touching scenes the sweet virtues and good deeds of St. Joachim and St. Ann, brings on the stage two knaves who wish to make experiments on their pious simplicity. "The fellow, who has more than one trick in his bag," says the learned critic from whom we transcribe the analysis, "pretending that cold weather makes him insane, styles himself Claquedent [chatterer]; and the other is called Babin, which word, according to the lexicographer Rouchi, signifies 'foolish,' 'imbecile.' Babin, despite his name and simple air, is more artful than even Claquedent, whom he persuades to imitate madness and to let himself be bound, the better to excite compassion. Claquedent, tied up with cords by Babin, begins to gnash his teeth and to utter piteous cries, which bring the wife of Joachim. This holy woman wishes to relieve him. Babin shouts out not to touch him:

  "Ha, good dame! be wary,
  Touch him not, I pray thee,
  Lest, perchance, he slay thee!"

After a long scene of horrible contortions on one side, and of tender compassion on the other, Babin says he is going to lead away Claquedent, and receives money from the charitable dame, who bids him take good care of his friend, and to return when the money is gone. Babin, upon the latter part of this advice, replies pleasantly, "O madame, without fail!" As soon as Ann has gone away, Claquedent says to Babin, "Quick, untie me!" But the latter, wishing to profit, like Raton, from the misfortune which another Bertrand has brought on himself, says to him,

  Wait awhile, I beg you, do;
  You have what is best for you;
  And since I am a trifle clever,
  I will manage all this silver.

Claquedent, who sees himself caught in a snare, fills the air with his shrieks, which have no sham in them now. Babin is not at all frightened, and tells him, with a remarkable allusion to the fable of the fox and the goat,

  Adieu, good Claquedent. In the well
  Till to-morrow you must dwell.

"Murder! a thief, a thief!" cries the entrapped rogue, while the other, as he runs off, doubtless tells {594} everybody he meets on the way not to approach the infuriated man. "Don't touch him. He will bite you!" Finally, they come to Claquedent's assistance, and when they inquire who put him in this condition, he replies:

  Un laroncheau, plein de malfalct.
  (A roguish fellow full of mischief).

"All the comedy of this scene," says M. Onesime Le Roy, "lies in this single word, un laroncheau" a diminutive of larron (rogue), who has taken in a triple scamp, who thinks himself past mastery! It is thus that Patelin says of another scamp, his younger brother, "He has deceived me, who have deceived so many others." "Is there not," adds M. Douhaire,—"is there not, moreover, in this burlesque and merry episode, a lesson for those very foolish persons who from excess of goodness are so easily victimized by the ruses of professional beggars?"

These gay scenes quite naturally turn to farce, and these moralities degenerate into satires. This occurs, and in a deplorable manner, even in the representation of the gravest and most solemn "mysteries." The Fraternity of the Passion, perceiving that the people grew tired of their pious spectacles, called to their rescue a mischievous and merry troupe, whose duty it was to attract the crowd to their hall at the Hospital de la Trinité. It was the Enfants sans souci company, celebrated at the end of the fourteenth century, and composed of young gentlemen of family, who, having invented a kingdom founded on the faults and vices of the human race, called it the Fool's Kingdom, named as its king the Prince of Fools, and styled their plays "Fooleries" (sotties)—plays which they made upon everybody, in a fantastic and allegorical form. At the court and among the subjects of the prince figure his well-beloved son, the "Prince of Jollity," the "Mother Fool," the "Affianced Fool," the "Fool Occasion," the "Dissolute Fool," the "Boasting Fool," the "Cheating Fool," the "Ignorant Fool," the "Corrupt Fool," and twenty other personages whose names and qualities vary according to the requirements of the farce, and of a satire which spared none. In a sottie played on Shrove Tuesday, in 1511, and directed against Pope Julius II., then at war with Louis XII., the "Mother Fool" represents the Church. In another sottie where l'ancien monde is introduced, the "Dissolute Fool" is dressed as a churchman, the "Boasting Fool" as a gendarme, and the "Lying Fool" as a merchant. It was the scandalous conduct of these young Aristophaneses, whose licentiousness equalled their boldness, which, in 1547, provoked the order of the Parliament against the representation of "mysteries." The Hospital de la Trinité reverted to its first destination, and the Fraternity of the Passion, driven from their theatre after a century and a half of popularity, could only obtain permission on the following year to construct a new stage at the Hotel de Bourgogne, on the express condition that they would play only profane subjects, which should also be lawful and proper. They accepted this new mode of existence; but their time was past, and their glory was constantly in a decline. However, they held out bravely till 1588, at which period they leased their theatre to a company of travelling comedians, who for some years had been trying to establish themselves in Paris. The cleverest of them, we are told by the brothers Parfait, attempted to preserve their fame by giving out that the religious title of their fraternity did not permit them to play profane pieces. They had realized this a trifle late in the day; some forty years too late indeed!

The resuscitation of the Greek theatre, four years after the parliamentary decree, completed the ruin of the medieval spectacles. They still played the miracles in the provinces, they even composed new ones. But the pious representations went out, changing more and more; and the {595} next century, which was that of Boileau, merely amused itself with ridiculing them. However, in the very simplicity of the miracles there was something too popular to be completely forgotten, in countries where the faith and the innocent manners of our good ancestors survived. On May 18, 1835, M. Guizot, then minister, recommended to the attention of his historical correspondents the still surviving traditions of the moralities and mysteries of the middle ages. "There are yet preserved on festal days, in certain districts of France," said he, "certain popular dramatic performances. It will not be a useless labor to examine and note down these relics of the past, before modern civilization and the usages of the common language cause their disappearance."

The author of "Researches into the Mysteries which have been represented in Maine," Dom Piolin, has traced these performances from the end of the sixteenth century up to the present time. He finds the last one at Laval, during the procession of Corpus Christi. "At its origin," he says, "one of the principal features of this fete, the one, at least, which peculiarly attracted the attention of the mob, consisted in scenes from the Old and New Testament which were represented on theatres erected along the route of the procession, but chiefly at the main court of the Convent des Cordeliers, they belonged, unquestionably, to the miracles' proper, having retained that characteristic simplicity and brevity which is found in the most ancient pieces. We know that King René established a similar custom in the city of Aix. Afterward, when the marionettes were introduced into France by Catharine de Medicis, puppets were substituted for the players. This theatre—a remnant of the ancient manners—continued until the end of the restoration, the last performance being in ??37."

M. Douhaire closes his "Course upon the History of Christian Poetry" by account of a foreign performance, extending from the creation of the world to the resurrection of the dead, of which he was an eye-witness. It was in 1830, at a small town on the banks of the Loire. "What I came to see," he adds, "was the 'Mystery of the Passion' played by puppets. I did not suppose, before this curious adventure, that there could be any existing trace of the scenic plays of the middle ages; but I have since learnt that there still remain many considerable vestiges in our western and southern provinces—where not only professional actors and puppets represent the principal scenes of both Testaments, but even families amuse themselves with this holy recreation on days of solemn feasts."

Permit us to mention, in our turn, the performance of a mystery witnessed by men still alive, and whose simplicity carries one quite back to the middle ages. We get the fact from the president of the modern Bollandists. At the commencement of our century a good priest of French Hainaut took upon himself to bring out the "Mystery of the Passion," for the welfare of his flock. An appeal was made to all well-disposed people, and, as at Paris in 1437, for the "Mystery of the Acts of the Apostles," the parts were distributed to the burgesses and artisans of every description, according to the measure of their talent in such case required. A Judas was wanting. The priest at once hit upon the apothecary of the place, whose modesty kept him in his laboratory, and he went in search of him. "My friend," said he, "we are going, as you know, to represent a fine 'mystery,' and it is necessary, for the common good, that you should do something. I have found your place. Your rôle is Judas." "But M. le curé, my memory is not worth a sou, and you would never be able to stuff so many words into my head." "Exactly so, my friend. I have selected for you the shortest part, and I pledge myself to teach you it in no time." Straightway our man is enrolled in the {596} company. The solemn day arrives. The parish and all the country round are there. The spectacle commences, and the actors, duly costumed and seated on benches along each side of the stage, rise in turn to go through with what they have to say. The moment of the kiss of Judas is at hand. The poor apothecary remains glued to his chair, pale with terror. The priest, who is all eyes, hastens to him, and forces him to get up. Arrived before the person who represents Jesus Christ, he falls on his knees, trembling in every limb, and crying with joined hands, "Oh Lord! thou well knowest it was not my fault! It is monsieur the curé who forces me."

This grand trilogy of the "Mystery of the Passion"—which history exhibits as closely connected with puppet shows and village performances, naïve even to the grotesque—has quite another importance and quite another destiny in the eyes of philosophy, which discerns therein the principal features of the modern dramatic art. Let us not quit this subject before presenting a confirmation of the thesis which the readers of these essays have already seen maintained in an article where Corneille, Racine, and even Voltaire himself were shown to be unconsciously the lineal successors of our old dramatists far more than of AEschylus, of Sophocles, and of Euripides. The father of French tragedy, who discoursed upon his art with so much philosophy and toiled night and day to make our poetry Aristotle's—Pierre Corneille, after having for half a century attempted himself, and seen attempted around him, every possible denouement, was led to recognize the necessity in this particular of going contrary to the tragic art of the Greeks. "The ancients," he wrote at the close of his career, "very often content themselves in their tragedies with depicting vices in such a manner as to cause us to hate them, and virtues so as to cause us to love them, without troubling themselves with recompensing good actions or punishing bad ones. Clytemnestra and her paramour slay Agamemnon, and go free. Medea does the same with her children, and Atreus with those of her brother. It is true that by carefully studying the actions which were selected for the catastrophe of their tragedies, there were some criminals whom they punished, but by crimes greater than their own. … Our drama hardly tolerates such subjects. … It is the interest which we love to extend to the virtuous that has obliged us to resort to this other mode of finishing the dramatic poem by punishing the bad actions and by recompensing the good. It is not a precept of art, but a custom, which we have observed."

Whence originated this custom Corneille gave his own century the credit of it; but it is from the middle ages that it dates. What tragic drama was it which was the most important—the most popular—the longest played—of that first epoch of the modern theatre? Was it not the "Mystery of the Passion," which we have seen commencing with a simple dramatizing of the gospel—growing century by century—and ending with an immense trilogy, extending from the fall of man to the birth of our Saviour, from the passion and the death of the Saviour to his resurrection, from the establishment of the Church to the last judgment—that solution of human doctrines which regulates all things retribution for the wicked and recompense for the good, and by making virtue rise victorious from its battle with the passions? What the middle ages show us in the "mystery" which was its masterpiece, appears without exception in all those dramatic compositions which have come down to us. We have already remarked, and it is moreover a fact recognized by all scholars, that there is not a tragic drama of this epoch, whatever may be its subject, which does not close with the Te Deum or with some other chant of joy, of triumph, or of forgiveness. Its denouement is always homage rendered by the justice {597} heaven avenging innocence, or by mercy bestowing on the guilty repentance and pardon.

In speaking three years ago upon the liturgic origin of the modern tragedy, and the influence of Christianity on the dramatic passions, we ended by saying that we need no longer seek, as has been too often done, in Corneille or Racine for the restorers of the ancient tragedy; that those great dramatists, it is true, received from Greece the science of the pageant and the mise en scene; but that as much as they approach the Greek art in their literary form, so much they depart from it not only by their denouement but also by the moral character of their intrigue. It was impossible, in fact, to change the nature of the tragic denouement without changing that of the passions and of the events which led to them. Let us develop this conclusion of our essay by showing what it is that prevents our comprehending French tragedy and defining it.

Voltaire has said, "To compress an illustrious and interesting event into the space of two or three hours, to introduce the personae only when they ought to appear, to never leave the stage empty, to construct an intrigue which shall be probable as well as striking, to say nothing useless, to instruct the mind and to move the heart, to be always eloquent in verse, and with an eloquence appropriate to each character represented, to make the dialogue as pure as the choicest prose, without the constraint of the rhyme appearing to fetter the thoughts, and never to admit an obscure or harsh or declamatory verse—these are the conditions which are exacted from a tragedy of our day, before it can pass to posterity with the approbation of critics, without which it can never have a true reputation."

This definition, or rather this exposition, otherwise so clear and so elegant, of the demands of our Melpomene, are far from being complete. In the time of Euripides, a Greek could have said almost as much. It is because Voltaire has only taken into account the style and the mise en scène, the laws of which were at Athens what they are at Paris. The difference between the ancient tragedies and the modern tragic art consists essentially in their moral character and in that alone. Christianity, by modifying the passions of the human heart, has been able to modify them on the stage likewise. It is, then, from the philosophy of the drama that we ought to set out with Aristotle to study its nature.

The French tragedy, such as our own great century has made it, is the representation of an action more probable than real, more ideal than historic, wholly noble, serious, and becoming, restricted to one place, accomplished in a few hours, without any interruption, except the interval of the acts, constructed with the majestic simplicity of the epic, drawing its startling changes from the play of passions rather from that of events, and leading forward the mind by admiration and enthusiasm to emotions of pity and of terror.

It is not the Greek tragedy—although the ancient Melpomene has transmitted to our time its cothurnus, its mise en scène, its triple unity, its heroes themselves, with their terrors and their tears. The poetic form is the same, the moral force is entirely different. On the Athenian stage, the will was subjugated by a brutal fatality; upon ours, the will makes the destiny. Vice becomes more terrible, virtue more magnanimous, and the struggles of the soul hold a larger place than the tricks of fortune. The heroes of the ancient tragedy, to become endurable with us, would have not only to take on something of our character, of our manners, of our sentiments, and, above all, of our conscience, but it would be necessary to change their mode of action, and to lead them to a denouement by paths wholly new.

Returning to the trilogy of the Passion, let us conclude this essay with a {598} reflection which appears to us of a nature to throw great light upon the popularity and the gigantic proportions of this "mystery." The middle age, so penetrated with Christian beliefs and ideas, loved it only because it found there the supreme manifestation of Divine Providence, at once merciful and just. It had been induced to thus represent the whole history of the human race, only to give to that manifestation all the development demanded by the religious conscience and the ethics of nations. There was needed the representation of sin and the fall of the first man to explain the justice and the pardon of Cavalry: there was needed the spectacle of a universal judgment to solve the grand tragedy of human destinies.

We may blame the literary tastes of our good ancestors, but not their philosophy. It has established on an immovable basis the fundamental laws of our dramatic art. We may laugh at the puerile simplicity of their theatre, but let us laugh reverently, since we find in their literary infancy the germ, the strength, the character of the manhood of the great century.

Translated and Abridged from the Civiltà Cattolica.

ANTONIO CANOVA.

Memorie di Antonio Canova, scritte da Antonio d'Este, e publicate per cura, di Alessandro d'Este. Firenze: Felice Le Monnier. 1864.

"It must be known," says Signor Antonio d'Este, "that when the learned Missirini undertook to publish the artist-life of Canova, he had recourse to me as the only person living who could inform him thoroughly and truly of the principles of the Venetian artist, and instruct him in some details of a life which I had known intimately for the space of fifty years. … I put upon paper whatever might serve to illustrate not only the disposition and character of my friend, but also the excellent qualities of his heart. … I was disappointed when the illustrious writer, in sending back my manuscript, said: 'I have made use of many things, and of some anecdotes, but not of all, since they appeared to me too familiar.' To tell the truth, such an answer hurt my self-love, and offended the unquenchable affection which I felt for Canova."

Hence the book before us. The author has apparently endeavored chiefly to exhibit Canova the artist as a model for the studious, but he has not overlooked Canova the citizen and the Christian. He begins with him in the humble Possagno, and shows us his life in Venice, where his genius first displayed itself, even in the degenerate school with which alone he was then acquainted. It was in Rome that the young sculptor saw the ancient purity in its full splendor. It burst upon him like a sudden revelation. For several days he was like one in a trance. Then, with his conceptions enlightened, his manner fixed, and his aim determined, he threw himself into his work. Yet he was never a servile copyist of Greek or Roman models. He imbibed the spirit of the classical school, but his genius never was trammelled by imitation. The last group which he carved under the inspiration drawn from the ancient masterpieces,—his Daedalus and Icarus,—compared with his Theseus, the first work which he executed in Rome, shows in a marked {599} manner the change in his style—we might almost say his conversion to the true principles of art.

From this time Canova, though endowed with rare modesty, and always ready to take advice, showed a fixed resolution to free sculpture from the mannerism then so common; and neither the advice of friends nor the abuse of evil-minded critics could shake his purpose.

Nature undoubtedly lavished talents upon him with unsparing hand; but he was without a parallel in the industry and care with which he fostered the divine flame. His whole time not passed in labor was devoted to monuments and museums of art. With his friend d'Este he often paid a reverential visit to the famous horses at the Quirinal, before which he gave free vent to his fancy. He used to spend many hours in contemplating these masterpieces. Long before sunrise he would spring from his bed and shut himself up in his studio. He took no relaxation—scarcely even food and rest. After hammering at the marble all day, he examined it by candlelight, and dreamed about it at night. He so consumed himself in work that his friends had to wrench the tools from his hands by force. But if he laid down the chisel, it was only to return to the study of ancient masterpieces. Not content with contemplating the works themselves under every possible aspect, he tried to study out what instruments the artists probably made use of. He would throw open his studio, and then hide or disguise himself in order to overhear the honest opinions of his visitors. Extravagant praise always made him suspicious. Once he was so much pained at a lavish eulogium upon one of his works that he ran, all trembling, to his friend Hamilton, and begged him to point out some defect in it; and having obtained the criticism that he asked, he ran home again in great glee to correct the fault. He gladly accepted criticism from the ignorant as well as the learned. One day, when he was quite old, and recognized as the first sculptor of the time, he begged d'Este to move to a certain spot a beautiful group that he had finished. Several laborers were called in to move it. When they had done their task, one of them, with that connoisseur-air which the Roman laborer knows so well how to assume, shrugged his shoulders and exclaimed:

"Well, perhaps the marchese" (Canova bore this title in his later years) "knows best; but to me this statue seems to have the goitre."

The pupils in the studio sprang up in a rage and loaded the poor man with abuse, and in the midst of the noisy dispute Canova rushed into the room, and with some difficulty learned what was the laborer's offence. He darted a glance of fire at the marble.

"Bravo!" he exclaimed after a moment's pause. "You are right. 'Take this watch—it is yours—you have done me a great service."

So saying, he threw his watch and chain upon the man's neck; and taking up a chisel began immediately to retouch the statue.

At the age of twenty-five, Canova was selected by Volpato to execute the monument of Clement XIV., and it is not too much to say that the restoration of the art of sculpture dates from this immortal work. The governments of Venice, Russia, Austria, and France invited him to take up his residence in their respective capitals; but he was never happy out of Rome; the ground seemed to burn under his feet whenever he was away from his beloved studio and the great works of the ancient sculptors. Few artists ever enjoyed so high a reputation in Europe during their lifetime as Canova, and few certainly ever sought it less. He was wholly absorbed in love for his art. and eagerness for its advancement.

But the character of a great artist, according to the Italian ideal, is not complete without a touch of oddity, and Canova was not free from some amiable eccentricities. His love passage with the Signorina Volpato, and the {600} way he got out of it, will perhaps furnish the subject for a poem by some future Goldoni; but we have no space to tell of it here.

D'Este describes the moral character of Canova extremely well. He was upright, brave, and sincere, an ardent patriot, and a sensible, practical Christian. In the midst of his labors he was not insensible to the dark clouds which obscured the political horizon, and he felt so deeply the misfortunes which threatened his country that he took the pains to retouch his Dancing Girls because their expression was too joyful to accord with his own sadness of heart. He was still employed on this work when the pope was carried into captivity. He felt the misfortune as a personal affliction, and on the statue wrote these words: "Modelled in the most unhappy days of my life, June, 1809."

A few weeks after the establishment of the Roman republic, a National Institute was erected, and Canova was chosen a member. He accepted the appointment willingly, in the hope of being useful to Rome and to her artists; but when, on the evening appointed for his formal admission, the oath of membership was tendered to him, and he heard the words, "I swear hatred to princes," etc., he sprang to his feet, cried out in his Venetian dialect, "Mi non odio nessun!" (I hate no one), and left the hall.

From The Month.

CONSTANCE SHERWOOD.

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

BY LADY GEORGIANA FULLERTON.

CHAPTER IX.

On the next morning Mr. Congleton called me into the library from the garden, where I was gathering for Muriel a few of such hardy flowers as had survived the early frost. She was wont to carry them with her to the prisons; for it was one of her kindly apprehensions of the sufferings of others to divide the comfort wherewith things seemingly indifferent do affect those that be shut out of all kinds of enjoyments; and where a less tender nature should have been content to provide necessaries, she, through a more delicate acquaintanceship and light touch, as it were, on the strings of the human heart, ever bethought herself when it was possible to minister if but one minute's pleasure to those who had often well-nigh forgotten the very taste of it. And she hath told me touching that point of flowers, how it had once happened that the scent of some violets she had concealed in her bosom with a like intent did move to tears an aged man, who for many years past had not seen, no not so much as one green leaf in his prison; which tears, he said, did him more good than anything else which could have happened to him.

I threw down on a bench the chrysanthemums and other bold blossoms I had gathered, and running into the house, opened the door of the library, where, lo and behold, to my no small agitation and amaze, I discovered Edmund Genings, who cried out as I entered:

"O my dear master's daughter and well-remembered playmate, I do greet you with all mine heart; and I thank God that I see you in so good a condition, as I may with infinite gladness {601} make report of to your good father, who through me doth impart to you his paternal blessing and most affectionate commendations."

"Edmund," I cried, scarce able to speak for haste, "is he in London? is he in prison?"

"No, forsooth," quoth Mr. Congleton.

"No, verily," quoth Edmund; both at the same time.

"Thy fears, silly wench," added the first, "have run away with thy wits, and I do counsel thee another time to be at more pains to restrain them; for when there be so many occasions to be afraid of veritable evils, 'tis but sorry waste to spend fears on present fancies."

By which I did conjecture my uncle not to be greatly pleased with Edmund's coming to his house, and noticed that he did fidget in his chair and ever and anon glanced at the windows which opened on the garden in an uneasy manner.

"And wherefore art thou then in London?" I asked of Edmund; who thus answered:

"Because Mr. James Fenn, who is also called Williesden, was taken and committed close prisoner to the Marshalsea a short time back; which, when my dear master did hear of, he was greatly disturbed and turmoiled thereby, by reason of weighty matters having passed betwixt him and that gentleman touching lands belonging to recusants, and that extraordinary damage was likely to ensue to several persons of great merit, if he could not advertise him in time how to answer to those accusations which would be laid against him; and did seek if by any means he could have access to him; but could find no hope thereof without imminent danger not to himself only, but to many beside, if he had come to London and been recognized."

"Wherein he did judge rightly," quoth my uncle; and then Edmund—

"So, seeing my master and others of a like faith with him in so great straits touching their property and their lives also, I did most earnestly crave his licence, being unknown and of no account in the world, and so least to be suspected, to undertake this enterprise, which he could not himself perform; which at last he did grant me, albeit not without reluctance. And thus resolved I came to town."

"And has your hope been frustrated?" Mr. Congleton asked. To whom Edmund—"I thank God, the end hath answered my expectations. I committed the cause to him to whom nothing is impossible, and determined, like a trusty servant, to do all that in me did lie thereunto. And thinking on no other means, I took up my abode near to the prison, hoping in time to get acquainted with the keeper; for which purpose I had to drink with him each day, standing the cost, beside paying him well, which I was furnished with the means to do. At last I did, by his means, procure to see Mr. Fenn, and not only come to speak to him, but to have access to his cell three or four times with pen and ink and paper to write his mind. So I have furnished him with the information he had need of, and likewise brought away with me such answers to my master's questions as should solve his doubts how to proceed in the aforesaid matters."

"God reward thee, my good youth," Mr. Congleton said, "for this thing which thou hast done; for verily, under the laws lately set forth, recusants be in such condition that, if not death, beggary doth stare them in the face, and no remedy thereunto except by such assistance as well-disposed Protestants be willing to yield to them."

"And where doth my father stay at this present time?" I asked; and Edmund answered:

"Not so much as to you, Mistress Constance, am I free to reply to that question; for when I left, 'Edmund,' quoth my master, 'it is a part of prudence in these days to guard those that be dear to us from dangers ensuing on what men do call our perversity; and as these new laws enact {602} that he which knoweth any one which doth hear mass, be it ever so privately, or suffers a priest to absolve him, or performs any other action appertaining to Catholic religion, and doth not discover him before some public magistrate within the space of twenty days next following, shall suffer the punishment of high treason, than which nothing can be more horrible; and that neither sex nor age be a cause of exemption from the like penalties, so that father must accuse son, and sister brother, and children their parents;—it is, I say, a merciful part to hide from our friends where we do conceal ourselves, whose consciences do charge us with these novel crimes, lest theirs be also burdened with the choice either to denounce us if called upon to testify thereon, or else to speak falsely. Therefore I do charge thee, my son Edmund' (for thus indeed doth my master term me, his unworthy servant), 'that thou keep from my good child, and my dear sister, and her no less dear husband, the knowledge of my present, but indeed ever-shifting, abode; and solely inform them, by word of mouth, that I am in good health, and in very good heart also, and do most earnestly pray for them, that their strength and patience be such as the times do require.'"

"And art thou reconciled, Edmund?" I asked, ever speaking hastily and beforehand with prudence. Mr. Congleton checked me sharply; whereupon, with great confusion, I interrupted my speech; but Edmund, albeit not in words yet by signs, answered my question so as I should be certified it was even as I hoped. He then asked if I should not be glad to write a letter to my father,—which he would carry to him, so that it was neither signed nor addressed,—which letter I did sit down to compose in a hurried manner, my heart prompting my pen to utter what it listed, rather than weighing the words in which those affectionate sentiments were expressed. Mr. Congleton likewise did write to him, whilst Edmund took some food, which he greatly needed; for he had scarce eaten so much as one comfortable meal since he had been in London, and was to ride day and night till he reached his master. I wept very bitterly when he went away; for the sight of him recalled the dear mother I had lost, the sole parent whose company I was likewise reft of, and the home I was never like to see again. But when those tears were stayed, that which at the time did cause sadness ministered comfort in the retrospect, and relief from worse fears made the present separation from my father more tolerable. And on the next Sunday, when I went to the Charter House, with my cousins and Mistress Ward, I was in such good cheer that Polly commended my prating; which she said for some days had been so stayed that she had greatly feared I had caught the infectious plague of melancholy from Kate, whom she vowed did half kill her with the sound of her doleful sighing since Mr. Lacy was gone, which she said was a dismal music brought into fashion by love-sick ladies, and such as she never did intend to practise; "for," quoth she, "I hold care to be the worst enemy in life; and to be in love very dull sport, if it serve not to make one merry." This she said turning to Sir Ralph Ingoldby, the afore-mentioned suitor for her hand, who went with us, and thereupon cried out, "Mercy on us, fair mistress, if we must be merry when we be sad, and by merriment win a lady's love, the lack of which doth so take away merriment that we must needs be sad, and so lose that which should cure sadness;" and much more he in that style, and she answering and making sport of his discourse, as was her wont with all gentlemen.

When we reached the house, Mrs. Milicent was awaiting us at the door of the gallery for to conduct us to the best place wherein we could see her majesty's entrance. There were some seats there and other persons present, some of which were of Polly's acquaintance, with whom she did keep up a {603} brisk conversation, in which I had occasion to notice the sharpness of her wit, in which she did surpass any woman I have since known, for she was never at a loss for an answer; as when one said to her—

"Truly, you have no mean opinion of yourself, fair mistress."

"As one shall prize himself," quoth she, "so let him look to be valued by others."

And another: "You think yourself to be Minerva."

Whereupon she: "No, sir, not when I be at your elbow;" meaning he was no Ulysses.

And when one gentleman asked her of a book, if she had read it:

"The epistle," she said, "and no more."

"And wherefore no more," quoth he, "since that hath wit in it?"

"Because," she answered, "an author who sets all his wit in his epistle is like to make his book resemble a bankrupt's doublet."

"How so?" asked the gentleman.

"In this wise," saith she, "that he sets the velvet before, though the back be but of buckram."

"For my part," quoth a foppish young man, "I have thoughts in my mind should fill many volumes."

"Alack, good sir," cries she, "is there no type good enough to set them in?"

He, somewhat nettled, declares that she reads no books but of one sort, and doats on Sir Bevis and Owlglass, or Fashion's Mirror, and such like idle stuff, wherein he himself had never found so much as one word of profitable use or reasonable entertainment.

"I have read a fable," she said, "which speaks of a pasture in which oxen find fodder, hounds, hares, storks, lizards, and some animals nothing."

"To deliver you my opinion," said a lady who sat next to Polly's disputant, "I have no great esteem for letters in gentlewomen. The greatest readers be oft the worst doers."

"Letters!" cries Polly; "why, surely they be the most weighty things in creation; for so much as the difference of one letter mistaken in the order in which it should stand in a short sentence doth alter the expression of a man's resolve in a matter of life and death."

"How prove you that, madam?" quoth the lady.

"By the same token," answered Polly, "that I once did hear a gentleman say, 'I must go die a beggar,' who willed to say, 'I must go buy a dagger.'"

They all did laugh, and then some one said, "There was a witty book of emblems made on all the cardinals at Rome, in which these scarlet princes were very roughly handled. Bellarmine, for instance, as a tiger fast chained to a post, and a scroll proceeding from the beast's mouth—'Give me my liberty; you shall see what I am.' I wish," quoth the speaker, "he were let loose in this island. The queen's judges would soon constrain him to eat his words."

"Peradventure," answered Polly, "his own words should be too good food for a recusant in her majesty's prisons."

"Maybe, madam, you have tasted of that food," quoth the aforesaid lady, "that you be so well acquainted with its qualities."

Then I perceived that Mistress Ward did nudge Polly for to stay her from carrying on a further encounter of words on this subject; for, as she did remind us afterward, many persons had been thrown into prison for only so much as a word lightly spoken in conversation which should be supposed even in a remote manner to infer a favorable opinion of Catholic religion; as, for instance, a bookseller in Oxford, for a jest touching the queen's supremacy in ecclesiastical matters, had been a short time before arrested, pilloried, whipped, and his ears nailed to a counter, which with a knife he had himself to cut through to free himself; which maybe had not been taken much notice of, as nothing singular in these days, the man being a Catholic and of no great note, but that much talk had {604} been ministered concerning a terrible disease which broke out immediately after the passing of that sentence, by which the judge which had pronounced it, the jury, and many other persons concerned in it, had died raving mad; to the no small affright of the whole city. I ween, howsoever, no nudging should have stopped Polly from talking, which indeed was a passion with her, but that a burst of music at that time did announce the queen's approach, and we did all stand up on the tiptoe of expectation to see her majesty enter.

My heart did beat as fast as the pendulum of a clock when the cries outside resounded, "Long live Queen Elizabeth!" and her majesty's voice was distinctly heard answering, "I thank you, my good people;" and the ushers crying out, "La Royne!" as the great door was thrown open; through which we did see her majesty alight from her coach, followed by many nobles and lords, and amongst them one of her bishops, and my Lord and my Lady Surrey, kneeling to receive her on the steps, with a goodly company of kinsfolks and friends around them. Oh, how I did note every lineament of that royal lady, of so great power and majesty, that it should seem as if she were not made of the same mould as those of whom the Scriptures do say, that dust they are, and to dust must they return. Very majestic did she appear; her stature neither tall nor low, but her air exceedingly stately. Her eyes small and black, her face fair, her nose a little hooked, and her lips narrow. Upon her head she had a small crown, her bosom was uncovered; she wore an oblong collar of gold and jewels, and on her neck an exceeding fine necklace. She was dressed in white silk bordered with pearls, and over it a mantle of black silk shot with silver threads; her train, which was borne by her ladies, was very long. When my lord knelt, she pulled off her glove, and gave him her right hand to kiss, sparkling with rings and jewels; but when my lady, in as sweet and modest a manner as can be thought of, advanced to pay her the same homage, she did withdraw it hastily and moved on. I can even now, at this distance of time, call to mind the look of that sweet lady's face as she rose to follow her majesty, who leant on my lord's arm with a show of singular favor, addressing herself to him in a mild, playful, and obliging manner. How the young countess's cheek did glow with a burning blush, as if doubting if she had offended in the manner of her behavior, or had anyways merited the repulse she had met with! How she stood for one moment irresolute, seeking to catch my lord's eye, so as to be directed by him; and failing to do so, with a pretty smile, but with what I, who loved her, fancied to be a quivering lip, addressed herself to the ladies of the queen, and conducted them through the cloisters to the garden, whither her highness and my lord had gone.

In a brief time Mistress Milicent came to fetch us to a window which looked on the square, where a great open tent was set for a collation, and seats all round it for the concert which was to follow. As we went along, I took occasion to ask of her the name of a waiting-gentleman, who ordered about the servants with no small alacrity, and met her majesty with many bows and quirks and a long compliment in verse.

"Tis Mr. Churchyard," she said; "a retainer of his grace's, and a poet withal."

"Not a grave one, I hope," said Polly.

"Nay," answered the simple gentlewoman, "but one well versed in pageants and tournaments and suchlike devices, as well as in writing of verses and epigrams very fine and witty. Her majesty doth sometimes send for him when any pageant is on hand."

"Ah, then, I doubt not," quoth Polly, "he doth take himself to be no mean personage in the state, and so behaves accordingly."

{605}

Pretty Milicent left us to seek for Mistress Bess, whom she had charge of that day; and now our eyes were so intent on watching the spectacle before us that even Polly for a while was silent. The queen did sit at table with a store of noblemen waiting on her; and a more goodly sight and a rarer one is not to be seen than a store of men famed for so much bravery and wit and arts of state, that none have been found to surpass them in any age, who be so loyal to a queen and so reverent to a woman as these to this lady, who doth wear the crown of so great a kingdom, so that all the world doth hold it in respect, and her hand sought by so many great princes. But all this time I could not perceive that she so much as once did look toward my Lady Surrey, or spoke one single word to her or to my Lady Lumley, or little Bess, and took very scanty notice also of my Lady Berkeley, his grace's sister, who was a lady of so great and haughty a stomach, and of speech so eloquent and ready, that I have heard the queen did say, that albeit Lady Berkeley bent her knee when she made obeisance to her, she could very well see she bent not her will to love or serve her, and that she liked not such as have a man's heart in a woman's body. 'Tis said that parity breedeth not affection, or affinity respect, of which saying this opinion of the queen's should seem a notable example. But to see my Lady Surrey so treated in her own husband's father's house worked in me such effects of choler, mingled with sadness, that I could scarce restrain my tears. Methought there was a greater nobleness and a more true queenly greatness in her meek and withal dignified endurance of these slights who was the subject, than in the sovereign who did so insult one who least of all did deserve it. What the queen did, others took pattern from; and neither my Lord Burleigh, nor my Lord Leicester, or Sir Christopher Hatton, or young Lord Essex (albeit my lord's own friend ), or little Sir John Harrington, her majesty's godson, did so much as speak one civil word or show her the least attention; but she did bear herself with so much sweetness, and, though I knew her heart was full almost to bursting, kept up so brave an appearance that none should see it except such as had their own hearts wounded through hers, that some were present that day who since have told me that, for promise of future distinction and true nobility of aspect and behavior, they had not in their whole lives known one to be compared with the young Countess of Surrey.

Polly did point out to us the aforesaid noblemen and gentlemen, and also Dr. Cheney, the bishop of Gloucester, who had accompanied her majesty, and M. de la Motte, the French ambassador, whom she did seem greatly to favor; but none that day so much as my Lord Surrey, on whom she let fall many gracious smiles, and used playful fashions with him, such as nipping him once or twice on the forehead, and shaking her fan, as if to reprove him for his answers to her questions, which nevertheless, if her countenance might be judged of, did greatly content her; albeit I once observed her to frown (and methought, then, what a terror doth lie in a sovereign's frown) and speak sharply to him; at the which a high color came into his cheek, and rose up even to his temples, which her majesty perceiving, she did again use the same blandishments as before; and when the collation was ended, and the concert began, which had been provided for her grace's entertainment, she would have him sit at her feet, and gave him so many tokens of good-will, that I heard Sir Ralph Ingoldby, who was standing behind me, say to another gentleman:

"If that young nobleman's father is like to be shorter by the head, his father's son is like to have his own raised higher than ever his father's was, so he doth keep clear of papistry and overmuch fondness for his wife, which be the two things her {606}majesty doth most abhor in her courtiers."

My heart moving me to curiosity, I could not forbear to ask:

"I pray you, sir, wherefore doth not her majesty like her courtiers to love their wives?"

At the which question he laughed, and said:

"By reason, Mistress Constance, that when they be in that case they do become stayers at home, and wait not on her majesty with a like diligence as when they are unmarried, or leastways love not their ladies. The Bible saith a man cannot serve God and mammon. Now her grace doth opine men cannot serve the queen and their wives also."

"Then," I warmly cried, "I hope my Lord Surrey shall never serve the queen!"

"I' faith, say it not so loud, young Mistress Papist," said Sir Ralph, laughing, "or we shall have you committed for high treason. Some are in the Tower, I warrant you, for no worse offence than the uttering of such like rash words. How should you fancy to have your pretty ears bored with a rougher instrument than Master Anselm's the jeweller?"

And so he; but Polly, who methinks was not well pleased that he should notice mine ears, which were little and well-shaped, whereas hers were somewhat larger than did accord with her small face, did stop his further speech with me by asking him if he were an enemy to papists; for if so, she would have naught to say to him, and he might become a courtier to the queen, or any one else's husband, for anything she did care, yea, if she were to lose her ears for it.

And he answered, he did very much love some papists, albeit he hated papistry when it proved not conformable to reason and the laws of the country.

And so they fell to whispering and suchlike discourses as lovers hold together; and I, being seated betwixt this enamored gentleman and the wall on the other side, had no one then to talk with. But if my tongue and mine ears also, save for the music below, were idle, not so mine eyes; for they did stray from one point to another of the fair spectacle which the garden did then present, now resting on the queen and those near unto her, and anon on my Lady Surrey, who sat on a couch to the left of her majesty's raised canopy, together with Lady Southwell, Lady Arundell (Sir Robert's wife), and other ladies of the queen, and on one side of her the bishop of Gloucester, whom, by reason of his assiduous talking with her, I took more special note of than I should otherwise have done; albeit he was a man which did attract the eye, even at the first sight, by a most amiable suavity of countenance, and a sweet and dignified behavior both in speech and action such as I have seldom observed greater in any one. His manners were free and unconstrained; and only to look at him converse, it was easy to perceive he had a most ready wit tempered with benevolence. He seemed vastly taken with my Lady Surrey; and either had not noticed how others kept aloof from her, or was rather moved thereby to show her civility; for they soon did fall into such eager, and in some sort familiar, discourse, as it should seem to run on some subject of like interest to both. Her color went and came as the conversation advanced; and when she spoke, he listened with such grave suavity, and, when she stayed her speech, answered in so obliging a manner, and seemed so loth to break off, that I could not but admire how two persons, hitherto strangers to each other, and of such various ages and standing, should be so companionable on a first acquaintanceship.

When the queen rose to depart, in the same order in which she came, every one kneeling as she passed, I did keenly watch to see what visage she would show to my Lady Surrey, whom she did indeed this time salute; but in no gracious manner, as one who looks without looking, notices without {607} heeding, and in tendering of thanks thanketh not. As my lord walked by her majesty's side through the cloisters to the door, he suddenly dropped on one knee, and drawing a paper from his bosom, did present it to her highness, who started as if surprised, and shook her head in a playful manner—(oh, what a cruel playfulness methought it was, who knew, as her majesty must needs also have done, what that paper did contain)—as if she would not be at that time troubled with such grave matters, and did hand it to my Lord Burleigh; then gave again her hand to my lord to kiss, who did kneel with a like reverence as before; but with a shade of melancholy in his fair young face, which methought became it better than the smiles it had worn that day.

After the queen had left, and all the guests were gone save such few as my lord had willed to stay to supper in his private apartments, I went unto my lady's chamber, where I found Mistress Milicent, who said she was with my lord, and prayed me to await her return; for that she was urgent I should not depart without speaking with her, which was also what I greatly desired. So I took a book and read for the space of an hour or more, whilst she tarried with my lord. When she came in, I could see she had been weeping. But her women being present, and likewise Mistress Bess, she tried to smile, and pressed my hand, bidding me to stay till she was rid of her trappings, as she did term them; and, sitting down before her mirror,—though I ween she never looked at her own face, which that evening had in it more of the whiteness of a lily than the color of the rose,—she desired her women to unbraid her hair, and remove from her head the diamond circlet, and from her neck the heavy gold chain with a pearl cross, which had belonged to her husband's mother. Then stepping out of her robe, she put on a silk wrapper, and so dismissed them, and likewise little Bess, who before she went whispered in her ear:

"Nan, methinks the queen is foul and red-haired, and I should not care to kiss her hand for all the fine jewels she doth wear."

And so hugged her round the neck and stopped her mouth with kisses. When they were gone,

"Constance," quoth she, "we be full young, I ween, for the burden laid upon us, my lord and me."

"Ay, sweet one," I cried; "and God defend thou shouldst have to carry it alone;" for my heart was sore that she had had so little favor shown to her and my lord so much. A faint color tinged her cheek as she replied:

"God knows I should be well cotent that Phil should stand so well in her majesty's good graces as should be convenient to his honor and the furtherance of his fortunes, if so be his father was out of prison; and 'tis little I should reck of such slights as her highness should choose to put upon me, if I saw him not so covetous of her favor that he shall think less well of his poor Nan hereafter by reason of the lack of her majesty's good opinion of her, which was so plainly showed to-day. For, good Constance, bethink thee what a galling thing it is to a young nobleman to see his wife so meanly entreated; and for her majesty to ask him, as she did, if the pale-faced chit by his side, when she arrived, was his sister or his cousin. And when he said it was his wife who had knelt with him to greet her majesty"—"Wife!" quoth the queen; "i' faith, I had forgotten thou wast married—if indeed that is to be called a marriage which children do contract before they come to the age of reason; and said she would take measures for that a law should be passed which should make such foolish marriages unlawful. And when my lord tried to tell her we had been married a second time a few months since, she pretended not to hear, and asked M. de la Motte if, in his country, children were made to marry in their infancy. To which he gave answer, that the like practice did sometimes take place {608} in France; and that he had himself been present at a wedding where the bridegroom was whipped because he did refuse to open the ball with the bride. At the which her majesty very much laughed, and said she hoped my lord had not been so used on his wedding-day. I promise you Phil was very angry; but the wound these jests made was so salved over with compliments, which pleasantly tickle the ears when uttered by so great a queen, and marks of favor more numerous than can be thought of, in the matter of inviting him to hunt with her in Marylebone and Greenwich park, and telling him he deserved better treatment than he had, as to his household and setting forward in the world, that methinks the scar was not long in healing; albeit in the relating of these passages the pain somewhat revived. But what doth afflict me the most is the refusal her highness made to read my lord's letter, lamenting the unhappy position of the duke his father, and hoping the queen, by his means and those of other friends, should mitigate her anger. I would have had Phil not only go down on his knees as he did, but lie on the threshold of the door, so that she should have walked over the son's body if she refused to show mercy to the father; but he yet doth greatly hope from the favor showed him that he may sue her majesty with better effect some other time; and I pray God he may be right."

Here did the dear lady break off her speech, and, hiding her face in her hands, remained silent for a short space; and I, seeing her so deeply moved, with the intent to draw away her thoughts from painful musings, inquired of her if the good entertainment she had found in conversing with the bishop had been attributable to his witty discourse, or to the subjects therein treated of.

"Ah, good Constance," she answered, "our talk was of one whom you have often heard me speak of—Mr. Martin's friend, Master Campion, [Footnote 122] who is now beyond seas at Douay, and whom this bishop once did hold to be more dear to him than the apple of his eye. He says his qualifications were so excellent, and he so beloved by all persons in and outside of his college at Oxford, that none more so; and that he did himself see in him so great a present merit and promise of future excellence, that it had caused him more grief than anything else which had happened to him, and been the occasion of his shedding more tears than he had ever thought to have done, when he who had received from him deacon's orders, and whom he had hoped should have been an honor and a prop to the Church of England, did forsake it and fly in the face of his queen and his country: first, by going into Ireland; and then, as he understood, beyond seas, to serve the bishop of Rome, against the laws of God and man. But that he did yet so dearly affection him that, understanding we had sometimes tidings of Mr. Martin, by whose means he had mostly been moved to this lamentable defection, he should be contented to hear somewhat of his whilom son, still dear to him, albeit estranged. I told him we did often see Master Campion when Mr. Martin was here; and that, from what I had heard, both were like to be at Douay, but that no letters passed between Mr. Martin and ourselves; for that his grace did not allow of such correspondence since he had been reconciled and gone beyond seas. Which the bishop said was a commendable prudence in his grace, and the part of a careful father; and added, that then maybe he knew more of what had befallen Master Campion than I did; for that he had a long epistle from him, so full of moving arguments and pithy remonstrances as might have shaken one not well grounded and settled in his religion, and which also contained a recital of his near arrest in Dublin, where the queen's officers would have arrested him, if a friend had not privately warned him of his danger. And I do know, good {609} Constance, who that friend was; for albeit I would not tell the bishop we had seen Master Campion since he was reconciled, he, in truth, was here some months ago: my lord met him in the street, disguised as a common travelling man, and brought him into the garden, whither he also called me; and we heard then from him how he would have been taken in Ireland, if the viceroy himself, Sir Henry Sydney, who did greatly favor him,—as indeed all who know him incline to do, for his great parts, and nobleness of mind and heart, and withal most attractive manners,—had not sent him a message, in the middle of the night, to the effect that he should instantly leave the city, and take measures for to escape abroad. So, under the name of Patrick, and wearing the livery of the Earl of Kildare, he travelled to a port twenty miles from Dublin, and there embarked for England. The queen's officers, coming on board the ship whereon he had taken his passage, before it sailed, searched it all over; but through God's mercy, he said, and St. Patrick's prayers, whose name he had taken, no one did recognize him, and he passed to London; and the day after, my lord sent him over to Flanders. So much as the bishop did know thereon, he related unto me, and stinted not in his praise of his great merits, and lamentations for what he called his perversion; and hence he took occasion to speak of religion. And when I said I had been brought up in the Catholic religion, albeit I now conformed to the times, he said he would show me the way to be Catholic and still obey the laws, and that I might yet believe for the most part what I had learnt from my teachers, so be I renounced the Pope, and commended my saying the prayers I had been used to; which, he doubted not, were more pleasing to God than such as some ministers do recite out of their own heads, whom he did grieve to hear frequented our house, and were no better than heretics, such as Mr. Fox and Mr. Fulke and Mr. Charke, and the like of them. But what did much content me was, that he mislikes the cruel usage recusants do meet with; and he said, not as if boasting of it, but to declare his mind thereon, that he had often sent them alms who suffered for their conscience' sake, as many do at this time. But that I was to remember many Protestants were burnt in the late queen's time, and that if Papists were not kept under by strict laws, the like might happen again."

[Footnote 122: State Papers.]

"You should have told him," I cried, who had been silent longer than I liked, "that Protestants are burnt also in this reign, by the same token that some Anabaptists did so suffer a short time back, to your Mr. Fox's no small disgust, who should will none but Catholics to be put to death."

"Content thee, good Constance," my lady answered; "I be not so furnished with arguments as thou in a like case wouldst be. So I only said, I would to God none were burnt, or hanged, or tortured any more in this country, or in the world at all, for religion; and my lord of Gloucester declared he was of the same mind, and would have none so dealt with, if he could mend it, here or abroad. Then the queen rising to go, our discourse came to an end; but this good bishop says he will visit me when he next doth come to London, and make that matter plain to me how I can remain Catholic, and obey the queen, and content his grace."

"Then he will show you," I cried, "how to serve God and the world, which the gospel saith is a thing not to be thought of, and full of peril to the soul."

My Lady Surrey burst into tears, and I was angered with myself that I had spoken peradventure over sharply to her who had too much trouble already; but it did make me mad to see her so beset that the faith which had been once so rooted in her, and should be her sure and only stay in the dangerous path she had entered on, should be in such wise shaken as her words did indicate. {610} But she was not angered, the sweet soul; and drawing me to herself, laid her head on my bosom, and said:

"Thou art a true friend, though a bold one; and I pray God I may never lack the benefit of such friendship as thine, for he knoweth I have great need thereof."

And so we parted with many tender embraces, and our hearts more strictly linked together than heretofore.

CHAPTER X.

In the month of November of the same year in which the queen did visit Lord and Lady Surrey at the Charter House, a person, who mentioned not his name, delivered into the porter's hands at our gate a letter for me, which I found to be from my good father, and which I do here transcribe, as a memorial of his great piety toward God, and tender love for me his unworthy child.

"MY DEARLY BELOVED DAUGHTER (so he),—Your comfortable letter has not a little cheered me; and the more so that this present one is like to be the last I shall be able to write on this side of the sea, if it so happen that it shall please God to prosper my intent, which is to pass over into Flanders at the first convenient opportunity: for the stress of the times, and mine own earnest desire to live within the compass of a religious life, have moved me to forsake for a while this realm, and betake myself to a place which shall afford opportunity and a sufficiency of leisure for the prosecution of my design. The comfortable report Edmund made of thy health, increased height, and good condition, as also of thy exceeding pleasant and affectionate behavior to him, as deputed from thy poor father to convey to thee his paternal blessing, together with such tokens as a third person may exhibit of that most natural and tender affection which he bears to thee, his sole child, whom next to God he doth most entirely value and love,—of which charge this good youth assured me he did acquit himself as my true son in Christ, which indeed he now is,—and my good brother's letter and thine, which both do give proof of the exceeding great favor shown toward thee in his house, wherein he doth reckon my Constance not so much a niece (for such be his words) as a most cherished daughter, whose good qualities and lively parts have so endeared her to his family, that the greatest sorrow which could befal them should be to lose her company; which I do not here recite for to awaken in thee motions of pride or a vain conceit of thine own deserts, but rather gratitude to those whose goodness is so great as to overlook thy defects and magnify thy merits;—Edmund's report, I say, coupled with these letters, have yielded me all the contentment I desire at this time, when I am about to embark on a perilous voyage, of which none can foresee the course or the end; one in which I take the cross of Christ as my only staff; his words, "Follow me," for my motto; and his promise to all such as do confess him before men, as the assured anchor of my hope.

"Our ingenuous youth informed thee (albeit I doubt not in such wise as to conceal, if it had been possible, his own ability, which, with his devotedness, do exceed praise) how he acquitted both me and others of much trouble and imminent danger by his fortunate despatch with that close prisoner. I had determined to place him with some of my acquaintance, lest perhaps he should return, not without some danger of his soul, to his own friends; but when he understood my resolution, he cried out with like words to those of St. Lawrence, 'Whither goeth my master without his servant? Whither goeth my father without his son?' and with tears distilling from his eyes, he humbly entreated he might go together with me, saying, as it were with St. Peter, 'Master, I am {611} ready to go with you to prison, yea to death;' but, forecasting his future ability, as also to try his spirit a little further, I made him answer it was impossible; to which our Edmund replied, 'Alas! and is it impossible? Shall my native soil restrain free will? or home-made laws alter devout resolutions? Am I not young? Can I not study? May I not in time get what you now have got—learning for a scholar? yea, virtue for a priest, perhaps; and so at length obtain that for which you now are ready? Direct me the way, I beseech you; and let me, if you please, be your precursor. Tell me what I shall do, or whither I must go; and for the rest, God, who knows my desire, will provide and supply the want. Can it be possible that he who clothes the lilies of the field, and feeds the fowls of the air, will forsake him who forsakes all to fulfil his divine precept, "Seek first the kingdom of God and his justice, and all other things shall be given to you?"' Finally, he ended, to my no small admiration, by reciting the words of our Saviour, 'Whosoever shall forsake home, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, for my sake and the gospel's, shall receive a hundredfold and possess life everlasting.'

"By these impulses, often repeated with great fervor of spirit, I perceived God Almighty's calling in him, and therefore at last condescended to let him take his adventures, procuring him commendations to such friends beyond seas as should assist him in his purpose, and furnishing him with money sufficient for such a journey; not judging it to be prudent to keep him with me, who have not ability to warrant mine own passage; and so noted a recusant, that I run a greater risk to be arrested in any port where I embark. And so, in all love and affection, we did part; and I have since had intelligence, for the which I do return most humble and hearty thanks to God, that he hath safely crossed the seas, and has now reached a sure harbor, where his religious desires may take effect. And now, daughter Constance, mine own good child, fare thee well! Pray for thy poor father, who would fain give thee the blessing of the elder as of the younger son—Jacob's portion and Esau's also. But methinks the blessings of this world be not at the present time for the Catholics of this land; and so we must needs be content, for our children as for ourselves (and a covetous man he is which should not therewith be satisfied), with the blessings our Lord did utter on the mountain, and mostly with that in which he doth say, 'Blessed are ye when men shall persecute you, and revile you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my name's sake; for great is your reward in heaven.'

"Your loving father in natural affection and ten thousand times more in the love of Christ, H. S."

Oh, what a gulf of tenfold separation did those words "beyond seas" suggest betwixt that sole parent and his poor child! Thoughts travel not with ease beyond the limits which nature hath set to this isle; and what lies beyond the watery waste wherewith Providence hath engirdled our shores offers no apt images to the mind picturing the invisible from the visible, as it is wont to do with home-scenes, where one city or one landscape beareth a close resemblance to another. And if, in the forsaking of this realm, so much danger did lie, yea, in the very ports whence he might sail, so that I, who should otherwise have prayed that the winds might detain him, and the waves force him back on his native soil, was constrained to supplicate that they should assist him to abandon it,—how much greater, methought, should be the perils of his return, when, as he indeed hoped, a mark should be set on him which in our country dooms men to a cruel death! Many natural tears I shed at this parting, which until then had not seemed so desperate and final; {612} and for a while would not listen to the consolations which were offered by the good friends who were so tender to me, but continued to wander about in a disconsolate manner in the garden, or passionately to weep in my own chamber, until Muriel, the sovereign mistress of comfort to others, albeit ever ailing in her body, and contemned by such as dived not through exterior deformity into the interior excellences of her soul, with sweet compulsion and authoritative arguments drawn from her admirable faith and simple devotion, rekindled in mine the more noble sentiments sorrow had obscured, not so much through diverting, as by elevating and sweetening, my thoughts to a greater sense of the goodness of God in calling my father, and peradventure Edmund also, to so great an honor as the priesthood, and never more honorable than in these days, wherein it oftentimes doth prove the road to martyrdom.

In December of that year my Lord and my Lady Surrey, by the Duke of Norfolk's desire, removed for some weeks to Kenninghall for change of air, and also Lady Lumley, his grace judging them to be as yet too young to keep house alone. My lord's brothers and Mistress Bess, with her governess, were likewise carried there. Lady Surrey wrote from that seat, that, were it not for the duke's imprisonment and constant fears touching his life, she should have had great contentment in that retirement, and been most glad to have tarried there, if it had pleased God, so long as she lived, my lord taking so much pleasure in field-sports, and otherwise so companionable, that he often offered to ride with her; and in the evenings they did entertain themselves with books, chiefly poetry, and sometimes played at cards. They had but few visitors, by reason of the disgrace and trouble his grace was in at that time; only such of their neighbors as did hunt and shoot with the earl her husband; mostly Sir Henry Stafford and Mr. Rookwood's two sons, whom she commended; the one for his good qualities and honest carriage, and the other for wit and learning; as also Sir Hammond l'Estrange, a gentleman who stayed no longer away from Kenninghall, she observed, than thereunto compelled by lack of an excuse for tarrying if present, or returning when absent. He often procured to be invited by my lord, who used to meet him out of doors, and frequently carried him back with him to dine or to sup, and often both.

"And albeit" (so my lady wrote) "I doubt not but he doth set a reasonable value on my lord's society,—who, although young enough to be his son, is exceedingly conversable and pleasant, as every one who knows him doth testify,—and mislikes not, I ween, the good cheer, or the wine from his grace's cellar; yet I warrant thee, good Constance, 'tis not for the sake only of our poor company or hospitable table that this good knight doth haunt us, but rather from the passion I plainly see he hath conceived for our Milicent since a day when he hurt his arm by a fall not far from hence, and I procured she should dress it with that rare ointment of thine, which verily doth prove of great efficacy in cases where the skin is rubbed off. Methinks the wound in his arm was then transplanted into his heart, and the good man so bewitched with the blue eyes and dove-like countenance of his chirurgeon, that he has fallen head-over-ears in love, and is, as I hope, minded to address her in a lawful manner. His wound did take an exceeding long time in healing, to the no small discredit of thy ointment; for he came several days to have it dressed, and I could not choose but smile when at last our sweet practitioner did ask him, in an innocent manner, if the wound did yet smart, for indeed she could see no appearance in it but what betokened it to be healed. He answered, 'There be wounds, Mistress Milicent, which smart, albeit no outward marks of such suffering do show themselves.' {613} 'Ay,' quoth Milicent, 'but for such I be of opinion further dressing is needless; and with my lady's licence, I will furnish you, sir, with a liquid which shall strengthen the skin, and so relieve the aching, if so you be careful to apply it night and morning to the injured part, and to cork the bottle after using it.' 'My memory is so bad, fair physician,' quoth the knight, 'that I am like to forget the prescription.' She answered, he should stand the bottle so as it should meet his eyes when he rose, and then he must needs remember it.

"And so broke off the discourse. But when he is here I notice how his eyes do follow her when she sets the table for primero, or works at the tambour-frame, or plays with Bess, to whom he often talks as she sits on her knees, who, if I mistake not, shall be, one of these days, Lady l'Estrange, and is as worthy to be so well married as any girl in the kingdom, both as touching her birth and her exceeding great virtue and good disposition. He is an extreme Protestant, and very bitter against Catholics; but as she, albeit mild in temper, is as firmly settled in the new religion as he is, no difference will exist between them on a point in which 'tis most of all to be desired husbands and wives should be agreed. Thou mayst think that I have been over apt to note the signs of this good knight's passion, and to draw deductions from such tokens as have appeared of it, visible maybe to no other eyes than mine; but, trust me, Constance, those who do themselves know what 'tis to love with an engrossing affection are quick to mark the same effects in others. When Phil is in the room, I find it a hard matter at times to restrain mine eyes from gazing on that dear husband, whom I do so entirely love that I have no other pleasure in life but in his company. And not to seem to him or to others too fond, which is not a beseeming thing even in a wife, I study to conceal my constant thinking on him by such devices as cunningly to provoke others to speak of my lord, and so appear only to follow whereunto my own desire doth point, or to propose questions,—a pastime wherein he doth excel,—and so minister to mine own pride in him without direct flattery, or in an unbecoming manner setting forth his praise. And thus I do grow learned in the tricks of true affection, and to perceive in such as are in love what mine own heart doth teach me to be the signals of that passion."

So far my lady; and not long after, on the first day of February, I had a note from her, written in great distraction of mind at the Charter House, where she and all his grace's children had returned in a sudden manner on the hearing that the queen had issued a warrant for the duke's execution on the next Monday. Preparations were made with the expectation of all London, and a concourse of many thousands to witness it, the tread of whose feet was heard at night, like to the roll of muffled drums, along the streets; but on the Sunday, late in the night, the queen's majesty entered into a great misliking that the duke should die the next day, and sent an order to the sheriffs to forbear until they should hear further. His grace's mother, the dowager countess, and my Lady Berkeley his sister (now indeed lowering her pride to most humble supplication), and my Lord Arundel from his sick-bed, and the French ambassador, together with many others, sued with singular earnestness to her majesty for his life, who, albeit she had stayed the execution of his sentence, would by no means recall it. I hasted to the Charter House, Mistress Ward going with me, and both were admitted into her ladyship's chamber, with whom did sit that day the fairest picture of grief I ever beheld—the Lady Margaret Howard, who for some months had resided with the Countess of Sussex, who was a very good lady to her and all these afflicted children. Albeit Lady Surrey had often greatly commended this young lady, and styled her so rare a piece of perfection that no one {614} could know and not admire her, the loveliness of her face, nobility of her figure, and attractiveness of her manners exceeded my expectations. The sight of these sisters minded me then of what Lady Surrey had written when they were yet children, touching my Lord Surrey, styling them "two twin cherries on one stalk;" and methought, now that the lovely pair had ripened into early maturity, their likeness in beauty (though differing in complexion) justified the saying. Lady Margaret greeted us as though we had not been strangers, and in the midst of her great and natural sorrow showed a grateful sense of the share we did take in a grief which methinks was deeper in her than in any other of these mourners.

Oh, what a period of anxious suspense did follow that first reprieve! what alternations of hope and fear! what affectionate letters were exchanged between that loving father and good master and his sorrowful children and servants; now writing to Mr. Dyx, his faithful steward:

"Farewell, good Dyx! your service hath been so faithful unto me, as I am sorry that I cannot make proof of my good-will to recompense it. I trust my death shall make no change in you toward mine, but that you will faithfully perform the trust that I have reposed in you. Forget me, and remember me in mine. Forget not to counsel and advise Philip and Nan's unexperienced years; the rest of their brothers' and sisters' well-doing resteth much upon their virtuous and considerate dealings. God grant them his grace, which is able to work better in them than my natural well-meaning heart can wish unto them. Amen. And so, hoping of your honesty and faithfulness when I am dead, I bid you this my last farewell. T. H."

Now to another trusty friend and honest dependent:

"Good friend George, farewell. I have no other tokens to send my friends but my books; and I know how sorrowful you are, amongst the rest, for my hard hap, whereof I thank God; because I hope his merciful chastisement will prepare me for a better world. Look well throughout this book, and you shall find the name of duke very unhappy. I pray God it may end with me, and that others may speed better hereafter. But if I might have my wish, and were in as good a state as ever you knew me, yet I would wish for a lower degree. Be a friend, I pray you, to mine; and do my hearty commendations to your good wife and to gentle Mr. Dennye. I die in the faith that you have ever known me to be of. Farewell, good friend.

"Yours dying, as he was living,

"NORFOLK."

These letters and some others did pass from hand to hand in that afflicted house; and sometimes hope and sometimes despair prevailed in the hearts of the great store of relatives and friends which often assembled there to confer on the means of softening the queen's anger and moving her to mercy; one time through letters from the king of France and other princes, which was an ill shot, for to be so entreated by foreign potentates did but inflame her majesty's anger against the duke; at others, by my Lord Sussex and my Lord Arundel, or such persons in her court as nearly approached her highness and could deal with her when she was merry and chose to condescend to their discourse. But the wind shifts not oftener than did the queen's mind at that time, so diverse were her dispositions toward this nobleman, and always opposed to such as appeared in those who spoke on this topic, whether as pressing for his execution, or suing for mercy to be extended to him. I heard much talk at that time touching his grace's good qualities: how noble had been his spirit; how moderate his disposition; how plain his attire; how bountiful his alms.

{615}

As the fates of many do in these days hang on the doom of one, much eagerness was shown amongst those who haunted my uncle's house to learn the news afloat concerning the issue of the duke's affair. Some Catholics of note were lying in prison at that time in Norwich, most of them friends of these gentlemen; of which four were condemned to death at that time, and one to perpetual imprisonment and loss of all his property for reconcilement; but whilst the Duke of Norfolk was yet alive, they held the hope he should, if once out of prison, recover the queen's favor and drive from their seats his and their mortal enemies, my Lords Burleigh and Leicester. And verily the axe was held suspended on the head of that duke for four months and more, to the unspeakable anguish of many; and, amongst others, his aged and afflicted mother, the Dowager Countess of Surrey, who came to London from the country to be near her son in this extremity. Three times did the queen issue a warrant for his death and then recalled it; so that those trembling relatives and well-wishers in and out of his house did look each day to hear the fatal issue had been compassed, In the month of March, when her majesty was sick with a severe inflammation and agonizing pain, occasioned, some said, by poison administered by papists, but by her own physicians declared to arise from her contempt of their prescriptions, there was a strange turmoil, I ween, in some men's breasts, albeit silent as a storm brewing on a sultry day. Under their breath, and with faces shaped to conceal the wish which bred the inquiry, they asked of the queen's health; whilst others tore their hair and beat their breasts with no affected grief, and the most part of the people lamented her danger. Oh, what five days were those when the shadow of death did hover over that royal couch, and men's hearts failed them for fear, or else wildly whispered hopes such as they durst not utter aloud,—not so much as to a close friend,—lest the walls should have ears, or the pavement open under their feet! My God, in thy hands lie the issues of life and death. Thou dost assign to each one his space of existence, his length of days. Thy ways are not as our ways, nor thy thoughts as our thoughts. She lived who was yet to doom so many princely heads to the block, so many saintly forms to the dungeon and the rack. She lived whose first act was to stretch forth a hand yet weakened by sickness to sign, a fourth time, a warrant for a kinsman's death, and once again recalled it. Each day some one should come in with various reports touching the queen's dispositions. Sometimes she had been heard to opine that her dangers from her enemies were so great that justice must be done. At others she vehemently spoke of the nearness of blood to herself, of the superiority in honor of this duke; and once she wrote to Lord Burleigh (a copy of this letter Lord Surrey saw in Lord Oxford's hands), "that she was more beholden to the hinder part of her head than she dared trust the forward part of the same;" and expressed great fear lest an irrevocable deed should be committed. But she would not see Lord Surrey, or suffer him to plead in person for his father's life. Yet there were good hopes amongst his friends he should yet be released, till one day—I mind it well, for I was sitting with Lady Surrey, reading out loud to her, as I was often used to do—my Lord Berkeley burst into the chamber, and cried, throwing his gloves on the table and swearing a terrible oath:

"That woman has undone us!"

"What, the queen?" said my lady, white as a smock.

"Verily a queen," he answered gloomily. "I warrant you the Queen of Scots hath ended as she did begin, and dragged his grace into a pit from whence I promise you he will never now rise. A letter writ in her cipher to the Duke of Alva hath been intercepted, in which that luckless royal {616} wight, ever fatal to her friends as to herself, doth say, 'that she hath a strong party in England, and lords who favor her cause; some of whom, albeit prisoners, so powerful, that the Queen of England should not dare to touch their lives.' Alack! those words, 'should not dare,' shall prove the death-warrant of my noble brother. Cursed be the day when he did get entangled in that popish siren's plots!"

"Speak not harshly of her, good my lord," quoth Lady Surrey, in her gentle voice. "Her sorrows do bear too great a semblance to our own not to bespeak from us patience in this mishap."

"Nan," said Lord Berkeley, "thou art of too mild a disposition. 'Tis the only fault I do find with thee. Beshrew me, if my wife and thee could not make exchange of some portion of her spirit and thy meekness to the advantage of both. I warrant thee Phil's wife should hold a tight hand over him."

"I read not that precept in the Bible, my lord," quoth she, smiling. "It speaketh roundly of the duty of wives to obey, but not so much as one word of their ruling."

"Thou hadst best preach thy theology to my Lady Berkeley," he answered; "and then she—"

"But I pray you, my lord, is it indeed your opinion that the queen will have his grace's life?"

"I should not give so much as a brass pin, Nan, for his present chance of mercy at her hands," he replied sadly. And his words were justified in the event.

Those relentless enemies of the duke, my Lords Burleigh and Leicester, —who, at the time of the queen's illness, had stood three days and three nights without stirring from her bedside in so great terror lest she should die and he should compass the throne through a marriage with the Queen of Scots, that they vowed to have his blood at any cost if her majesty did recover,—so dealt with parliament as to move it to send a petition praying that, for the safety of her highness and the quieting of her realm, he should be forthwith executed. And from that day to the mournful one of his death, albeit from the great reluctance her majesty had evinced to have him despatched, his friends, yea unto the last moment, lived in expectancy of a reprieve; he himself made up his mind to die with extraordinary fortitude, not choosing to entertain so much as the least hope of life.

One day at that time I saw my Lady Margaret mending some hose, and at each stitch she made with her needle tears fell from her eyes. I offered to assist her ladyship; but she said, pressing the hose to her heart, "I thank thee, good Constance; but no other hands than mine shall put a stitch in these hose, for they be my father's, who hath worn them with these holes for many months, till poor Master Dyx bethought himself to bring them here to be patched and mended, which task I would have none perform but myself. My father would not suffer him to procure a new pair, lest it should be misconstrued as a sign of his hope or desire of a longer life, and with the same intent he refuseth to eat flesh as often as the physicians do order; 'for,' quoth he, 'why should I care to nourish a body doomed to such near decay?'" Then, after a pause, she said, "He will not wear clothes which have any velvet on them, being, he saith, a condemned person."

Lady Surrey took one of the hose in her hand, but Lady Margeret, with a filial jealousy, sadly smiling, shook her head: "Nay, Nan," quoth she, "not even to thee, sweet one, will I yield one jot or tittle of this mean, but, in relation to him who doth own these poor hose, exalted labor." Then she asked her sister if she had heard of the duke's request that Mr. Fox, his old schoolmaster, should attend on him in the Tower, to whom he desired to profess that faith he did first ground him in.

And my Lady Surrey answered yea, that my lord had informed her of {617} it, and many other proofs beside that his grace sought to prepare for death in the best manner he could think of.

"Some ill-disposed persons have said," quoth Lady Margaret, "that it is with the intent to propitiate the queen that my father doth show himself to be so settled in his religion, and that he is not what he seems; but tis a slander on his grace, who hath been of this way of thinking since he attained to the age of reason, and was never at any time reconciled, as some have put forth."

This was the last time I did see these afflicted daughters until long after their father's death, who was beheaded in the chapel of the Tower shortly afterward. When the blow fell which, striking at him, struck a no less fatal blow to the peace and well-doing of his children, they all left the Charter House, and removed for a time into the country, to the houses of divers relatives, in such wise as before his death the duke had desired. A letter which I received from Lady Surrey a few weeks after she left London doth best serve to show the manner of this disposal, and the temper of the writer's mind at that melancholy time.

"My OWN DEAR CONSTANCE,—It may like you to hear that your afflicted friend is improved in bodily health, and somewhat recovered from the great suffering of mind which the duke, their good father's death, has caused to all his poor children—mostly to Megg and Phil and me; for their brothers and my sister are too young greatly to grieve. My Lord Arundel is sorely afflicted, I hear, and hath writ a very lamentable letter to our good Lady Sussex concerning this sad mishap. My Lady Berkeley and my Lady Westmoreland are almost distracted with grief for the death of a brother they did singularly love. That poor lady (of Westmoreland) is much to be pitied, for that she is parted from her husband, maybe for ever, and has lost two fair daughters in one year.

"My lord hath shown much affection for his father, and natural sorrow in this sad loss; and when his last letters written a short time before he suffered, and addressed "To my loving children," specially the one to Philip and Nan, reached his hands, he wept so long and bitterly that it seemed as if his tears should never cease. My lord is forthwith to make his chief abode at Cambridge for a year or two; and Meg and I, with Lady Sussex, and I do hope Bess also—albeit his grace doth appear in his letter to be otherwise minded. But methinks he apprehended to lay too heavy a charge on her, who is indeed a good lady to us all in this our unhappy condition, and was loth Megg should be out of my company.

"The parting with my lord is a sore trial, and what I had not looked to; but God's will be done; and if it be for the advantage of his soul, as well as the advancement of his learning, he should reside at the university, it should ill befit me to repine. And now methinks I will transcribe, if my tears do not hinder me, his grace's letters, which will inform thee of his last wishes better than I could explain them; for I would have thee know how tender and forecasting was his love for us, and the good counsel he hath left unto his son, who, I pray to God, may always follow it. And I would have thee likewise note one point of his advice, which indeed I should have been better contented he had not touched upon, forasmuch as his having done so must needs hinder that which thy fond love for my poor self, and resolved adherence to what he calls 'blind papistry,' doth so greatly prompt thee to desire; for if on his blessing he doth charge us to beware of it, and then I should move my lord to so much neglect of his last wishes as at any time to be reconciled, bethink thee with what an ill grace I should urge on him, in other respects, obedience to his commands, which indeed are such as do commend themselves to any Christian soul as most wise and profitable. {618} And now, breaking off mine own discourse to transcribe his words—a far more noble and worthy employment of my pen—and praying God to bless thee, I remain thy tender and loving friend,
"ANN SURREY."

"The Duke of Norfolk's letters to his children:

"DEAR CHILDREN,—This is the last letter that ever I think to write to you; and therefore, if you loved me, or that you will seem grateful to me for the special love that I have ever borne unto you, then remember and follow these my last lessons. Oh, Philip, serve and fear God, above all things. I find the fault in myself, that I have (God forgive me!) been too negligent in this point. Love and make much of your wife; for therein, considering the great adversity you are now in, by reason of my fall, is your greatest present comfort and relief, beside your happiness in having a wife which is endued with so great towardness in virtue and good qualities, and in person comparable with the best sort. Follow these two lessons, and God will bless you; and without these, as you may see by divers examples out of the Scripture, and also by ordinary worldly proof, where God is not feared, all goeth to wreck; and where love is not between the husband and wife, there God doth not prosper. My third lesson is, that you show yourself loving and natural to your brothers and sister and sister-in-law. Though you be very young in years, yet you must strive with consideration to become a man; for it is your own presence and good government of yourself that must get friends; and if you take that course, then have I been so careful a father unto you, as I have taken such order as you, by God's grace, shall be well able, beside your wife's lands, to maintain yourself like a gentleman. Marry! the world is greedy and covetous; and if the show of the well government of yourself do not fear and restrain their greedy appetite, it is like that, by undirect means, they will either put you from that which law layeth upon you, or else drive you to much trouble in trying and holding your right. When my grandfather died, I was not much above a year elder than you are now; and yet, I thank God, I took such order with myself, as you shall reap the commodity of my so long passed travel, if you do now imitate the like. Help to strengthen your young and raw years with good counsel. I send you herewith a brief schedule, whom I wish you to make account of as friends, and whom as servants; and I charge you, as a father may do, to follow my direction therein; my experience can better tell what is fit for you than your young years can judge of. I would wish you for the present to make your chief abode at Cambridge, which is the place fittest for you to promote your learning in; and beside, it is not very far hence, whereby you may, within a day's warning, be here to follow your own causes, as occasion serveth. If, after a year or two, you spend some time in a house of the law, there is nothing that will prove more to your commodity, considering how for the time you shall have continual business about your own law affairs; and thereby also, if you spend your time well, you shall be ever after better able to judge in your own causes. I too late repent that I followed not this course that now I wish to you; for if I had, then my case perchance had not been in so ill state as now it is.

"When God shall send you to those years as that it shall be fit for you to keep house with your wife (which I had rather were sooner, than that you should fall into ill company), then I would wish you to withdraw yourself into some private dwelling of your own. And if your hap may be so good as you may so live without being called to higher degree, oh, Philip, Philip, then shall you enjoy that blessed life which your woful father would fain have done, and never could be so happy. Beware of high degree. To a vain-glorious, proud stomach it seemeth at the first sweet. Look into all {619} chronicles, and you shall find that in the end it brings heaps of cares, toils in the state, and most commonly in the end utter overthrow. Look into the whole state of the nobility in times past, and into their state now, and then judge whether my lessons be true or no. Assure yourself, as you may see by the book of my accounts, and you shall find that my living did hardly maintain my expenses; for all the help that I had by Tom's lands, and somewhat by your wife's and sister's-in-law, I was ever a beggar. You may, by the grace of God, be a great deal richer and quieter in your low degree, wherein I once again wish you to continue. They may, that shall wish you the contrary, have a good meaning; but believe your father, who of love wishes you best, and with the mind that he is at this present fully armed to God, who sees both states, both high and low, as it were even before his eyes. Beware of the court, except it be to do your prince service, and that, as near as you can, in the lowest degree, for that place hath no certainty; either a man, by following thereof, hath too much of worldly pomp, which, in the end, throws him down headlong, or else he liveth there unsatisfied; either that he cannot attain for himself that he would, or else that he cannot do for his friends as his heart desireth. Remember these notes, and follow them; and then you, by God's help, shall reap the commodity of them in your old years.

"If your brothers may be suffered to remain in your company, I would be most glad thereof, because continuing together should still increase love between you. But the world is so catching of everything that falls, that Tom being, as I believe, after my death, the queen's majesty's ward, shall be begged by one or another. But yet you are sure to have your brother William left still with you, because, poor boy, he hath nothing to feed cormorants withal; to whom you will as well be a father as a brother; for upon my blessing I commit him to your charge to provide for, if that which I have assured him by law shall not be so sufficient as I mean it. If law may take place, your sister-in-law will be surely enough conveyed to his behoof, and then I should wish her to be brought up with some friend of mine; as for the present I allow best of Sir Christopher Heydon, if he will so much befriend you as to receive her to sojourn with him; if not there in some other place, as your friends shall best allow of. And touching the bestowing of your wife and Megg, who I would be loth should be out of your wife's company; for as she should be a good companion for Nan, so I commit Megg of especial trust to her. I think good, till you keep house together, if my Lady of Sussex might be entreated to take them to her as sojourners, there were no place so fit considering her kindred unto you, and the assured friend that I hope you shall find of her; beside she is a good lady. If it will not be so brought to pass, then, by the advice of your friends, take some other order; but in no case I would wish you to keep any house except it be together with your wife.

"Thus I have advised you as my troubled memory can at present suffer me. Beware of pride, stubbornness, taunting, and sullenness, which vices nature doth somewhat kindle in you; and therefore you must with reason and discretion make a new nature in yourself. Give not your mind too much and too greedily to gaming; make a pastime of it, and no toil. And lastly, delight to spend some time in reading of the Scriptures; for therein is the whole comfort of man's life; all other things are vain and transitory; and if you be diligent in reading of them, they will remain with you continually, to your profit and commodity in this world, and to your comfort and salvation in the world to come, whither, in grace of God, I am now with joy and consolation preparing myself. And, upon my blessing, beware of blind papistry, which brings nothing but bondage to men's consciences. {620} Mix your prayers with fasting, not thinking thereby to merit; for there is nothing that we ourselves can do that is good,—we are but unprofitable servants; but fast, I say, thereby to tame the wicked affection of the mind, and trust only to be saved by Christ's precious blood; for without a perfect faith therein, there is no salvation. Let works follow your faith; thereby to show to the world that you do not only say you have faith, but that you give testimony thereof to the full satisfaction of the godly. I write somewhat the more herein, because perchance you have heretofore heard, or perchance may hereafter hear, false bruits that I was a papist; [Footnote 123] but trust unto it, I never, since I knew what religion meant (I thank God) was of other mind than now you shall hear that I die in; although (I cry God mercy) I have not given fruits and testimony of my faith as I ought to have done; the which is the thing that I do now chiefliest repent.

[Footnote 123: There would seem to be no doubt that the Duke of Norfolk was a sincere Protestant. The strenuous advice to his children to beware of Popery affords evidence of it. Greatly, however, as it would have tended to their worldly prosperity to have followed their father's last injunctions in this respect, all but one of those he thus counselled were subsequently reconciled to the Catholic Church.

The Duke's letters in this chapter are all authentic. See the Rev. M. Tierney's History of Arundel, and the Appendix to Nott's edition of Lord Surrey's poems.]

"When I am gone, forget my condemning, and forgive, I charge you, my false accusers, as I protest to God I do; but have nothing to do with them if they live. Surely, Bannister dealt no way but honestly and truly. Hickford did not hurt me in my conscience, willingly; nor did not charge me with any great matter that was of weight otherways than truly. But the Bishop of Ross, and specially Barber, did falsely accuse me, and laid their own treasons upon my back. God forgive them, and I do, and once again I will you to do; bear no malice in your mind. And now, dear Philip, farewell. Read this my letter sometimes over; it may chance make you remember yourself the better; and by the same, when your father is dead and rotten, you may see what counsel I would give you if I were alive. If you follow these admonitions, there is no doubt but God will bless you; and I, your earthly father, do give you God's blessing and mine, with my humble prayers to Almighty God that it will please him to bless you and your good Nan; that you may both, if it be his will, see your children's children, to the comfort of you both; and afterward that you may be partakers of the heavenly kingdom. Amen, amen. Written by the hand of your loving father. T. H."

"And to Tom his grace did write:

"Tom, out of this that I have written to your brother, you may learn such lessons as are fit for you. That I write to one, that I write to all, except it be somewhat which particularly touches any of you. To fear and serve God is generally to you all; and, on my blessing, take greatest care thereof, for it is the foundation of all goodness. You have, even from your infancy, been given to be stubborn. Beware of that vice, Tom, and bridle nature with wisdom. Though you be her majesty's ward, yet if you use yourself well to my Lord Burleigh, he will, I hope, help you to buy your own wardship. Follow your elder brother's advice, who, I hope, will take such a course as may be to all your comforts. God send him grace so to do, and to you too! I give you God's blessing and mine, and I hope he will prosper you."

"And to Will he saith (whom methinks his heart did incline to, as Jacob's did to Benjamin):

"Will, though you be now young, yet I hope, if it shall please God to send you life, that you will then consider of the precepts heretofore written to your brethren. I have committed the charge of your bringing-up to your elder brother; and therefore I charge you to be obedient to him, as you would have been to me if I had been {621} living. If you shall have a liking to my daughter-in-law, Bess Dacres, I hope you shall have it in your own choice to marry her. I will not advise you otherways than yourself, when you are of fit years, shall think good; but this assure yourself, it will be a good augmentation to your small living, considering how chargeable the world groweth to be. As you are youngest, so the more you ought to be obedient to your elders. God send you a good younger brother's fortune in this world, and his grace, that you may ever be his, both in this world and in the world to come."

"To me, his unworthy daughter, were these lines written, which I be ashamed to transcribe, but that his goodness doth appear in his good opinion of me rather than my so poor merits:

"Well-beloved Nan, that hath been as dear to me as if you had been my own daughter, although, considering this ill hap that has now chanced, you might have had a greater marriage than now your husband shall be; yet I hope that you will remember that, when you were married, the case was far otherways; and therefore I hope your dutiful dealings shall be so to your husband, and your sisterly love to your brothers-in-law and sister-in-law, as my friends that shall see it may think that my great affection to you was well bestowed. Thanks be to God, you have hitherto taken a good course; whereby all that wish you well take great hope rather of your going forward therein than backward—which God forbid! I will request no more at your hands, now that I am gone, in recompense of my former love to you, but that you will observe my three lessons: to fear and serve God, flying idleness; to love faithfully your husband; and to be kind to your brothers and sisters—specially committing to your care mine only daughter Megg, hoping that you will not be a sister-in-law to her, but rather a natural sister, yea even a very mother; and that as I took care for the well bestowing of you, so you will take care for the well bestowing of her, and be a continual caller on your husband for the same. If this mishap had not chanced, you and your husband might have been awhile still young, and I would, by God's help, have supplied your wants. But now the case is changed, and you must, at your years of fifteen, attain to the consideration and discretion of twenty; or else, if God send you to live in your age, you shall have cause to repent your folly in youth, beside the endangering the casting away of those who do wholly depend upon your two well-doings. I do not mistrust that you will be mindful of my last requests; and so doing God bless you, and send you to be old parents to virtuous children, which is likeliest to be if you give them good example. Farewell! for this is the last that you shall ever receive from your loving father. Farewell, my dear Nan!"

"And to his own sweet Megg he subjoined in the same letter these words:

"Megg, I have, as you see, committed you to your loving sister. I charge you therefore, upon my blessing, that you obey her in all things, as you would do me or your own mother, if we were living; and then I doubt not but by her good means you shall be in fit time bestowed to your own comfort and contentment. Be good; no babbler, and ever be busied and doing of somewhat; and give your mind to reading in the Bible and such other good books, whereby you may learn to fear God; and so you shall prove, by his help, hereafter the better wife, and a virtuous woman in all other respects. If you follow these my lessons, then God's blessing and mine I give you, and pray that you may both live and die his servant. Amen."

When I read these letters, and my Lady Surrey's comments upon them, what pangs seized my heart! Her {622} messenger was awaiting an answer, which he said must be brief, for he had to ride to Bermondsey with a message for my Lord Sussex, and had been long delayed in the city. I seized a pen, and hastily wrote:

"Oh, my dear and honored lady, what grief, what pain, your letter hath caused me! Forgive me if, having but brief time in which to write a few lines by your messenger, I dwell not on the sorrow which doth oppress you, nor on the many excellences apparent in those farewell letters, which give token of so great virtue and wisdom in the writer, that one should be prompted to exclaim he did lack but one thing to be perfect, that being a true faith,—but rather direct my answer to that passage in yours which doth work in me such regret, yea such anguish of heart, as my poor words can ill express. For verily there can be no greater danger to a soul than to be lured from the profession of a true Catholic faith, once firmly received and yet inwardly held, by deceptive arguments, whereby it doth conceal its own weakness under the garb of respect for the dead and duty to the living. For, I pray you, mine own dear lady, what respect and what duty is owing to men which be not rather due to him who reads the heart, and will ask a strict account of such as, having known his will, yet have not done it? Believe me, 'tis a perilous thing to do evil that good may come. Is it possible you should resolve never to profess that religion which, in your conscience, you do believe to be true, nor to move your lord thereunto, for any human respect, however dear and sacred? I hope other feelings may return, and God's hand will support, uphold, and never fail you in your need. I beseech him to guard and keep you in the right way.

"Your humble servant and truly loving poor friend,

"CONSTANCE SHERWOOD."

[TO BE CONTINUED. Page 748]

{623}

From The Fortnightly Review.

THE HEART AND THE BRAIN.

BY GEORGE HENRY LEWES.

Heart and brain are the two lords of life. In the metaphors of ordinary speech and in the stricter language of science, we use these terms to indicate two central powers, from which all motives radiate, to which all influences converge. They rule the moral and the physical life: the moral owes to them its continuous supply of feelings and ideas; the physical its continuous supply of food and stimulus. All the composite material which serves to build up the bodily fabric, and repair its daily waste, is only so much "carted material" awaiting the architect, until it has twice passed through the heart—until having been sent by the heart to the lungs it has there received its plastic virtues, and returns to the heart to be thence distributed throughout the organism. So much is familiar to every one; but less familiar is the fact that this transmission of the blood from heart to lungs, and its distribution throughout the organism, are rendered possible and made effective only under the influence of the brain. Life is sustained by food and stimulus. The operation of nutrition itself is indissolubly connected with sensibility. Life is a plexus of nutrition and sensation, the threads of which may ideally be separated, but which in reality are so interwoven as to be indissoluble. This is a paradox which even many physiologists will reject; but it is only a paradox because biological questions have constantly been regarded from a chemical point of view.

To render my proposition free from ambiguity, it is needful to premise that the term heart, by a familiar device of rhetoric, here expresses the whole of that great circulatory apparatus of which it is only a part; and in like manner the term brain here expresses the whole of the sensory apparatus. The reader knows perfectly well that in strict anatomical language the heart is only one organ having a definite function; and that the brain—although the term is used with considerable laxity—is only one portion of the complex nervous mechanism, having also its definite functions. But I am not here addressing anatomists, and for purposes of simplification I shall generally speak of the heart as if it were the whole of the vascular system, and of the brain as if it were the whole of the nervous system. And there is a philosophic truth suggested by this departure from the limitations of anatomical definition, namely, that if the brain as a nervous centre requires to be distinguished from all other nervous centres, it also requires to be affiliated on them: it has its special functions as an organ, but it has also a community of property—i.e., sensibility—with all other nervous centres.

In the study of animal organisms, the scientific artifice called analysis, which separates ideally what nature has indissolubly united, isolating each portion of a complex whole to study it undisturbed by the influences of other portions, has established a division of life into animal and vegetable. The division is as old as Aristotle, but has become the common property of science only since the days of Bichat. It is not exact, but it is convenient. As an artifice it has proved its utility, but like all such distinctions it has a tendency to divert the mind from contemplation of the real synthesis of nature. Even as an artifice the classification is not free from ambiguities; and perhaps it would be less exceptionable if {624} instead of vegetal and animal we were to substitute nutritive and sensitive. All the phenomena of growth, development, and decay—phenomena common to plants as to animals—may range under the laws of nutrition. All the phenomena of feeling and motion which specially distinguish animals, will range under the laws of sensibility. Plants, it is true, manifest motion, some few of them even locomotion; but in them it is believed that these phenomena are never due to the stimulus of sensibility.

Viewing the animal organism as thus differentiated, we see on the one hand a complex system of organs—glands, membranes, vessels—all harmoniously working to one end, which is to build up the body, and silently repair its continual waste. They evolve the successive phases of development. They prepare successive generations. On the other hand, we see a complex system of organs—muscles, tendons, bones, nerves, and nerve-centres—also harmoniously co-operative. They stimulate the organs of nutrition. They work first for the preservation of the individual in the struggle of existence; next, for the perfection of the individual in the development of his highest qualities.

But it is important to remember that this division is purely ideal—a scientific artifice, not a reality. Nature knows of none such. In the organism the two lives are one. The two systems interlace, interpenetrate each other, so that the slightest modification of the one is followed by a corresponding change in the other. The brain is nourished by the heart, and were it not for the blood which is momently pumped into it by the heart, its sensibility would vanish. And the heart in turn depends upon the brain, not for food, but for stimulus, for motive power, without which food is inert. That we may feel, it is necessary we should feed; that we may feed, it is necessary we should feel. Nutrition cannot be dissociated from sensation. The blood which nourishes the brain, giving it impulse and sustaining power, could never have become arterial blood, could never have reached the brain, had not the heart which sent it there been subjected to influences from the brain. The blood itself has no locomotive impulse. The heart has no spontaneous power: it is a muscle, and like all other muscles must be stimulated into activity. Unless the sensitive mechanism were in action, the lungs could not expand, the blood would not become oxygenated, the heart would not pump. Look on the corpse from which the life has just vanished. Why is it inert? There is food within it. It has blood in abundance. There is air in the lungs. The muscles are contractile, and the tendons elastic. So little is the wondrous mechanism impaired, that if by any means we could supply a stimulus to awaken the dormant sensibility, the chest would expand, the heart would beat, the blood would circulate, the corpse would revive.

It is unnecessary to point out in detail how dependent the brain is upon the heart; but mention may be made of the fact that more blood is sent to the brain than to any other organ in the body: according to some estimates a fifth of the whole, according to others a third. Not only is a large quantity of blood demanded for the continuous activity of the brain, but such is the peculiar nature of this great nervous centre, that of all organs it is the most delicately susceptible to every variation in the quality of the blood sent to it. If the heart pumps feebly, the brain acts feebly. If the blood be vitiated, the brain is lethargic; and when the brain is lethargic, the heart is weak. Thus do the two great centres interact. They are both lords of life, and both mutually indispensable.

There are two objections which it may be well to anticipate: Nutrition, it may be objected, cannot be so indissolubly blended with sensation as I have affirmed, because, in the first place, most of the nutritive processes go on without the intervention of {625} sensibility; and in the second place, the nutritive life of plants is confessedly independent of sensation, since in plants there is no sensitive mechanism whatever. Nutrition is simply a chemical process.

The answers to these objections may be very brief. Nutrition is a biological not a chemical process: it involves the operation of chemical laws, but these laws are themselves subordinated to physiological laws; and one of these laws is the necessary dependence of organic activity on a nervous mechanism wherever such a mechanism exists. Although popular language, and the mistaken views (as I conceive) of physiologists, allow us to say, without any apparent absurdity, that the processes of respiration, digestion, circulation, and secretion go on without feeling or sensation—because these processes do not habitually become distinct in consciousness, but are merged in the general feeling of existence—we have only to replace the word feeling, or sensation, by the phrase "nervous influence," and it then becomes a serious biological error to speak of nutrition as dissociated from the stimulus of nervous centres, as capable of continuance without the intervention of sensibility. The chemical combinations and decompositions do not of course depend on this intervention, but the transport of materials does. All the disputes which have been waged on this subject would have been silenced had the disputants borne in mind this distinction between the chemical and organic elements in every nutritive process. It is not the stoker who makes the steam; but if the stoker were not to supply the fire with coals, and the safety-valve were not to regulate the amount of pressure, steam might indeed be generated, but no steam-engine would perform its useful work. In like manner, it is not the vascular system which makes a secretion; but if the blood did not supply the gland with materials, the secreting process would quickly end, and the blood can only be brought to the gland through the agency of muscular contractions stimulated by nervous influence.

Granting that plants have no sensibility, and that in them the process of nutrition must go on without such an intervention, we are able to demonstrate that in animals in whose organism the sensitive apparatus is an integral portion, the processes of nutrition are more or less under the influence of this apparatus. In saying "more or less," I indicate the greater or less perfection of the organism; for, as every one knows, the perfection of each type is due to the predominance of its sensitive mechanism. In some of the lowest types, no trace of a nervous mechanism can be discovered. A little higher in the scale, the mechanism is very slight and simple. Still higher, it becomes complex and important. It culminates in man. Corresponding with this scale of complexity in the sensitive life is the scale of complexity in the nutritive life. As the two rise in importance they rise in the scale of dependence. Thus a frog or a triton will live long after its brain is removed. I have kept frogs for several weeks without their brains, and tritons without their heads. Redi, the illustrious Italian naturalist, kept a turtle alive five months after the removal of its brain. Now it is needless to say that in higher animals death would rapidly follow the loss of the brain. A somewhat similar parallelism is seen on the removal of the heart. None of the higher animals can survive a serious injury to the heart; but that organ may be removed from a reptile, and the animal will crawl away seemingly as lively as ever. A frog will live several hours without a heart, and will hop, swim, and struggle as if uninjured. Stilling once removed all the viscera from a frog, which, however, continued for one hour to hop, defend itself, and in various ways manifest its vivacity. [Footnote 124]

[Footnote 124: Stilling, Untersuchungen über die Functionen des Rückenmarks, p. 38. ]

{626}

In spite of these evidences of a temporary independence of brain and heart, as individual organs, there is nothing more certain than the intimate interdependence of the sensitive and circulating systems; and if in lower animals the interdependence of the two great central organs is less energetic than in the higher, the law of the intervention of sensibility in all processes of nutrition is unaffected. In fact, wherever the motor mechanism is muscular, as it is in all but the simplest animals, the necessary intervention of sensibility is an à priori axiom. Every action in the organs of such animals is a manifestation of muscular contractility, and there is no known means of exciting this contractility except by the stimulus of a nerve.

The heart is a muscle. Some years ago there was a school of physiologists advocating the hypothesis that the action of the heart was due to the irritability of its muscular tissue, which was stimulated by the presence of blood. The great Haller was the head of this school, and his "Memoires sur la nature sensible et irritable des parties" [Footnote 125] is still worthy the attention of experimentalists. And, indeed, when men saw the heart continue its pulsations some time after death, and even after removal from the body, and saw, moreover, that after pulsation had ceased it could be revived by the injection of warm blood, there seemed the strongest arguments in favor of the hypothesis. Unhappily for the hypothesis, the heart continues to beat long after all the blood has been pumped out of it, consequently its beating cannot be due to the stimulus of the blood.

[Footnote 125: Lausanne, 1756, in 4 vols. ]

In our own day the difficulty has to a considerable extent been removed by the discovery of a small nervous system specially allotted to the heart,—nerves and ganglia imbedded in its substance, which there do the work of nerves and ganglia everywhere else. Cut the heart into pieces, and each piece containing a ganglion will beat as before; the other pieces will be still. Beside this special cardiac system which influences the regular pulsations, there is the general nervous system, which accelerates and arrests these pulsations at every moment of our lives. The heart is thus connected with the general organism through the intervention of the great sensory apparatus. Filaments of what are called the pneumogastric nerves connect the heart with the spinal chord and cerebral masses; but it is not the influence of these filaments which causes the regular beatings of the heart (as physiologists formerly supposed), and the proof is that these filaments may all be cut, thus entirely isolating the heart from all connection with the great nervous centres, and yet the heart will continue tranquilly beating. What causes this? Obviously the stimulus comes from the heart's own nerves; and these are, presumably, excited by the molecular changes going on within it.

Physiologists, as we said just now, supposed that the filaments of the pneumogastric nerves distributed to the heart caused its beating. What then was their surprise, a few years since, when Weber announced that the stimulation of these fibres, instead of accelerating the heart's action, arrested it! Here was a paradox. All other muscles, it was said (but erroneously said), are excited to increased action when their nerves are stimulated, and here is a muscle which is paralyzed by the stimulation of its nerves. The fact was indisputable; an electric current passed through the pneumogastric did suddenly and invariably arrest the heart. Physiologists were interested. The frogs and rabbits of Europe had a bad time of it, called upon to answer categorically such questions put to their hearts. In a little while it appeared that although a strong electric current arrested the pulsations—and in mammals instantaneously—yet a feeble current accelerated instead of arresting them. The same opposite results followed a powerful and a gentle excitation of the upper region of the spinal chord.

{627}

To these very important and suggestive facts, which throw a strong light on many phenomena hitherto obscure, let us add the interesting facts that in a healthy, vigorous animal, the heart quickly recovers its normal activity after the withdrawal of the electric stimulus; but in a sickly or highly sensitive animal the arrest is final.

Who does not read here the physiological explanation of the familiar fact that powerful mental shocks momently arrest the heart, and sometimes arrest it for ever? That which a powerful current will do applied to the pneumogastric nerve, will be done by a profound agitation of grief or joy—truly called a heart-shaking influence. The agitation of the great centres of thought is communicated to the spinal chord, and from it to the nerves which issue to various parts of the body: the limbs are violently moved, the glands are excited to increased activity, the tears flow, the facial muscles contract, the chest expands, laughter or sobs, dances of delight and shouts of joy, these and the manifold expressions of an agitated emotion, are the after results—the first effect is an arrest, more or less fugitive, followed by an increase of the heart's action. If the organism be vigorous, the effect of a powerful emotion is a sudden paleness, indicating a momentary arrest of the heart. This may be but for an instant; the heart pauses, and the lungs pause with it—"the breath is taken away." This is succeeded by an energetic palpitation; the lungs expand, the blood rushes to face and brain with increased force. Should the organism be sickly or highly sensitive, the arrest is of longer duration, and fainting, more or less prolonged, is the result. In a very sensitive or very sickly organism the arrest is final. The shock of joy and the shock of grief have both been known to kill.

The effects of a gentle stimulus we may expect to be very different, since we know that a feeble electric current stimulates the heart's action. The nature of the stimulus is always the same, no matter on what occasion it arises. It may arise from a dash of cold water on the face—as we see in the revival of the heart's action when we throw water on the face of a fainting person. It may arise from inhaling an irritant odor. It may arise from the pleasurable sight of a dear friend, or the thrill of delight at the new birth of an idea. In every case the brain is excited, either through an impression on a sensitive nerve, or through the impulses of thought; and the sensibility thus called into action necessarily discharges itself through one or more of the easiest channels; and among the easiest is that of the pneumogastric nerve. But the heart thus acted on in turn reacts. Its increased energy throws more blood into the brain, which draws its sustaining power from the blood.

Experimentalists have discovered another luminous fact connected with this influence of the brain upon the heart, namely, that although a current of a certain intensity (varying of course with the nature of the organism) will infallibly arrest the heart, if applied at once, yet if we begin with a feeble current and go on gradually increasing its intensity, we may at last surpass the degree which would have produced instantaneous arrest, and yet the heart will continue to beat energetically.

The effect of repetition in diminishing a stimulus is here very noticeable. It will serve to explain why, according to the traditions of familiar experience, we are careful to break the announcement of disastrous news, by intimating something much less calamitous, wherewith to produce the first shock, and then, when the heart has withstood that, we hope it may have energy to meet the more agitating emotions. The same fact will also serve, partly, to explain why from repetition the effect of smoking is no longer as it is at first to produce paleness, sweating, and sickness. The heart ceases to be sensibly affected by the stimulus.

{628}

Returning to the effects of a gentle stimulus, we can read therein the rationale of change of scene, especially of foreign travel, in restoring the exhausted energies. The gentle excitement of novel and pleasurable sights is not, as people generally suppose, merely a mental stimulus—a pleasure which passes away without a physical influence; on the contrary, it is inseparably connected with an increased activity of the circulation, and this brings with it an increased activity of all the processes of waste and repair. If the excitement and fatigue be not too great, even the sickly traveller finds himself stronger and happier, in spite of bad food, irregular hours, and many other conditions which at home would have enfeebled him. I have heard a very distinguished physician (Sir Henry Holland) say that such is his conviction of the beneficial influence of even slight nervous stimulus on the nutritive processes, that when the patient cannot have change of scene, change of room is of some advantage—nay, even change of furniture, if there cannot be change of room!

To those who have thoroughly grasped the principle of the indissoluble conjunction of nutrition and sensation, such effects are obvious deductions. They point to the great importance of pleasure as an element of effective life. They lead to the question whether much of the superior health of youth is not due to the greater amount of pleasurable excitement which life affords to young minds.

Certain it is that much of the marvellous activity of some old men, especially of men engaged in politics or in interesting professions, may be assigned to the greater stimulus given to their bodily functions by the pleasurable excitement of their minds. Men who vegetate sink prematurely into old age. The fervid wheels of life revolve upon excitement. If the excitement be too intense, the wheels take fire; but if the mental stimulus be simply pleasurable, it is eminently beneficial.

Every impression reacts on the circulation, a slight impression producing a slight acceleration, a powerful impression, producing an arrest more or less prolonged. The "shock" of a wound and the "pain" of an operation cause faintness, sometimes death. Indeed, it is useful to know that many severe operations are dangerous only because of the shock or pain, and can be performed with impunity if the patient first be rendered insensible by chloroform. On the other hand, the mere irritation of a nerve so as to produce severe pain will produce syncope or death in an animal which is very feeble or exhausted. It is possible to crush the whole of the upper part of the spinal chord (the medulla oblongata) without arresting the action of the heart, if the animal has been rendered insensible by chloroform; whereas without such precautions a very slight irritation of the medulla suffices to arrest the heart.

A moment's reflection will disclose the reason of the remarkable differences observed in human beings in the matter of sensitiveness. The stupid are stupid, not simply because their nervous development is below the average, but also because the connection between the two great central organs, brain and heart, is comparatively languid; the pneumogastric is not in them a ready channel for the discharge of nervous excitement. The sensitive are sensitive because in them the connection is rapid and easy. All nervous excitement must discharge itself through one or more channels; but what channels, will depend on the native and acquired tendencies of the organism. In highly sensitive animals a mere prick on the skin can be proved to affect the beating of the heart; but you may lacerate a reptile without sensibly affecting its pulse. In like manner, a pleasurable sight or a suggestive thought will quicken the pulse of an intelligent man, whereas his stupid brother may be the spectator of festal or solemn scenes and the auditor of noble eloquence with scarcely a change.

{629}

The highly sensitive organism is one in which the reactions of sensibility on the circulation, and of the circulation on the sensibility, are most direct and rapid. This is often the source of weakness and inefficiency—as we see in certain feminine natures of both sexes, wherein the excessive sensitiveness does not lie in an unusual development of the nervous centres, but in an unusual development of the direct connection between brain and heart. There are men and women of powerful brains in whom this rapid transmission of sensation to the heart is not observable; the nervous force discharges itself through other channels. There are men and women of small brains in whom "the irritability" is so great that almost every sensation transmits its agitating influence to the heart.

And now we are in a condition to appreciate the truth which was confusedly expressed in the ancient doctrine respecting the heart as the great emotional organ. It still lives in our ordinary speech, but has long been banished from the text-books of physiology, though it is not, in my opinion, a whit more unscientific than the modern doctrine respecting the brain (meaning the cerebral hemispheres) as the exclusive organ of sensation. That the heart, as a muscle, is not endowed with the property of sensibility—a property exclusively possessed by ganglionic tissue—we all admit. But the heart, as the central organ of the circulation, is so indissolubly connected with every manifestation of sensibility, and is so delicately susceptible to all emotional agitations, that we may not improperly regard it as the ancients regarded it, in the light of the chief centre of feeling; for the ancients had no conception of the heart as an organ specially endowed with sensibility—they only thought of it as the chief agent of the sensitive soul. And is not this the conception we moderns form of the brain? We do not imagine the cerebral mass, as a mere mass, and unrelated to the rest of the organism, to have in itself sensibility; but we conceive it as the centre of a great system, dependent for its activity on a thousand influences, sensitive because sensibility is the form of life peculiar to it, but living only in virtue of the vital activities of the whole organism. Thus the heart, because its action is momently involved in every emotion, and because every emotion reacts upon it, may, as truly as the brain, be called the great emotional centre. Neither brain nor heart can claim that title exclusively. They may claim it together.

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From The Month.

THE DREAM OF GERONTIUS.

BY JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, D.D.

[Concluded.]

§4.

SOUL.

        But hark! upon my sense
  Comes a fierce hubbub, which would make me fear,
  Could I be frighted.

ANGEL.

          We are now arrived
  Close on the judgment-court; that sullen howl
  Is from the demons who assemble there.
  It is the middle region, where of old
  Satan appeared among the sons of God,
  To cast his jibes and scoffs at holy Job.
  So now his legions throng the vestibule,
  Hungry and wild, to claim their property,
  And gather souls for hell. Hist to their cry.

SOUL.

  How sour and how uncouth a dissonance!

DEMONS.

     Low-born clods
         Of brute earth,
      To become gods,
         By a new birth,
      And a score of merits,
         As if ought
         Of the high thought,
      Of the great spirits,
         The powers blest,

      Of the proud dwelling
         Dispossessed,

      Who after expelling

    They aspire

    And an extra grace,

    Could stand in place
    And the glance of fire

    The lords by right,
        The primal owners
    And realm of light,
    Aside thrust,
    Chucked down,
    By the sheer might
        Of a despot's will,
    Of a tyrant's frown,
    Their hosts, gave,
        Triumphant still,
    And still unjust,
    Each forfeit crown
        To psalm-droners
        And canting groaners,
    To every slave,
        And pious cheat,
    And crawling knave,
    Who licked the dust
        Under his feet.

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ANGEL.

  It is the restless panting of their being;
  Like beasts of prey, who, caged within their bars,
  In a deep hideous purring have their life,
  And an incessant pacing to and fro.

DEMONS.

 The mind bold
      And independent,
  The purpose free,
  So we are told,
  Must not think
      To have the ascendant,
      One whose breath
      Before his death;
      Which fools adore,
      When life is o'er,
  Which rattle and stink,
      E'en in the flesh.
  No flesh hath he;
      Ha! ha!

  Afresh, afresh,

  As priestlings prate,

  And envy and hate

 What's a saint?
 Doth the air taint
 A bundle of bones,
 Ha! ha!

 We cry his pardon!

 For it hath died,
 'Tis crucified
     Day by day,
 Ha! ha!
     That holy clay,
 Ha! ha!
     And such fudge,
 Is his guerdon
     Before the judge,
 And pleads and atones
     For spite and grudge,
 And bigot mood,
 And greed of blood.

SOUL.

  How impotent they are! and yet on earth
  They have repute for wondrous power and skill;
  And books describe, how that the very face
  Of th' evil one, if seen, would have a force
  To freeze the very blood, and choke the life
  Of him who saw it.

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ANGEL.

         In thy trial state
  Thou hadst a traitor nestling close at home,
  Connatural, who with the powers of hell
  Was leagued, and of thy senses kept the keys,
  And to that deadliest foe unlocked thy heart.
  And therefore is it, in respect of man,
  Those fallen ones show so majestical.
  But, when some child of grace, angel or saint,
  Pure and upright in his integrity
  Of nature, meets the demons on their raid,
  They scud away as cowards from the fight.
  Nay, oft hath holy hermit in his cell,
  Not yet disburdened of mortality,
  Mocked at their threats and warlike overtures;
  Or, dying, when they swarmed like flies, around,
  Defied them, and departed to his judge.

DEMONS.

  Virtue and vice,
  'Tis all the same;
  Of the venomous flame,
  Give him his price,

  With sordid aim,

 A knave's pretence.
 Ha! ha!
 A coward's plea.
 Saint though he be,
 From shrewd good sense
 Ha! ha!
 To the heaven above
 Not from love.

Dread of hell-fire,

Ha! ha!
He'll slave for hire;
And does but aspire

Ha! ha!

SOUL.

  I see not those false spirits; shall I see
  My dearest Master, when I reach his throne?
  Or hear, at least, his awful judgment-word
  With personal intonation, as I now
  Hear thee, not see thee, angel? Hitherto
  All has been darkness since I left the earth;
  Shall I remain thus sight-bereft all through
  My penance-time? if so, how comes it then
  That I have hearing still, and taste, and touch,
  Yet not a glimmer of that princely sense
  Which binds ideas in one, and makes them live?

{633}

ANGEL.

  Nor touch, nor taste, nor hearing hast thou now;
  Thou livest in a world of signs and types,
  The presentations of most holy truths,
  Living and strong, which now encompass thee.
  A disembodied soul, thou hast by right
  No converse with aught else beside thyself;
  But, lest so stern a solitude should load
  And break thy being, in mercy are vouchsafed
  Some lower measures of perception,
  Which seem to thee, as though through channels brought,
  Through ear, or nerves, or palate, which are gone.
  And thou art wrapped and swathed around in dreams,
  Dreams that are true, yet enigmatical;
  For the belongings of thy present state,
  Save through such symbols, come not home to thee.
  And thus thou tell'st of space and time and size,
  Of fragrant, solid, bitter, musical,
  Of fire, and of refreshment after fire;
  As (let me use similitude of earth,
  To aid thee in the knowledge thou dost ask)—
  As ice which blisters may be said to burn.
  Nor hast thou now extension, with its parts
  Correlative,—long habit cozens thee,—
  Nor power to move thyself, nor limbs to move.
  Hast thou not heard of those, who after loss
  Of hand or foot, still cried that they had pains
  In hand or foot, as though they had it still?
  So is it now with thee, who hast not lost
  Thy hand or foot, but all which made up man.
  So will it be, until the joyous day
  Of resurrection, when thou wilt regain
  All thou hast lost, new-made and glorified.—
  —How, even now, the consummated saints
  See God in heaven, I may not explicate:—
  Meanwhile let it suffice thee to possess
  Such means of converse as are granted thee,
  Though till the beatific vision thou art blind;
  For e'en thy purgatory, which comes like fire,
  Is fire without its light.

SOUL.

               His will be done!
  I am not worthy e'er to see again
  The face of day; far less his countenance,
  Who is the very sun. Natheless, in life,
  When I looked forward to my purgatory,
  It ever was my solace to believe,
  That, ere I plunged into th' avenging flame,
  I had one sight of him to strengthen me.

ANGEL.

  Nor rash nor vain is that presentiment;
  Yes,—for one moment thou shalt see thy Lord.
  Thus will it be: what time thou art arraigned
  Before the dread tribunal, and thy lot
  Is cast for ever, should it be to sit
  On his right hand among his pure elect,
  Then sight, or that which to the soul is sight,
  As by a lightning-flash, will come to thee,
  And thou shalt see, amid the dark profound,
  Whom thy soul loveth, and would fain approach,
  One moment; but thou knowest not, my child,
  What thou dost ask: that sight of the Most Fair
  Will gladden thee, but it will pierce thee too.

{634}

SOUL.

  Thou speakest darkly, angel; and an awe
  Falls on me, and I fear lest I be rash.

ANGEL.

  There was a mortal, who is now above
  In the mid glory; he, when near to die,
  Was given communion with the Crucified,—
  Such, that the Master's very wounds were stamped
  Upon his flesh; and, from the agony
  Which thrilled through body and soul in that embrace,
  Learn that the flame of the Everlasting Love
  Doth burn, ere it transform. …

§ 5.

         … Hark to those sounds!
  They come of tender beings angelical,
  Least and most childlike of the sons of God.

FIRST CHOIR OF ANGELICALS.

  Praise to the Holiest in the height,
  In all his words most wonderful;

  To us his elder race he gave
  Without the chastisement of pain,

  The younger son he willed to be
  Spirit and flesh his parents were;

  The Eternal blessed his child and armed,
  To serve as champion in the field

  To be his vice-roy in the world
  Upon the frontier, toward the foe,

And in the depth be praise:
Most sure in all his ways!

To battle and to win,
Without the soil of sin.

A marvel in his birth:
His home was heaven and earth.

And sent him hence afar,
Of elemental war.

Of matter, and of sense;
A resolute defence.

ANGEL.

  We now have passed the gate, and are within
  The house of judgment; and whereas on earth
  Temples and palaces are formed of parts
  Costly and rare, but all material,
  So in the world of spirits nought is found,
  To mould withal and form a whole,
  But what is immaterial; and thus
  The smallest portions of this edifice,
  Cornice, or frieze, or balustrade, or stair,
  The very pavement is made up of life—
  Of holy, blessed, and immortal beings,
  Who hymn their Maker's praise continually.

{635}

SECOND CHOIR OF ANGELICALS.

  Praise to the Holiest in the height,
  In all his words most wonderful;

  Woe to thee, man! for he was found
  And lost his heritage of heaven,

  Above him now the angry sky,
  Who once had angels for his friends,

  O man! a savage kindred they:
  He scaled the sea-side cave and clomb

  With now a fear and now a hope,
  From youth to old, from sire to son,

  He dreed his penance age by age;
  Slowly to doff his savage garb,

  And quickened by the Almighty's breath,
  And taught by angel-visitings,

  And learned to call upon his name,
  A household and a fatherland,

  Glory to him who from the mire,
  Elaborated into life

And in the depth be praise:
Most sure in all his ways!

A recreant in the fight;
And fellowship with light.

Around the tempest's din
Has but the brutes for kin.

To flee that monster brood
The giants of the wood.

With aids which chance supplied,
He lived, and toiled, and died.

And step by step began
And be again a man.

And chastened by his rod,
At length he sought his God;

And in his faith create
A city and a state.

In patient length of days,
A people to his praise!

SOUL.

  The sound is like the rushing of the wind—
  The summer wind—among the lofty pines;
  Swelling and dying, echoing round about,
  Now here, now distant, wild and beautiful;
  While scattered from the branches it has stirred,
  Descend ecstatic odors.

THIRD CHOIR OF ANGELICALS.

  Praise to the Holiest in the height,
  In all his words most wonderful;

  The angels, as beseemingly
  At once were tried and perfected,

  For them no twilight or eclipse;
  Twas hopeless, all-engulfing night,

  But to the younger race there rose
  And slowly, surely, gracefully,

  And ages, opening out, divide
  And from the hard and sullen mass

  O man! albeit the quickening ray
  Takes him at length what once he was,

  Yet still between that earth and heaven—
  A double agony awaits

  A double debt he has to pay—
  The chill of death is past, and now

  Glory to him, who evermore
  Who tears the soul from out its case,

And in the depth be praise:
Most sure in all his ways!

To spirit-kind was given,
And took their seats in heaven.

No growth and no decay:
Or beatific day.

A hope upon its fall;
The morning dawned on all.

The precious and the base,
Mature the heirs of grace.

Lit from his second birth,
And heaven grows out of earth;

His journey and its goal—
His body and his soul.

The forfeit of his sins:
The penance-fire begins.

By truth and justice reigns;
And burns away its stains!

{636}

ANGEL.

  They sing of thy approaching agony,
  Which thou so eagerly didst question of:
  It is the face of the incarnate God
  Shall smite thee with that keen and subtle pain;
  And yet the memory which it leaves will be
  A sovereign febrifuge to heal the wound;
  And yet withal it will the wound provoke,
  And aggravate and widen it the more.

SOUL.

  Thou speakest mysteries; still methinks I know
  To disengage the tangle of thy words:
  Yet rather would I hear thy angel voice,
  Than for myself be thy interpreter.

ANGEL.

  When then—if such thy lot—thou seest thy Judge,
  The sight of him will kindle in thy heart
  All tender, gracious, reverential thoughts.
  Thou wilt be sick with love, and yearn for him,
  And feel as though thou couldst but pity him,
  That one so sweet should e'er have placed himself
  At disadvantage such, as to be used
  So vilely by a being so vile as thee.
  There is a pleading in his pensive eyes
  Will pierce thee to the quick, and trouble thee.
  And thou wilt hate and loathe thyself; for, though
  Now sinless, thou wilt feel that thou hast sinned,
  As never thou didst feel; and wilt desire
  To slink away, and hide thee from his sight;
  And yet wilt have a longing aye to dwell
  Within the beauty of his countenance.
  And these two pains, so counter and so keen,—
  The longing for him, when thou seest him not;
  The shame of self at thought of seeing him,—
  Will be thy veriest, sharpest purgatory.

SOUL.

  My soul is in my hand: I have no fear,—
  In his dear might prepared for weal or woe.
  But hark! a deep, mysterious harmony
  It floods me, like the deep and solemn sound
  Of many waters.

{637}

ANGEL.

             We have gained the stairs
  Which rise toward the presence-chamber; there
  A band of mighty angels keep the way
  On either side, and hymn the incarnate God.

ANGELS OF THE SACRED STAIR.

  Father, whose goodness none can know, but they
      Who see thee face to face,
  By man hath come the infinite display
      Of thine all-loving grace;
  But fallen man—the creature of a day—
      Skills not that love to trace.
  It needs, to tell the triumph thou hast wrought,
  An angel's deathless fire, an angel's reach of thought.

  It needs that very angel, who with awe
      Amid the garden shade,
  The great Creator in his sickness saw,
      Soothed by a creature's aid,
  And agonized, as victim of the law
      Which he himself had made;
  For who can praise him in his depth and height,
  But he who saw him reel in that victorious fight?

SOUL.

  Hark! for the lintels of the presence-gate
  Are vibrating and echoing back the strain.

FOURTH CHOIR OF ANGELICALS.

  Praise to the Holiest in the height,
  In all his words most wonderful;

  The foe blasphemed the holy Lord,
  In that he placed his puppet man

  For even in his best estate,
  A sorry sentinel was he,

  As though a thing, who for his help
  Could cope with those proud rebel hosts,

  And when, by blandishment of Eve,
  He shrieked in triumph, and he cried,

  The Maker by his word is bound,
  He must abandon to his doom,

And in the depth be praise
Most sure in all his ways!

As if he reckoned ill,
The frontier place to fill.

With amplest gifts endued,
A being of flesh and blood.

Must needs possess a wife,
Who had angelic life.

That earth-born Adam fell,
"A sorry sentinel.

Escape or cure is none;
And slay his darling Son."

ANGEL.

  And now the threshold, as we traverse it,
  Utters aloud its glad responsive chant.

{638}

FIFTH CHOIR OF ANGELICALS.

  Praise to the Holiest in the height,
  In all his words most wonderful;

  O loving wisdom of our God!
  A second Adam to the fight

  O wisest love! that flesh and blood
  Should strive afresh against the foe,

  And that a higher gift than grace
  God's presence and his very self,

  O generous love! that he who smote
  The double agony in man

  And in the garden secretly,
  Should teach his brethren and inspire

   And in the depth be praise:
   Most sure in all his ways!

   When all was sin and shame,
   And to the rescue came.

   Which did in Adam fail,
   Should strive and should prevail.

   Should flesh and blood refine,
   And essence all-divine.

   In man for man the foe,
   For man should undergo;

   And on the cross on high,
   To suffer and to die.

§ 6.

ANGEL.

  The judgment now is near, for we are come
  Into the veiled presence of our God.

SOUL.

  I hear the voices that I left on earth.

ANGEL.

  It is the voice of friends around thy bed,
  Who say the "Subvenite" with the priest.
  Hither the echoes come; before the throne
  Stands the great angel of the agony,
  The same who strengthened him, what time he knelt
  Lone in the garden shade, bedewed with blood.
  That angel best can plead with him for all
  Tormented souls, the dying and the dead.

ANGEL OF THE AGONY.

  Jesu! by that shuddering dread which fell on thee;
  Jesu! by that cold dismay which sickened thee;
  Jesu! by that pang of heart which thrilled in thee;
  Jesu! by that mount of sins which crippled thee;
  Jesu! by that sense of guilt which stifled thee;
  Jesu! by that innocence which girdled thee;
  Jesu! by that sanctity which reigned in thee;
  Jesu! by that Godhead which was one with thee;
  Jesu! spare these souls which are so dear to thee,
  Who in prison, calm and patient, wait for thee;
  Hasten, Lord, their hour, and bid them come to thee,
  To that glorious home, where they shall ever gaze on thee.

{639}

SOUL.

  I go before my Judge. Ah! …

ANGEL.

          … Praise to his name!
  The eager spirit has darted from my hold,
  And, with the intemperate energy of love,
  Flies to the dear feet of Emmanuel;
  But, ere it reach them, the keen sanctity,
  Which with its effluence, like a glory, clothes
  And circles round the Crucified, has seized,
  And scorched, and shrivelled it; and now it lies
  Passive and still before the awful throne.
  O happy, suffering soul! for it is safe,
  Consumed, yet quickened, by the glance of God.

SOUL.

  Take me away, and in the lowest deep
      There let me be,
  And there in hope the lone night-watches keep,
      Told out for me.
  There, motionless and happy in my pain,
      Lone, not forlorn,—
  There will I sing my sad perpetual strain,
      Until the morn.
  There will I sing, and soothe my stricken breast,
      Which ne'er can cease
  To throb, and pine, and languish, till possessed
      Of its sole peace.
  There will I sing my absent Lord and love:—
      Take me away,
  That sooner I may rise, and go above,
  And see him in the truth of everlasting day.

§ 7.

ANGEL.

  Now let the golden prison ope its gates,
  Making sweet music, as each fold revolves
  Upon its ready hinge. And ye, great powers,
  Angels of purgatory, receive from me
  My charge, a precious soul, until the day,
  When, from all bond and forfeiture released,
  I shall reclaim it for the courts of light.

{640}

SOULS IN PURGATORY.

1. Lord, thou hast been our refuge: in every generation;

2. Before the hills were born, and the world was: from age to age thou art God.

3. Bring us not, Lord, very low: for thou hast said, Come back again, ye sons of Adam.

4. A thousand years before thine eyes are but as yesterday: and as a watch of the night which is come and gone.

5. Though the grass spring up in the morning; yet in the evening it shall shrivel up and die.

6. Thus we fail in thine anger; and in thy wrath we are troubled.

7. Thou hast set our sins in thy sight: and our round of days in the light of thy countenance.

8. Come back, O Lord! how long? and be entreated for thy servants.

9. In thy morning we shall be filled with thy mercy: we shall rejoice and be in pleasure all our days.

10. We shall be glad according to the days of our humiliation; and the years in which we have seen evil.

11. Look, O Lord, upon thy servants and on thy work; and direct their children,

12. And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us: and the work of our hands direct thou it. Glory be to the father and to the Son: and to the Holy Ghost. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be; world without end. Amen.

ANGEL.

  Softly and gently, dearest, sweetest soul
    In my most loving arms I now enfold thee,
  And, o'er the penal waters, as they roll,
    I poise thee, and I lower thee, and hold thee.

  And carefully I dip thee in the lake,
    And thou, without a sob or a resistance,
  Dost through the flood thy rapid passage take
    Sinking deep, deeper, into the dim distance.

  Angels, to whom the willing task is given,
    Shall tend, and nurse, and lull thee, as thou liest;
  And masses on the earth, and prayers in heaven,
    Shall aid thee at the throne of the Most Highest.

  Farewell, but not for ever! brother dear,
    Be brave and patient on thy bed of sorrow;
  Swiftly shall pass thy night of trial here,
    And I will come and wake thee on the morrow.

{641}

From The Edinburgh Review. (Abridged.)

THE CHURCH AND MOSQUE OF ST. SOPHIA.

1. Byzantine Architecture; illustrated by Examples of Edifices erected in the East during the earliest ages of Christianity. With Historical and Archaeological Descriptions. By C. TEXIER and E. P. PULLAN. Folio. London: 1864.

2. Epigraphik von Byzantium und Constantinopolis, von den ältesten Zeiten bis zum J. 1453. Von Dr. S. A. DETHIER und Dr. A. D. MORDTMANN. 4to. Wien: 1864.

3. Acta Patriarchates Constantinopolitani, 1305-1402, e Codice MS. Bibliothecae Palat. Vindobonensis; edentibus D. D. MIKLOVISCH et MULLER. 8vo. 2 vols. Viennse: 1860-2.

4. Die alt-christliche Baudenkmale Konstantinopels von V. bis XII. Jahrhundert. Auf Befehl seiner Majestät des Königs aufgenommen und historisch erläutert von W. SALZENBERG. Im Anhange des Silentiarius Paulus Beschreibung der heiligen Sophia und der Ambon, metrisch übersetzt und mit Anmerkungen versehen, von Dr. C. W. KORTÜM. Fol. Berlin: 1854.

5. Aya Sofia, Constantinople, as recently restored by Order of H. M. the Sultan Abdul Medjid. From the original Drawings of Chevalier GASPARD FOSSATI. Lithographed by Louis HAGHE, Esq. Imperial folio. London: 1854.

There is not one among the evidences of Moslem conquest more galling to Christian associations than the occupation of Justinian's ancient basilica for the purposes of Mohammedan worship. The most commonplace sight-seer from the west feels a thrill when his eye falls for the first time upon the flaring cresent which surmounts "Sophia's cupola with golden gleam;" and this emotion deepens into a feeling of awe at the mysterious dispensations of Providence, when he has stood beneath the unaltered and still stately dome, and

     "surveyed
  The sanctuary, the while the usurping Moslem prayed."

For oriental Christians, this sense of bitterness is hardly second to that with which they regard the Turkish occupation of Jerusalem itself. In the latter, however they may writhe under the political supremacy of their unbelieving master, still, as the right of access to those monuments which form the peculiar object of Christian veneration is practically undisturbed, they are spared the double indignity of religious profanation super-added to social wrong. But the mosque of St. Sophia is, in Christian eyes, a standing monument at once of Moslem sacrilege and of Christian defeat, the sense of which is perpetuated and embittered by the preservation of its ancient, but now desecrated name.

To an imaginative visitor of the modern mosque, it might seem as if the structure itself were not unconscious of this wrong. The very position of the building is a kind of silent protest against the unholy use to which its Turkish masters have perverted it. Like all ancient Christian churches, it was built exactly in the line of east and west; and, as the great altar, which stood in the semicircular apse, was directly at the eastern point of the building, the worshippers in the old St. Sophia necessarily faced directly eastward; and all the appliances of their worship were arranged with a view to that position. Now, in the exigencies of Mohammedan ecclesiology, since the worshipper must turn to the Kibla at Mecca (that is, in Constantinople, to the south-east), the mihrab, or sacred niche, in the modern St. Sophia is {642} necessarily placed out of the centre of the apse; and thus the mimber (pulpit), the prayer carpets, and the long ranks of worshippers themselves, present an appearance singularly at variance with every notion of architectural harmony, being arranged in lines, not parallel, but oblique, to the length of the edifice, and out of keeping with all the details of the original construction. It is as though the dead walls of this venerable pile had retained more of the spirit of their founder than the degenerate sons of the fallen Rome of the east, and had refused to bend themselves at the will of that hateful domination before which the living worshippers tamely yielded or impotently fled!

The mosque of St. Sophia had long been an object of curious interest to travellers in the east. Their interest, however, had seldom risen beyond curiosity; and it was directed rather toward St. Sophia as it is, than to the Christian events and traditions with which it is connected. For those, indeed, who know the grudging and capricious conditions under which alone a Christian visitor is admitted to a mosque, and the jealous scrutiny to which he is subjected during his visit, it will be easy to understand how rare and how precarious have been the opportunities for a complete or exact study of this, the most important of all the monuments of Byzantine art; and, notwithstanding its exceeding interest for antiquarian and artistic purposes, far more of our knowledge of its details was derived from the contemporary description of Procopius [Footnote 126] or Agathias, [Footnote 127] from the verses of Paulus Silentiarius, [Footnote 128] from the casual allusions of other ancient authorities, and, above all, from the invaluable work of Du Gauge, which is the great repertory of everything that has been written upon ancient or mediaeval Byzantium, than from the observation even of the most favored modern visitors of Constantinople, until the publication of the works named at the head of these pages.

[Footnote 126: De Edificiis, lib. i. c. i. ]

[Footnote 127: Pp. 152-3.]

[Footnote 128: A very good German version, with most valuable notes, is appended to the text of Saltzenberg's Baudenkmale.]

For the elaborate account of the present condition of the mosque of St. Sophia which we now possess, we are indebted to the happy necessity by which the Turkish officials, in undertaking the recent restoration of the building, were led to engage the services of an eminent European architect, Chevalier Fossati, in whose admirable drawings, as lithographed in the "Aya Sofia," every arch and pillar of the structure is reproduced. The archaeological and historical details, which lay beyond the province of a volume mainly professional in its object, are supplied in the learned and careful work of M. Salzenberg, who during the progress of the restoration was sent to Constantinople at the cost of the late King of Prussia, for the express purpose of copying and describing exactly every object which might serve to throw light on Byzantine history, religion, or art, or on the history and condition of the ancient church of St. Sophia, the most venerable monument of them all.

Nor is it possible to imagine, under all the circumstances of the case, a combination of opportunities more favorable for the purpose. From long neglect and injudicious or insufficient reparation, the mosque had fallen into so ruinous a condition, that, in the year 1847, the late sultan, Abdul Medjid, found it necessary to direct a searching survey of the entire building, and eventually a thorough repair. In the progress of the work, while engaged near the entrance of the northern transept, M. Fossati discovered, beneath a thin coat of plaster (evidently laid on to conceal the design from the eyes of true believers) a beautiful mosaic picture, almost uninjured, and retaining all its original brilliancy of color. A further examination showed that these mosaics extended throughout the building; and, with a liberality which every lover of art must gratefully applaud, the sultan at once acceded to the suggestion of M. Fossati, {643} and ordered that the plaster should be removed throughout the interior; thus exposing once more to view the original decorations of the ancient basilica. It was while the mosque was still crowded with the scaffolding erected to carry on this most interesting work, that M. Salzenberg arrived in Constantinople. He thankfully acknowledges the facilities afforded to him, as well by the Turkish officials as by the Chevalier Fossati; and, although the specimens of the purely pictorial decorations of the ancient church which he has published are not as numerous as the reader may possibly expect, yet they are extremely characteristic, and full of religious as well as of historical and antiquarian interest.

Notwithstanding the beauty and attractiveness of M. Louis Haghe's magnificent lithographs of Chevalier Fossati's drawings published in the "Aya Sofia," the subject has received in England far less attention than it deserves. There is not an incident in Byzantine history with which the church of St. Sophia is not associated. There is not a characteristic of Byzantine art of which it does not contain abundant examples. It recalls in numberless details, preserved in monuments in which time has wrought little change and which the jealousy or contempt of the conquerors has failed to destroy or even to travesty, interesting illustrations of the doctrine, the worship, and the disciplinary usages of the ancient Eastern Church, which are with difficulty traced, at present, in the living system of her degenerate representative. To all these researches the wider cultivation of art and of history, which our age has accepted as its calling, ought to lend a deeper significance and a more solemn interest. St. Sophia ought no longer to be a mere lounge for the sightseer or a spectacle for the lover of the picturesque.

The history of this venerable church may be said to reach back as far as the first selection of Byzantium by Constantine as the new capital of his empire. Originally, the pretensions of Byzantium to ecclesiastical rank were sufficiently humble, its bishop being but a suffragan of the metropolitan of Heraclea. But, from the date of the translation of the seat of empire, Constantine's new capital began to rise in dignity. The personal importance which accrued to the bishop from his position at the court of the emperor, was soon reflected upon his see. The first steps of its upward progress are unrecorded; but within little more than half a century from the foundation of the imperial city, the celebrated fifth canon of the council which was held therein in 381 not only distinctly assigned to the Bishop of Constantinople "the primacy of honor, next after the Bishop of Rome," but, by alleging as the ground of this precedence the principle "that Constantinople is the new Rome," laid the foundation of that rivalry with the older Rome which had its final issue in the complete separation of the Eastern from the Western Church.

The dignity of the see was represented in the beauty and magnificence of its churches, and especially of its cathedral. One of the considerations by which Constantine was influenced in the selection of Byzantium for his new capital, lay in the advantages for architectural purposes which the position commanded. The rich and various marbles of Proconnesus; the unlimited supply of timber from the forests of the Euxine; the artistic genius and the manual dexterity of the architects and artisans of Greece—all lay within easy reach of Byzantium; and, freely as Constantine availed himself of these resources for the embellishment of the new city in its palaces, its offices of state, and its other public buildings, the magnificence which he exhibited in his churches outstripped all his other undertakings. Of these churches by far the most magnificent was that which forms the subject of the present notice. Its title is often a subject of misapprehension to those who, being accustomed to regard {644} "Sophia" merely as a feminine name, are led to suppose that the church of Constantine was dedicated to a saint so called. The calendar, as well of the Greek as of the Latin Church, does, it is true, commemorate more than one saint named Sophia. Thus one Sophia is recorded as having suffered martyrdom under Adrian, in company with her three daughters, Faith, Hope, and Charity. Another is said to have been martyred in one of the latter persecutions together with St. Irene; and a third is still specially venerated as a martyr at Fermo (the ancient Firmum). But it was not any of these that supplied the title of Constantine's basilica. That church was dedicated to the ,—the HOLY WISDOM; that is, to the Divine Logos, or Word of God, under the title of the "Holy Wisdom," borrowed by adaptation from the well-known prophetic allusion contained in the eighth chapter of Proverbs, and familiar in the theological language of the fourth century.

The original church, however, which Constantine erected in 325-6 was but the germ out of which the latter St. Sophia grew. The early history of St. Sophia is marked by many vicissitudes, and comprises, in truth, the history of four distinct churches, that of Constantine, that of Constantius, that of Theodosius, and finally that of Justinian.

Thirty-four years after the foundation of St. Sophia by the first Christian emperor, his son, Constantius, either because of its insufficient size, or owing to some injury which it had sustained in an earthquake, rebuilt it, and united with it the adjoining church of the Irene, or "peace" (also built by his father), forming both into one grand edifice. And, although the church of Constantius was not much longer lived than that of his father, it is memorable as the theatre for several years of the eloquence of St. John Chrysostom, while its destruction was a monument at once of the triumph and of the fall of that great father. It was within the walls of this church that his more than human eloquence was wont to draw, even from the light and frivolous audiences of that pleasure-loving city, plaudits, the notice of which in his own pages reads so strange to modern eyes. It was here that he provoked the petty malice of the imperial directress of fashion, by his inimitable denunciation of the indelicacy of female dress. Here, too, was enacted that memorable scene, which, for deep dramatic interest, has seldom been surpassed in history—the fallen minister Eutropius clinging to the altar of St. Sophia for protection against the popular fury, while Chrysostom, in a glorious exordium on the instability of human greatness, [Footnote 129] disarms the rage of the populace by exciting their commiseration for their fallen enemy. Nor can we wonder that those who had hung entranced upon that eloquent voice should, when it was silenced by his cruel and arbitrary banishment, have recognized a Nemesis in the destruction of the church which had so often echoed with the golden melody of its tones. St. Sophia, by a divine judgment, as the people believed, was destroyed for the second time in 404, in the tumult which followed the banishment of St. John Chrysostom.

[Footnote 129: Horn, in Eutropium Patricium. Opp. tom iii., p. 399 et seq. (Migne ed.)]

The third St. Sophia was built in 415 by Theodosius the Younger. The church of Theodosius lasted longer than either of those which went before it. It endured through the long series of controversies on the Incarnation. It witnessed their first beginning, and it almost survived their close. It was beneath the golden roof of the Theodosian basilica that Nestorius scandalized the orthodoxy of his flock, and gave the first impulse to the controversy which bears his name, by applauding the vehement declaration of the preacher who denied to the Virgin Mary the title of mother of God. And it was from its ambo or {645} pulpit that the Emperor Zeno promulgated his celebrated Henoticon—the "decree of union" by which he vainly hoped to heal the disastrous division. The St. Sophia of Theodosius was the scene of the first act in the long struggle between Constantinople and Rome, the great Acacian schism; when, at the hazard of his life, an impetuous monk, one of the fiery "Sleepless Brotherhood," pinned the papal excommunication on the cope of Acacius as he was advancing to the altar. And it witnessed the close of that protracted contest, in the complete and unreserved submission to Rome which was exacted by the formulary of Pope Hormisdas as the condition of reconciliation. The structure of Theodosius stood a hundred and fourteen years—from 415 to 529, but perished at length in the fifth year of Justinian, in a disaster which, for a time, made Constantinople all but a desert—the memorable battle of the blue and green factions of the hippodrome, known in history as the Nika sedition.

The restoration of St. Sophia, which had been destroyed in the conflagration caused by the violence of the rioters, became, in the view of Justinian, a duty of Christian atonement no less than of imperial munificence. There is no evidence that the burning of the church arose from any special act of impiety directed against it in particular; but it is certain that the ancient feuds of the religious parties in the east entered vitally as an element of discord into this fatal sedition; and even the soldiers who had been engaged on the side of the civil power in the repression of the tumult, and who were chiefly legionaries enlisted from among the Heruli, the most savage of the barbarian tribes of the empire, had contributed largely to the sacrilegious enormities by which, even more than by the destruction of human life, the religious feelings of the city had been outraged.

The entire history of the reconstruction exhibits most curiously the operation of the same impulse. It was undertaken with a large-handedness, and urged on with an energy, which bespeak for other than merely human motives. Scarce had Constantinople begun to recover after the sedition from the stupor of its alarm, and the affrighted citizens to steal back from the Asiatic shore to which they had fled in terror with their families and their most valuable effects, when Justinian commissioned Anthemius of Tralles to prepare the plans of the new basilica, on a scale of magnificence till then unknown. On the 23d of February, 532, within forty days from the catastrophe, the first stone of the new edifice was solemnly laid. Orders, to borrow the words of the chronicler, [Footnote 130] "were issued simultaneously to all the dukes, satraps, judges, quaestors, and prefects" throughout the empire, to send in from their several governments pillars, peristyles, bronzes, gates, marbles, and all other materials suitable for the projected undertaking. How efficiently the order was carried out may yet be read in the motley, though magnificent array of pillars and marbles which form the most striking characteristic of St. Sophia, and which are for the most part, as we shall see, the spoil of the older glories of Roman and Grecian architecture. We shall only mention here eight porphyry columns from the Temple of the Sun at Baalbec, which Aurelian had sent to Rome, and which, having come into the possession of a noble Roman widow, named Marcia, as her dowry, were presented by that pious lady to Justinian, as an offering , "for the Salvation of her soul." [Footnote 131]

[Footnote 130: Anonymi de Antiquit. Constantinop. (in Banduri's Imperium Orientale), p. 55.]

[Footnote 131: Anonymi, p. 55.]

Indeed, some of the incidents of the undertaking are so curious in themselves, and illustrate so curiously the manners and feelings of the age, that we are induced to select a few of them from among a mass of more or less legendary details, supplied by the anonymous {646} chronicler already referred to, whose work Banduri has printed in his Imperium Orientals [Footnote 132] and who, if less trustworthy than Procopius or the Silentiary, has preserved a much greater amount of the traditionary gossip connected with the building.

[Footnote 132: Under the title Anonymi de Antiquitatibus Constantinopoleos. The third part is devoted entirely to a "History and Description of the Church of St. Sophia."]

For the vastly enlarged scale of Justinian's structure, it became necessary to make extensive purchases in the immediate circuit of the ancient church; and, as commonly happens, the demands of the proprietors rose in proportion to the necessity in which the imperial purchaser was placed. It is interesting to contrast the different spirit in which each sought to use the legal rights of a proprietor.

The first was a widow, named Anna, whose tenement was valued by the imperial commissaries at eighty-five pounds of gold. This offer on the part of the commissary the widow unhesitatingly refused, and declared that she would consider her house cheap at fifty hundred-weight of gold; but when Justinian, in his anxiety to secure the site, did not hesitate to wait upon the widow herself in person, she was so struck by his condescension, and so fired by the contagion of his pious enthusiasm, that she not only surrendered the required ground, but refused all payment for it in money: only praying that she might be buried near the spot, in order that, from the site of her former dwelling itself, she "might claim the purchase-money on the day of judgment." She was buried, accordingly, near the Skeuophylacium, or treasury of the sacred vessels. [Footnote 133]

[Footnote 133: Anonymi, p. 58. ]

Very different, but yet hardly less characteristic of the time, was the conduct of one Antiochus, a eunuch, and ostiarius of the palace. His house stood on the spot now directly under the great dome, and was valued by the imperial surveyor at thirty-five pounds of gold. But Antiochus exacted a far larger sum, and obstinately refused to abate his demand. Justinian, in his eagerness, was disposed to yield; but Strategus, the prefect of the treasury, begged the emperor to leave the matter in his hands, and proceeded to arrest the obdurate proprietor and throw him into prison. It chanced that Antiochus was a passionate lover of the sports of the hippodrome, and Strategus so timed the period of his imprisonment that it would include an unusually attractive exhibition in the hippodrome—what in the language of the modern turf would be called "the best meeting of the season." At first Antiochus kept up a determined front; but, as the time of the games approached, the temptation proved too strong; his resolution began to waver; and, at length, when the morning arrived, he "bawled out lustily" from the prison, and promised that, if he were released in time to enjoy his favorite spectacle, he would yield up possession on the emperor's own terms. By this time the races had begun, and the emperor had already taken his seat; but Strategus did not hesitate to have the sport suspended, led Antiochus at once to the emperor's tribunal, and, in the midst of the assembled spectators, completed the negotiation. [Footnote 134]

[Footnote 134: Anonymi p. 59.]

A third was a cobbler, called by the classic name of Xenophon. His sole earthly possession was the stall in which he exercised his trade, abutting on the wall of one of the houses doomed to demolition in the clearance of the new site. A liberal price was offered for the stall; but the cobbler, although he did not refuse to surrender it, whimsically exacted, as a condition precedent, that the several factions of the charioteers should salute him, in the same way as they saluted the emperor, while passing his seat in the hippodrome. Justinian agreed; but took what must be considered an ungenerous advantage of the simple man of leather. The letter of Xenophon's. condition was fulfilled. He was placed {647} in the front of the centre tribune, gorgeously arrayed in a scarlet and white robe. The factions, as they passed his seat in procession, duly rendered the prescribed salute; but the poor cobbler was balked of his anticipated triumph, being compelled, amid the derisive cheers and laughter of the multitude, to receive the solute with his back turned to the assembly! [Footnote 135]

[Footnote 135: Anonymi, p. 59.]

But it is around the imperial builder himself that the incidents of the history of the work, and still more its legendary marvels, group themselves in the pages of the anonymous chronicler. For although the chief architect, Anthemius, was assisted by Agathias, by Isidorus of Miletus, and by a countless staff of minor subordinates, Justinian, from the first to the last, may be truly said to have been the very life and soul of the undertaking, and the director even of its smallest details. From the moment when, at the close of the inauguratory prayer, he threw the first shovelful of mortar into the foundation, till its solemn opening for worship on Christmas-day, 538, his enthusiasm never abated, nor did his energy relax. Under the glare of the noon-day sun, while others were indulging in the customary siesta, Justinian was to be seen, clad in a coarse linen tunic, staff in hand, and his head bound with a cloth, directing, encouraging, and urging on the workmen, stimulating the industrious by liberal donations, visiting the loiterers with his displeasure. Some of his expedients, as detailed by the chronicler, are extremely curious. We shall mention only one. In order to expedite the work, it was desirable to induce the men to work after-hours. The natural way of effecting this would have been to offer them a proportionate increase of pay; but Justinian chose rather to obtain the same result indirectly. Accordingly, he was accustomed—if our authority can be relied on—to scatter a quantity of coins about the building; and the workmen, afraid to search for them in the open day, were led to continue their work till the shades of evening began to fall, in order that they might more securely carry off the spoil under cover of the darkness!

Some of the building operations which this writer describes are equally singular. The mortar, to secure greater tenacity, was made with barley-water; the foundations were filled up with huge rectangular masses, fifty feet long, of a concrete of lime and sand, moistened with barley-water and other glutinous fluid, and bound together by wicker framework. The tiles or bricks of which the cupola was formed were made of Rhodian clay, so light that twelve of them did not exceed the weight of one ordinary tile. The pillars and buttresses were built of cubical and triangular blocks of stone, with a cement made of lime and oil, soldered with lead, and bound, within and without, with clamps of iron.

It is plain, however, that these particulars, however curious they may seem, are not to be accepted implicitly, at least if they are judged by the palpable incredibility of some of the other statements of the writer. The supernatural appears largely as an element in his history. On three several occasions, according to this chronicler, the emperor was favored with angelic apparitions, in which were imparted to him successive instructions, first as to the plan of the building, again as to urging on its progress, and finally as to finding funds for its completion. One of these narratives is extremely curious, as showing the intermixture of earth and heaven in the legendary notions of the time. A boy, during the absence of the masons, had been left in charge of their tools, when, as the boy believed, one of the eunuchs of the palace, in a resplendent white dress, came to him, ordered him at once to call back the masons, that the work of heaven might not be longer retarded. {648} On the boy's refusing to quit the post of which he had been left in charge, the supposed eunuch volunteered to take his place, and swore "by the wisdom of God" that he would not depart from the place till the boy should return. Justinian ordered all the eunuchs of the palace to be paraded before the boy; and on the boy's declaring that the visitor who had appeared to him was not any of the number, at once concluded that the apparition was supernatural; but, while he accepted the exhortation to greater zeal and energy in forwarding the work, he took a characteristic advantage of the oath by which the angel had sworn not to leave the church till the return of his youthful messenger. Without permitting the boy to go back to the building where the angel had appeared to him, Justinian sent him away to the Cyclades for the rest of his life, in order that the perpetual presence and protection of the angel might thus be secured for the church, which that divine messenger was pledged never to leave till the boy should return to relieve him at his post! [Footnote 136]

[Footnote 136: Anonymi, p. 61.]

Without dwelling further, however, on the legendary details, we shall find marvels enough in the results, such as they appear in the real history of the building. And perhaps the greatest marvel of all is the shortness of the period in which so vast a work was completed, the new church being actually opened for worship within less than seven years from the day of the conflagration. Ten thousand workmen were employed on the edifice, if it be true that a hundred master-builders, each of whom had a hundred men under him, were engaged to accelerate and complete the undertaking. For the philosophical student of history, there is a deep subject of study in the bare enumeration of the materials brought together for this great Christian enterprise, and of the various quarters from which they were collected. It is not alone the rich assortment of precious marbles—the spotless white of Paros; the green of Croceae; the blue of Libya; together with parti-colored marbles in a variety hardly ever equalled before—the costly cipolline, the rose-veined white marble of Phrygia, the curiously streaked black marble of Gaul, and the countless varieties of Egyptian porphyry and granite. Far more curious is it to consider how the materials of the structure were selected so as to present in themselves a series of trophies of the triumphs of Christianity over all the proudest forms of worship in the old world of paganism. In the forest of pillars which surround the dome and sustain the graceful arches of the gynaeconitis, the visitor may still trace the spoils of the Temple of the Sun at Baalbec, of the famous Temple of Diana at Ephesus, or that of the Delian Apollo, of Minerva at Athens, of Cybele at Cyzicus, and of a host of less distinguished shrines of paganism. When the mere cost of the transport of these massive monuments to Constantinople is taken into account, all wonder ceases at the vastness of the sums which are said to have been expended in the work. It is easy to understand how, "before the walls had risen two cubits from the ground, forty-five thousand two hundred pounds were consumed." [Footnote 137] It is not difficult to account for the enormous general taxation, the oppressive exactions from individuals, the percentages on prefects' incomes, and the deductions from the salaries of judges and professors, which went to swell the almost fabulous aggregate of the expenditure; and there is perhaps an economical lesson in the legend of the apparition of the angel, who, when the building had risen as far as the cupola, conducted the master of the imperial treasury to a subterranean vault in which eighty hundred weight of gold were discovered ready for the completion of the work! [Footnote 138]

[Footnote 137: Gibbon's "Decline and Fall," vol. iii. p. 633.]

[Footnote 138: Anonymi, p. 62.]

Even independently of the building itself and its artistic decorations, the value of the sacred furniture and appliances exceeded all that had ever before been devised. The sedilia of the {649} priests and the throne of the patriarch were of silver gilt. The dome of the tabernacle was of pure gold, ornamented with golden lilies, and surmounted by a gold cross seventy-five pounds weight and encrusted with precious stones. All the sacred vessels—chalices, beakers, ewers, dishes, and patens, were of gold. The candelabra which stood on the altar, on the ambo, and on the upper gynaeconitis; the two colossal candelabra placed at either side of the altar; the dome of the ambo; the several crosses within the bema; the pillars of the iconastasis; the covers of the sacred books—all were likewise of gold, and many of them loaded with pearls, diamonds, and carbuncles. The sacred linens of the altar and the communion cloths were embroidered with gold and pearls. But when it came to the construction of the altar itself, no single one of these costly materials was considered sufficiently precious. Pious ingenuity was tasked to its utmost to devise a new and richer substance, and the table of the great altar was formed of a combination of all varieties of precious materials. Into the still fluid mass of molten gold were thrown pearls and other gems, rubies, crystals, topazes, sapphires, onyxes, and amethysts, blended in such proportions as might seem best suited to enhance to the highest imaginable limit the costliness of what was prepared as the throne of the Most High on earth! And to this combination of all that is most precious in nature, art added all the wealth at its disposal, by the richness of the chasing and the elaborateness and beauty of the design.

The total cost of the structure has been variously estimated. It amounted, according to the ancient authorities, to "three hundred and twenty thousand pounds;" but whether these were of silver or of gold is not expressly stated. Gibbon [Footnote 139] leaves it to each reader, "according to the measure of his belief," to estimate it in one or the other metal; but Mr. Neale [Footnote 140] is not deterred by the sneer of Gibbon from expressing his "belief that gold must be intended." According to this supposition the expenditure, if this can be believed possible, would have reached the enormous sum of thirteen millions sterling!

[Footnote 139: "Decline and Fall," vol. iii., p. 523.]

[Footnote 140: "Eastern Church," vol. i., p. 237. ]

It was, no doubt, with profound self-gratulation that, at the end of almost six years of anxious toil, Justinian received the intelligence of the completion of this great labor of love. At his special entreaty, the last details had been urged forward with headlong haste, in order that all might be ready for the great festival of Christmas in the year 538; and his architect had not disappointed his hopes. There is some uncertainty as to the precise date of the dedication; and indeed it is probable that the festival may have extended over several days, and thus have been assigned to different dates by different writers. But when it came (probably on Christmas eve, December 24, 538) it was a day of triumph for Justinian. A thousand oxen, a thousand sheep, a thousand swine, six hundred deer, ten thousand poultry, and thirty thousand measures of corn, were distributed to the poor. Largesses to a fabulous amount were divided among the people. The emperor, attended by the patriarch and all the great officers of state, went in procession from his palace to the entrance of the church. But, from that spot, as though he would claim to be alone in the final act of offering, Justinian ran, unattended, to the foot of the ambo, and with arms outstretched and lifted up in the attitude of prayer, exclaimed in words which the event has made memorable: "Glory to God, who hath accounted me worthy of such a work! I have conquered thee, O Solomon!"

Justinian's works in St. Sophia, however, were not destined to cease with this first completion of the building. Notwithstanding the care bestowed on {650} the dome, the selection of the lightest materials for it, and the science employed in its construction, an earthquake which occurred in the year 558 overthrew the semi-dome at the east end of the church. Its fall was followed by that of the eastern half of the great dome itself; and in the ruin perished the altar, the tabernacle, and the whole bema, with its costly furniture and appurtenances. This catastrophe, however, only supplied a new incentive to the zeal of Justinian. Anthemius and his fellow-laborers were now dead, but the task of repairing the injury was entrusted to Isidorus the Younger, nephew of the Isidorus who had been associated with Anthemius in the original construction of the church. It was completed, and the church rededicated, at the Christmas of the year 561; nor can it be doubted that the change which Isidorus now introduced in the proportions of the dome, by adding twenty-five feet to its height, contributed materially as well to the elegance of the dome itself as to the general beauty of the church and the harmony of its several parts.

The church of Justinian thus completed may be regarded as substantially the same building which is now the chief temple of Islam. The few modifications which it has undergone will be mentioned in the proper place; but it may be convenient to describe the building, such as it came from the hands of its first founder, before we proceed to its later history.

St. Sophia, in its primitive form, may be taken as the type of Byzantine ecclesiology in almost all its details. Although its walls enclose what may be roughly [Footnote 141] called a square of 241 feet, the internal plan is not inaptly described as a Greek cross, of which the nave and transepts constitute the arm, while the aisles, which are surmounted by the gynaeconitis, or women's gallery, may be said to complete it into a square, within which the cross is inscribed. The head of the cross is prolonged at the eastern extremity into a slightly projecting apse. The aisle is approached at its western end through a double narthex or porch, extending over the entire breadth of the building, and about 100 feet in depth; so that the whole length of the structure, from the eastern wall of the apse to the wall of the outer porch, is about 340 feet. In the centre, from four massive piers, rises the great dome, beneath which, to the east and to the west, spring two great semi-domes, the eastern supported by three, the western by two, semi-domes of smaller dimensions. The central of the three lesser semi-domes, to the east, constitutes the roof of the apse to which allusion has already been made. The piers of the dome (differing in this respect from those of St. Peter's at Rome) present from within a singularly light and elegant appearance; they are nevertheless constructed with great strength and solidity, supported by four massive buttresses, which, in the exterior, rise as high as the base of the dome, and are capacious enough to contain the exterior staircases of the gynaeconitis. The lightness of the dome-piers is in great part due to the lightness of the materials of the dome itself already described. The diameter of the dome at its base is 100 feet, its height at the central point above the floor is 179 feet, the original height, before the reconstruction in 561, having been twenty-five feet less. [Footnote 142] The effect of this combination of domes, semi-domes, and plane arches, on entering the nave, is singularly striking. It constitutes, in the opinion of the authors of "Byzantine Architecture," what may regarded as the characteristic beauty be of St. Sophia; and the effect is heightened in the modern mosque by the nakedness of the lower part of the {651} building, and by the absence of those appurtenances of a Christian church,—as the altar, the screen, and the ambo,—which, by arresting the eye in more minute observation, withdrew it in the Christian times from the general proportions of the structure. This effect of lightness is also increased by numerous window's, which encircle the tympanum. They are twenty-four in number, small, low, and circular-headed; and in the spaces between them spring the twenty-four groined ribs of the dome, which meet in the centre and divide the vault into twenty-four equal segments. The interior was richly decorated with mosaic work. At the four angles beneath the dome were four colossal figures of winged seraphim; and from the summit of the dome looked down that majestic face of Christ the Sovereign Judge, which still remains the leading type of our Lord's countenance in the school of Byzantine art, and even in the Latin reproductions of it fills the mind with a feeling of reverence and awe, hardly to be equalled by any other production of Christian art. The exterior of the dome is covered with lead, and it was originally surmounted by a stately cross, which in the modern mosque is replaced by a gigantic crescent fifty yards in diameter; on the gilding of this ornament Murad III. expended 50,000 ducats, and the glitter of it in the sunshine is said to be visible from the summit of Mount Olympus—a distance of a hundred miles. To an eye accustomed to the convexity of the cupola of western churches, the interior height of the dome of Sophia is perhaps somewhat disappointing, especially considering the name "aerial," by which it is called by the ancient authorities. This name, however, was given to it, not so much to convey the idea of lightness or "airiness" in the structure, as because its proportions, as designed by the architect, were intended to represent or reproduce the supposed convexity of the "aerial vault" itself.

[Footnote 141: This is not exactly true. The precise dimensions of the building (excluding the apse and narthex) are 241 feet by 226 feet.]

[Footnote 142: Later Greek authorities, for the purpose of exalting the glories of the older church, allege that the second dome is fifteen feet lower than the first; and even Von Hammer (Constantinople und der Bosporus, vol. i., p. 346) adopts this view. But Zonaras and the older writers agree that the height was increased by twenty-five feet. See Neale's "Eastern Church," vol. i., p. 239.]

With Justinian's St. Sophia begins what may be called the second or classic period of Byzantine archaeology. It is proper, therefore, that we should describe, although of necessity very briefly, its general outline and arrangements.

With very few exceptions, the Greek churches of the earlier period (including the older church of St. Sophia, whether as originally built by Constantine and restored by his son, or as rebuilt by Theodosius) were of that oblong form which the Greeks called "dromic" and which is known in the west as the type of the basilica. The present St. Sophia, on the contrary, may be regarded as practically the type of the cruciform structure. This cruciform appearance, however, is, as has been already explained, confined to the internal arrangement, the exterior presenting the appearance of a square, or if the porch be regarded as part of the church, of an oblong rectangle.

To begin with the narthex or porch:—That of St. Sophia is double, consisting of an outer (exonarthcx) as well as an inner (esonarthex) porch. Most Byzantine churches have but a single narthex—often a lean-to against the western wall; and in some few churches the narthex is altogether wanting. But in St. Sophia it is a substantive part of the edifice; and, the roof of the inner compartment being arched, it forms the substructure of the western gynaeconitis, or women's choir, which is also carried upon a series of unrivalled arches supported by pillars, most of which are historical, around the northern and southern sides of the nave. The outer porch is comparatively plain, and communicates with the inner one by five marble doorways (of which one is now walled up), the doors being of bronze, wrought in floriated crosses, still distinguishable, although much mutilated by the Turkish occupants. The inner porch is much more rich, the floor of watered marble, and the walls lined with marbles of various colors and with richly carved alabaster. It opens on {652} the church by nine gates of highly-wrought bronze; over the central portal is a well-preserved group in mosaic, bearing the inscription: —and representing our Lord, with the Virgin and St. John the Baptist on either hand, in the act of giving with uplifted right hand his benediction to an emperor (no doubt Justinian) prostrate at his feet. This group is represented in one of M. Salzenberg's plates; and it is specially interesting for the commentary, explanatory of the attitude of our Lord, given in the poem of Paul the Silentiary, according to whom the position of our Lord's fingers represents, in the language of signs then received, the initial and final letters of the sacred name, :
.
The outstretched forefinger meant I; the bent second finger, C or Σ; the third finger applied to the thumb, X; and the little finger, Σ. It may also be noted that Justinian in this curious group is represented with the nimbus. During the progress of the restoration of the building in 1847, this mosaic was uncovered, and exactly copied; but like all the other mosaics which contain representations of the human form, it has been covered with canvas, and again carefully coated with plaster. It was on the phiale or fountain of the outer court of this narthex that the famous palindromic inscription was placed:

.
"Wash thy sins, not thy countenance only."

The interior of St. Sophia, exclusive of the women's choir, consisted of three great divisions—the nave, which was the place of the laity; the soleas, or choir, which was assigned to the assisting clergy of the various grades; and the bema, or sanctuary, the semi-circular apse at the eastern end in which the sacred mysteries were celebrated, shut off from the soleas by the inconastasis or screen, and flanked by two smaller, but similar, semicircular recesses; the diaconicon, corresponding with the modern vestry; and the prothesis, in which the bread and wine were prepared for the eucharistic offering, whence they were carried, in the procession called the "Great Entrance," to the high altar within the bema.

The position of these several parts is still generally traceable in the modern mosque, although, the divisions having been all swept away, there is some controversy as to details.

The nave, of course, occupies the western end, and is entered directly from the porch. It was separated from the soleas, or choir, at the ambo—the pulpit, or more properly gallery, which was used not only for preaching, but also for the reading or chanting of the lessons and the gospel, for ecclesiastical announcements or proclamations, and in St. Sophia for the coronation of the emperor. The ambo of St. Sophia was a very massive and stately structure of rich and costly material and of most elaborate workmanship; it was crowned by a canopy or baldachin, surmounted by a solid golden cross a hundred pounds in weight. All trace of the ambo has long disappeared from the mosque; but from the number of clergy, priests, deacons, subdeacons, lectors, and singers (numbering, even on the reduced scale prescribed by Justinian, 385) which the soleas was designed to accommodate, as well as from other indications, it is believed that the ambo, which was at the extreme end of the soleas, must have stood under the dome, a little to the east of the centre. The seat of the emperor was on the left side of the soleas, immediately below the seats of the priests, close to the ambo, and opposite to the throne of the patriarch. The seats assigned in the present patriarchal church to the princes of Wallachia and Moldavia correspond in position to those formerly occupied by the throne of the emperor and are directly opposite that of the patriarch. Beside its sacred uses, the ambo of St. Sophia was {653} the scene of many a striking incident in Byzantine history. The reader of Gibbon will recall the graphic picture of Heracleonas compelled by the turbulent multitude to appear in the ambo of St. Sophia with his infant nephew in his arms for the purpose of receiving their homage to the child as emperor; [Footnote 143] or his still more vivid description of the five sons of Copronimus, of whom the eldest, Nicephorus, had been made blind, and the other four had their tongues cut out, escaping from their dungeon and taking sanctuary in St. Sophia. There are few more touching stories in all the bloody annals of Byzantium than that which presents the blind Nicephorus employing that faculty of speech which had been spared in him alone, by appealing from the ambo on behalf of his mute brothers to the pity and protection of the people! [Footnote 144]

[Footnote 143: "Decline and Fall," vol. iv.. p. 403. ]

[Footnote 144: Ibid., vol. iv., p. 413. ]

But it was upon the bema of St. Sophia, as we have already seen, that the wealth and pious munificence of Justinian were most lavishly expended. It was shut off from the soleas by the inconastasis, which in Byzantine art is a screen resembling, in all except its position, the rood-screen of western architecture, and derived its name from the sacred pictures represented upon it. In that of St. Sophia the material was silver, the lower part being highly wrought with arabesque devices, and the upper composed of twelve pillars, twined two and two, and separated by panels on which were depicted in oval medallions the figures of our Lord, his Virgin Mother, and the prophets and apostles. It had three doors; the central one (called , "sacred door") leading directly to the altar, that on the right to the diaconicon, and that on the left to the prothesis. The figures on either side of the central door, following what appears to have been the universal rule, were those of our Lord and the Virgin, and above the door stood a massive cross of gold. The altar, with its canopy or tabernacle, has been already described. The synthronus, or bench with stalls, for the officiating bishop and clergy, are at the back of the altar along the circular wall of the bema. The seats were of silver gilt. The pillars which separated them were of pure gold. All this costly and gorgeous structure has of course disappeared from the modern mosque. The eye now ranges without interruption from the entrance of the royal doors to the very extremity of the bema;—the only objects to arrest observation being the sultan's gallery (maksure), which stands at the left or north side of the bema; the mimber, or pulpit for the Friday prayer, which is placed at the right or southern end of the ancient inconastasis; the mahfil, or ordinary preaching pulpit, in the centre of the mosque; and the mihrab, or sacred niche, which is at the south-east side of the bema.

It was more difficult, in converting the church into a mosque, to get rid of the numerous sacred pictures in gold and mosaic which adorned the walls and arches. Accordingly, instead of attempting to remove or destroy them, the Moslem invaders of the church were content with covering all these Christian representations with a coat of plaster; and thus in the late reparation of the mosque, the architect, having removed the plaster, was enabled to have copies made of all the groups which still remained uninjured. Of the principal of them M. Salzenberg has given fac-similes. On the great western arch was represented the Virgin Mary, with Sts. Peter and Paul. On the side walls of the nave, above the women's choir upon either side, were figures, in part now defaced, of prophets, martyrs, and other saints. M. Salzenberg has reproduced in his volume Sts. Anthemius, Basil, Gregory, Dionysius the Areopagite, Nicolas of Myra, Gregory the Armenian apostle, and the prophets Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Habakkuk. On the great eastern arch was a group consisting of the Virgin Mary, St. John the Baptist, and {654} the Emperor John Palaeologus, the last Christian restorer of the building; but these figures—and still more the group which decorated the arch of the bema, our Lord, the Virgin, and the Archangel Michael—are now much defaced. Much to the credit of the late sultan, however, he not only declined to permit the removal of these relics of ancient Christian art, but gave orders that every means should be taken to preserve them; at the same time directing that they should be carefully concealed from Moslem eyes, as before, by a covering of plaster, the outer surface of which is decorated in harmony with those portions of the ancient mosaic, which, not containing any object inconsistent with the Moslem worship, have been restored to their original condition. Accordingly, the winged seraphim at the angles of the buttresses which support the dome have been preserved, and, to a Christian visitor, appear in strange contrast with the gigantic Arabic inscriptions in gold and colors which arrest the eye upon either side of the nave and within the dome, commemorating the four companions of the Prophet, Abu-bekr, Omar, Osman, and Ali.

But there is one characteristic of St. Sophia which neither time nor the revolutions which time has brought have been able to efface or even substantially to modify—the strikingly graceful and elegant, although far from classically correct, grouping of the pillars which support the lesser semidomes and the women's choir. It would be impossible, without the aid of a plan, to convey any idea of the arrangement of this matchless assemblage of columns, which, as we have already observed, are even less precious for the intrinsic richness and beauty of their material than for the interesting associations which their presence in a Christian temple involves. Most of these may still be identified. The eight red porphyry pillars standing, two and two, under the semi-domes at either end of the nave, are the celebrated columns from the Temple of the Sun, already recorded as the gift of Marcia, offered by her "for the salvation of her soul." The eight pillars of green serpentine which support the women's choir, at either side of the nave, are from the Temple of Diana at Ephesus; and among the remaining pillars on the ground floor, twenty-four in number, arranged in groups of four, are still pointed out representatives of almost every form of the olden worship of the Roman empire—spoils of the pagan temples of Athens, Delos, Troas, Cyzicus, and other sanctuaries of the heathen gods.

Less grand, but hardly less graceful, are the groups of pillars, sixty-seven in number, in the women's choir above the aisles and the inner porch. The occasional absence of uniformity which they present, differing from each other in material, in color, in style, and even in height, although it may offend the rules of art, is by no means ungrateful to the eye. In the total number of the pillars of St. Sophia, which is the broken number one hundred and seven, there is supposed to be a mystic allusion to the seven pillars of the House of Wisdom. [Footnote 145]

[Footnote 145: Proverbs ix. 1.]

Such was St. Sophia in the days of its early glory—a fitting theatre for the stately ceremonial which constituted the peculiar characteristic of the Byzantine court and Church. On all the great festivals of the year—Christmas, Epiphany, Palm Sunday, Easter, Pentecost, and the Ascension; at the ceremony of the emperor's coronation; at imperial marriages; and on occasions, more rare in the inglorious annals of the Lower Empire, of imperial triumphs,—the emperor, attended by the full array of his family I and court, went in state to St. Sophia and assisted at the celebration of the divine mysteries. The emperor himself, with his distinctive purple buskins and close tiara; the Caesar, {655} and, in later times, the Sebastocrator, in green buskins and open tiara; the Despots, the Panhypersebastos, and the Protosebastos; the long and carefully graduated line of functionaries, civil and military—the Curopalata, the Logothete and Great Logothete, the Domestic and Great Domestic, the Prostostrator, the Stratospedarch, the Protospatharius, the Great AEteriarch, and the Acolyth, with the several trains of attendants in appropriate costume which belonged to each department,—combined to form an array for which it would be difficult to find a parallel in the history of ceremonial; and when to these are added the purely ecclesiastical functionaries, for whose number even the munificent provision of space allotted by Justinian's architect was found at times insufficient, some idea may be formed of the grandeur of the service, which, for so many ages, lent to that lofty dome and these stately colonnades a life and a significance now utterly lost in the worship which has usurped its place. As a purely ecclesiastical ceremony, probably some of the great functions at St. Peter's in Rome surpass in splendor such a ceremonial as the "Great Entrance" at St. Sophia on one of the emperor's days. But the latter had the additional element of grandeur derived from the presence of a court unrivalled for the elaborate stateliness and splendor of its ceremonial code.

We have said that the church of Justinian is, in all substantial particulars, the St. Sophia of the present day. In an architectural view the later history of the building is hardly worth recording. The eastern half of the dome, in consequence of some settling of the foundation of the buttresses, having shown indications of a tendency to give way, it became necessary in the reign of Basil the Macedonian, toward the end of the ninth century, to support it by four exterior buttresses, which still form a conspicuous object from the Seraglio Place. The Emperor Michael, in 896, erected the tower still standing at the western entrance, to receive a set of bells which were presented by the doge of Venice, but which the Turks have melted down into cannon. About half a century later, a further work for the purpose of strengthening the dome was undertaken by the Emperor Romanus; and in the year 987 a complete reparation and re-strengthening of the dome, within and without, was executed under Basil the Bulgaricide, in which work the cost of the scaffolding alone amounted to ten hundred weight of gold.

No further reparations are recorded for upward of two centuries. But, to the shame of the founders of the Latin empire of Constantinople, the church of St. Sophia suffered so much in their hands, that, after the recovery of the city by the Greeks, more than one of the later Greek emperors is found engaged in repairing the injuries of the building. Andronicus the Elder, Cantacuzenus, and John IV. Palaeologus, each had a share in the work; and, by a curious though fortuitous coincidence, Palaeologus, the last of the Christian emperors who are recorded as restorers of St. Sophia, appears to be the only one admitted to the same honor which was accorded to its first founder Justinian—that of having his portrait introduced into the mosaic decorations of the building. John Palaeologus, as we saw, is represented in the group which adorned the eastern arch supporting the great dome. The figures, however, are now much defaced.

How much of the injury which, from whatever cause, the mosaic and other decorations of St. Sophia have suffered, is due to the fanaticism of the Turkish conquerors of Constantinople it is impossible to say with certainty. Probably, however, it was far less considerable than might at first be supposed. Owing to the peculiar discipline of the Greek Church, which, while it freely admits painted images, endures no sculptured Christian representations except that of the cross itself, there was little in the marble or bronze of St. Sophia to provoke Moslem {656} fanaticism. The crosses throughout the building, and especially in the women's choir, have been modified, rather than completely destroyed; the mutilator being generally satisfied with merely chiselling off the head of the cross (the cruciform character being thus destroyed), sparing the other three arms of the Christian emblem. For the rest, as we have already said, the change consisted in simply denuding the church of all its Christian furniture and appliances, whether movable objects or permanent structures, and in covering up from view all the purely Christian decorations of the walls, roof, and domes. The mosaic work, where it has perished, seems to have fallen, less from intentional outrage or direct and voluntary defacement, than from the long-continued neglect under which the building had suffered for generations, down to the restoration by the late sultan.

The alterations of the exterior under Moslem rule are far more striking, as well as more considerable. Much of the undoubtedly heavy and inelegant appearance of the exterior of St. Sophia is owing to the absence of several groups of statues and other artistic objects which were designed to relieve the massive and ungraceful proportions of the buttresses and supports of the building as seen from without. Of these groups the most important was that of the celebrated horses now at St. Mark's in Venice. On the other hand, the addition of the four minarets has, in a different way, contributed to produce the same effect of heaviness and incongruity of proportion. Of these minarets, the first, that at the south-east angle, was built by Mahomet II. The second, at the north-east, was erected by Selim, to whose care the mosque was indebted for many important works, intended as well for its actual restoration as for its prospective maintenance and preservation. The north-western and south-western minarets are both the work of Amurath III. These structures, although exceedingly light and elegant in themselves, are altogether out of keeping with the massive structure to which they were intended as an appendage, and the pretentious style of their decoration only heightens by the contrast the bald and unarchitectural appearance of the exterior of the church. It is not too much to say that the effect of these peculiarly Mohammedan additions to the structure is externally to destroy its Christian character.

But whatever may be said of the works of former sultans, it is impossible not to regard the late Sultan Abdul Medjid as a benefactor to Christian art, even in the works which he undertook directly in the interest of his own worship. From the time of Amurath III. the building had been entirely neglected. Dangerous cracks had appeared in the dome, as well as in several of the semi-domes. The lead covering of all was in a ruinous condition; and the apertures not only admitted the rain and snow, but permitted free entrance to flocks of pigeons and even more destructive birds. The arches of the gynaeconitis were in many places split and in a tottering condition The pillars, especially on the upper floor, were displaced and thrown out of the perpendicular; and the whole structure, in all its parts and in all its appointments, presented painful evidence of gross and long-continued neglect. M. Louis Haghe has represented, in two contrasted lithographed sketches, the interior of the mosque such as it was and such as it now is since the restoration. The contrast in appearance, even on paper, is very striking; although this can only be realized by those who have had the actual opportunity of comparing the new with the old. But the substantial repairs are far more important, as tending to the security of a pile so venerable and the object of so many precious associations. The great dome, while it is relieved from the four heavy and unsightly buttresses, is made more permanently secure by a double girder of wrought iron around the base. The lead of the dome and the roof has been {657} renewed throughout. The tottering pillars of the women's choir have been replaced in the perpendicular, and the arches which they sustain are now shored up and strengthened. The mosaic work throughout the building has been thoroughly cleaned and restored, the defective portions being replaced by a skilful imitation of the original. All the fittings and furniture of the mosque—the sultan's gallery, the pulpits, the mihrab, and other appurtenances of its worship—have been renewed in a style of great splendor. The work of reparation extended over two years, and owed much of its success, as well as of the spirit in which it was executed, to the enlightened liberality of Redschid Pacha. An effort is said to have been made by the fanatical party in Constantinople to induce the sultan to order the complete demolition of the mosaic pictures on the walls, as being utterly prohibited by the Koran. But he firmly refused to accede to the demand; and it was with his express permission that the king of Prussia commissioned M. Salzenberg to avail himself of the occasion of their being uncovered, in order to secure for the students of the Christian art of Byzantium the advantage of accurate copies of every detail of its most ancient as well as most characteristic monument.

From The Lamp.

ALL-HALLOW EVE; OR, THE TEST OF FUTURITY.

BY ROBERT CURTIS.

CHAPTER VII.

Here it was that the real fun was going on! From the centre of the veiling hung a strong piece of cord, with cross sticks, about eighteen inches long, at the end. On each end of one of these sticks was stuck a short piece of lighted candle, while on the ends of the other were stuck small apples of a peculiarly good kind. The cross was then set turning, when some plucky hero snapped at the apples as they went round, but as often caught the lighted candle in his mouth, when a hearty laugh from the circle of spectators proclaimed his discomfiture. On the other hand, if fortunate enough to secure one of the apples, a clapping of hands, and shouts of "Well done!" proclaimed his victory.

A little to one side of this "merry-go-round" was a huge tub of spring-water, fresh from the pump, and as clear as crystal. It was intended that the performers at this portion of the fun should, stripped to the waist, dive for pence or whatever silver the by-standers chose to throw in. Up to this it had not come into play, for until their "betthers came down from the parlor" no silver was thrown in; and the youngsters were "loth to wet theirsel's for nothin'." Now, however, a tenpenny-bit from Tom Murdock soon glittered on the bottom of the tub, a full foot and a half under water. Forthwith two or three young fellows "peeled off," to prove their abilities as divers. The first, a black-haired fellow, with a head as round as a cannon-ball, after struggling and bubbling until the people began to think he was smothering, came up without the prize. He was handed a kitchen towel to rub himself with; while one of the other young gladiators adjusted the tenpenny-bit in the middle of the tub, drew {658} in a long breath, and down he went like a duck. He was not nearly so long down as the other had been; he neither struggled nor bubbled, and came up with the money between his teeth.

"It wasn't your first time, Jamesy, anyhow," said one.

"How did you get a hoult of it, Jamesy avic?" said another.

But he kept drying his head, and never minding them.

Another tenpenny was then thrown in by old Ned Cavana; it withstood repeated efforts, but was at last fairly brought up. Jamesy seemed to be the most expert, for having lifted this second tenpenny, his abilities were finally tested with a fippenny-bit, which after one or two failures he brought up triumphantly in his teeth; all the other divers having declined to try their powers upon it.

By this time the kitchen floor was very wet, and it was thought, particularly by the contributors to the tub, that there had been enough of that sort of fun. The girls, who were standing in whatever dry spots of the flags they could find, thought so too; they, did not wish to wet their shoes before the dance, and there was another move back to the parlor.

Here the scene was completely changed, as if indeed by magic, as nobody had been missed for the performance. The long table was no where to be seen, while the chairs and forms were ranged along the walls, and old Murrin the piper greeted their entrance with an enlivening jig.

Partners were of course selected at once, and as young Lennon happened to be coming in from the kitchen with Winny Cavana at the moment, they were soon with arms akimbo footing it to admiration opposite each other. Not far from them another couple were exhibiting in like manner. They were Tom Murdock and Kate Mulvey; while several other pairs were "footing it" through the room. To judge from the self-satisfied smile upon Kate Mulvey's handsome lips, she was not a little proud or well pleased at having taken Tom Murdock from the belle of the party; for she had too much self-esteem to think that it was the belle of the party had been taken from Tom Murdock.

I need not pursue the several sets which were danced, nor particularize the pairs who were partners on the occasion. Of course Tom Murdock took the first opportunity possible to claim the hand of Winifred Cavana for a dance. Indeed, he was ill-pleased that in his own house he had permitted any chance circumstance to prevent his having opened the dance with her, and apologized for it—"but it happened in a manner over which he had no control." He had picked up that expression at a race-course.

With all his bitterness he had the good sense not to make a scene by endeavoring to frustrate that which he had not the tact to obviate by pre-arrangement. Winny had made no reply to his apology, and he continued, "I did not ask Kate Mulvey to dance until I saw you led out by young Lennon."

"That is a bad compliment to Kate," she observed.

"I can't help that," said he gruffly; "some people take time d-mn-bly by the forelock."

"That cannot apply to either him or me in this case; there were two pairs dancing before he asked me."

Now although this was certainly not said by way of reproach to Tom for not himself being sooner, it was unanswerable, and he did not try to answer it. He was not however in such good humor as to forward himself much in Winny's good opinion, and Emon-a-knock, who watched him closely, was content that he should be her sole beau for the rest of the evening.

Refreshments were now brought in; cold punch for the boys and "nagus" for the girls; for old Murdock could afford to make a splash, and this he thought "was his time to do it. If any one was hungry, there was plenty {659} of cold mate and bread on the kitchen dresser." But after the calcannon and tea, nobody seemed to hear him.

After the liquor on the first tray was disposed of, and the glasses collected for a replenish, a solo jig was universally called for. The two best dancers in the province were present—Tom Murdock and Edward Lennon, so there could be no failure.

Old Murdock had never seen young Lennon dance until that night, and so far as he could judge, "he was not the man that Tom need be afraid of." He had often seen Tom's best dancing, and certainly nothing which young Lennon had exhibited there up to that time could at all touch it.

"Come, Tom," said he, "give the girls a specimen of what you can do, your lone," and he laid the poker and tongs across each other in the middle of the floor.

Paddy Murrin struck up a spirit-stirring jig, which no one could resist. The girls were all dancing it "to themselves," and young Lennon's feet were dying to be at it, but of course he must wait.

Indeed he was not anxious to exhibit in opposition to his host's son, but feared his reputation as a dancer would put him in for it.

Tom Murdock having been thus called on, was tightening the fung of one of his pumps, to begin. Turning then to Murrin, he called for "the fox-hunter's jig."

He now commenced, and like a knowing professor of his art "took it easy" at the commencement, determined however to astonish them ere he had done. He felt that he was dancing well, but knew that he could dance much better, and would presently do so. He had often tried the "poker and tongs jig," but hitherto never quite to his satisfaction. He had sometimes come off perfectly victorious, without touching them, but as often managed to kick them about the floor. He was now on his mettle, not only on account of Winny Cavana, but also because "that whelp, Lennon, was looking on, which he had no right to be." For a while he succeeded admirably. He had tipped each division of the cross with both heel and toe, several times with rapid and successful precision; but becoming enthusiastic, as the plaudits passed round, he called to Murrin "to play faster," when after a few moments of increased speed, he tripped in the tongs, and came flat on his back upon the floor. He was soon up again, and a few touches of the clothes-brush set all to rights, except the irrepressible titter that ran round the room.

Of course there was an excuse one of the fungs of his pump had again loosened and caught in the tongs. This was not merely an excuse, but a fact, upon which Tom Murdock built much consolation for his "partial failure," as he himself jocosely called it; but he was savage at heart.

There was a general call now from the girls for young Lennon, and "Emon-a-knock, Emon-a-knock," resounded on all sides. He would not rise, however; he was now more unwilling than ever to "dance a match," as he called it to himself, with his host's son.

The "partial failure" of his rival—and he was honest enough to admit that it was but partial, and could not have been avoided—gave him well-founded hopes of a triumph. He too had tried his powers of agility by the poker and tongs test, and oftener with success than otherwise. It was some time now since he had tried it, as latterly he had not much time to spare for such amusements. He was unwilling, but not from fear of failure, to get up; but no excuse would be taken; he was caught by the collar of his coat by two sturdy handsome girls, and dragged into the middle of the room. Thus placed before the spectators, he could not refuse the ordeal, as it might be called.

He had his wits about him, however. He had seen Tom Murdock whisper something to the piper when he was first called on to stand up, and it {660} proved that he was not astray as to its purport.

Recollecting the jig he was in the habit of dancing the poker and tongs to, he asked the piper to play it. Murrin hesitated, and at last came out with a stammer that "he hadn't it, but he'd give him one as good," striking up the most difficult jig in the Irish catalogue to dance to.

"No," said Lennon stoutly, "I heard you play the jig I called for a hundred times, and no later than last night, Pat, at Jemmy Mullarky's, as I passed home from work, and I'll have no other."

"I took whatever jig he happened to strike up," said Tom with a sneer.

"You might have had your choice, for that matter, and I daresay you had," replied Lennon, "and I'll have mine! It is my right."

"If a man can dance," continued Tom, "he ought to be able to dance to any jig that's given him; it's like a man that can only say his prayers out of his own book." And there was a suppressed smile at Lennon's expense.

He saw it, and his blood was up in a moment.

"He may play any jig he chooses now," exclaimed Lennon, "except one, and that is the one you told him to play," taking his chance that his suspicions were correct as to the purport of the whisper.

"I'll play the one I pled for the young masther himself; an' if that doesn't shoot you, you needn't dance at all," said Murrin, apparently prompted again by Tom Murdock.

This was a decision from which no impartial person could dissent, and Lennon seemed perfectly satisfied, but after all this jaw and interruption he felt in no great humor to dance, and almost feared the result.

As he stood up he caught a glance from Winny's eye which banished every thought save that of complying with that look. If ever a look planted an undying resolve in a man's heart it was that. It called him "Emon" as plain as if she had spoken it, and said, "Don't let that fellow put you down," and quick as the glance was it added, "he's a nasty fellow."

To it now Emon went with his whole heart. He cared not what jig Pat Murrin played, "or any other piper," he was able for them.

At first the quiet tipping of his heel and toe upon the floor, with now and then a flat stamp which threw up the dust, was inimitable. As he got into the "merits of the thing," the music was obliged to vie with him in activity. It seemed as much as if he was dancing for the piper to play to, as that the piper was playing for him to dance. Those who were up to the merits of an Irish jig, could have told the one he was dancing to if there had been no music at all. There was a tip, a curl, or a stamp for every note in the tune. In fact he played the jig upon the floor with his feet. He now closed the poker and tongs with confidence, while Tom Murdock looked on with a malicious hope that he too would bungle the business; and Winny Cavana looked on with a timid fear of the same result. But he danced through and amongst them as if by magic—a toe here, and a heel there, in each compartment of the crossed irons with the rapidity of lightning, but he never touched one of them.

"Quicker! quicker," cried Murdock to the piper, seeing that Lennon was perfect master of his position.

"Aye, as quick as you like," stammered Lennon, almost out of breath; and the increased speed of the music brought forth more striking performance, testified to by the applause which greeted his finishing bow.

He caught a short glance again from Winny's eye, as he passed to a vacant seat. "Thank you, Emon, from my heart," it said, as plainly as the other had spoken when he stood up.

It was now well on in the small hours, and as old Murdock and his son had both ceased in a manner to do any more honors, their silence was accepted as a sort of "notice to quit," {661} and there was a general move in search of bonnets and cloaks. Tom Murdock knew that he was in the dumps, and wisely left Winny to her father's escort. Lennon's way lay by the Mulveys, and he was "that far" with Kate and some others. Indeed, all the branch roads and pathways were echoing to the noisy chat and opinions of the scattered party on their several ways home.

CHAPTER VIII.

The after-reflections of those most interested in the above gathering were various, and it must be admitted to some extent unsatisfactory. First of all, old Murdock was keen enough to perceive that he had not furthered his object in the least by having given the party at all. From what Tom had told him he had kept a close watch upon young Lennon, of whose aspirations toward Winny Cavana he had now no doubt, and if he was not sure of a preference upon her part toward him, he was quite certain that she had none toward Tom. This was the natural result of old Murdock's observations of Winny's conduct during the evening,—who, while she could and did hide the one, could not, and did not, hide the other.

Tom Murdock was the least satisfied of them all with the whole business, and sullenly told his father, who had done it all to serve him, that "he had done more harm than good, and that he knew he would, by asking that whelp Lennon; and he hoped he might never die till he broke every bone in his body. By hook or by crook, by fair means or foul, he must put a stop to his hopes in that quarter."

His father was silent. He felt that he had not advanced matters by his party. Old Cavana was not the sharp old man in these matters, either to mind or divine from how many points the wind blew, and quietly supposed all had gone on smoothly, as he and old Murdock wished.

Winifred had been more than confirmed in her dislike to Tom Murdock, while her secret preference for Emon-a-knock had been in no respect diminished. She had depth enough also to perceive that Kate Mulvey was anxious enough to propitiate the good opinion, to which she had taken no pains to hide her indifference. She was aware that Kate Mulvey's name had been associated with young Lennon's by the village gossips, but she had seen nothing on that night to justify any apprehension, if she chose to set herself to work. She would take an opportunity of sounding her friend upon this momentous subject, and finding out how the land really lay. If that was the side of her head Kate's cap was inclined to lean to, might they not strike a quiet and confidential little bargain between them, as regarded these two young men?

Kate Mulvey's thoughts were not very much at variance with those of her friend Winny. She, not having the same penetration into the probable results of sinister looks and scowling brows; or not, perhaps, having ever perceived them, had thrown one of the nicest caps that ever came from a smoothing-iron at Tom Murdock, but she feared he had not yet picked it up. She was afraid, until the night of the party, that her friend and rival—yes, it is only in the higher ranks of society that the two cannot be united—had thrown a still more richly trimmed one at him; but on that night, and she had watched closely, she had formed a reasonable belief that her fear was totally unfounded. She was not quite sure that it had not been let drop in Emon-a-knock's way, if not actually thrown at him. These girls, in such cases, are so sharp!

The very same thought had struck her. She also had determined upon sounding her friend Winny, and would {662} take the first favorable opportunity of having a confidential chat with her upon the subject. The girls were very intimate, and were not rivals, only they did not know it. We shall see by-and-by how they "sounded" each other.

Young Lennon's after-thoughts, upon the whole, were more satisfactory than perhaps those of any of the other principal persons concerned. If Winny Cavana had not shown him a decided preference over the general set of young men there, she had certainly been still less particular in her conduct and manner toward Tom Murdock. These matters, no doubt, are managed pretty much the same in all ranks of society, though, of course, not with the same refinement; and to young Lennon, whose heart was on the watch, as well as his eyes, one or two little incidents during the night gave him some faint hopes that, as yet at least, his rich rival had not made much way against him. Hitherto, young Lennon had looked upon the rich heiress of Rathcash as a fruit too high for him to reach from the low ground upon which he stood, and had given more of his attention to her poorer neighbor Kate Mulvey. He, however, met with decided reluctance in that quarter, and being neither cowardly, ignorant, nor shy, he had improved one or two favorable occasions with Winny Cavana at the party, whom he now had some, perhaps delusive, notion was not so far above his reach after all.

These are the only persons with whose after-thoughts we are concerned. There may have been some other by-play on the part of two or three fine young men and handsome girls, who burned themselves upon the bar, and danced together after they became cinders, but as they are in no respect mixed up with our story, we may pass them by without investigating their thoughts, further than to declare that they were all well pleased, and that the praises of old Murdock's munificence rang from one end of the parish to the other.

CHAPTER IX.

I must now describe a portion of the garden which stretched out from the back of old Ned Cavana's premises. A large well-enclosed farmyard, almost immediately at the rear of the house, gave evidence of the comfort and plenty belonging not only to the old man himself, but to everything living and dead about the place; and as we shall be obliged to pass through this farm-yard to get into the garden, we may as well describe it first. Stacks of corn, wheat, oats, and barley, in great variety of size, pointed the pinnacles of their finishing touch to the sky. Sticking up from some of these were sham weather-cocks, made of straw, in the shape of fish, fowl, dogs, and cats, the handiwork of Jamesy Doyle, the servant boy,—the same black-headed urchin who lifted the tenpenny-bit out of the tub at old Murdock's party. They were fastened upon sticks, which did not turn round, and were therefore put up more to frighten away the sparrows than for the purpose of indicating which way the wind blew, or, more likely still, as mere specimens of Jamesy Doyle's ingenuity. The whole yard was covered a foot deep with loose straw, for the double purpose of giving comfort to two or three litters of young pigs, and that of being used up, by the constant tramping, into manure for the farm; for cows, heifers, and calves strayed about it without interruption. A grand flock of geese, as white as snow and as large nearly as swans, marched in from the fields, headed by their gander, every evening about the same hour, to spend their night gaggling and watching and sleeping by turns under the stacks of corn, which were raised upon stone pillars with mushroom metal-caps, to keep out the rats and mice. A big black cock, with a hanging red comb and white jowls, and innumerable hens belonging to him, something on the Brigham Young system, marched triumphantly about, calling his favorites {663} every now and then with a quick melancholy little chuckle as often as he found a tit-bit amongst the straw. Ducks, half as large as the geese, coming home without a feather raffled, in a mottled string of all colors, from the stream below the hill, diving, for variety, into the clean straw, emerging now and then, and smattering with their flat bills in any little puddle of water that lay between the pavement in the bare part of the yard. "Bullydhu," the watch-dog, as evening closed, taking possession of a small wooden house upon wheels,—Jamesy Doyle's handiwork too,—that it might be turned to the shelter, whichever way the wind blew. It was a miracle to see Bully getting into it, the door was so low; another piece of consideration of Jamesy's for the dog's comfort. You could only know when he was in it by seeing his large soft paws under the arch of the low door.

Beyond this farm-yard—farm in all its appearance and realities—was the garden. A thick, high, furze hedge, about sixty yards long, ran down one side of it, from the corner of the farmyard wall; and at the further end of this hedge, which was the square of the garden, and facing the sun, was certainly the most complete and beautiful summer-house in the parish of Rathcash, or Jamesy Doyle was very much mistaken. It also was his handiwork. In fact, there was nothing Jamesy could not turn his hands to, and his heart was as ready as his hands, so that he was always successful, but here he had outstripped all his former ingenuity. The bower was now of four years' standing, and every summer Jamesy was proud to see that nature had approved of his plan by endorsing it with a hundred different signatures. With the other portions of the garden or its several crops, we have nothing to do; we will therefore linger for a while about the furze hedge and in "Jamesy's bower" to see what may turn up. But I must describe another item in the locality.

Immediately outside the hedge there was a lane, common to a certain extent to both farms. It might be said to divide them. It lay quite close to the furze hedge, which ran in a straight line a long distance beyond where "Jamesy's bower" formed one of the angles of the garden. There was a gate across the lane precisely outside the corner where the bower had been made, and this was the extent of Murdock's right or title to the commonalty of the lane. Passing through this gate, Murdock branched off to the left with the produce of his farm. It is a long lane, they say, that has no turning, and although the portion of this one with which we are concerned was only sixty yards long, I have not, perhaps, brought the reader to the spot so quickly as I might. I certainly could have brought him through the yard without putting even the word "farm" before it, or without saying a word about the stacks of corn and the weather-cocks, the pigs, cows, heifers, and calves, the geese, ducks, cock, and hens, "Bullydhu" and his house, etc., and with a hop, step, and a leap I might have placed him in "Jamesy's bower" if he had been the person to occupy it—but he was not. With every twig, however, of the hedge and the bower it is necessary that my readers should be well acquainted; and I hope I have succeeded in making them so.

Winny Cavana was a thoughtful, thrifty girl, an experienced housekeeper, never allowing one job to overtake another where it could be avoided. Of course incidental difficulties would sometimes arise; but in general she managed everything so nicely and systematically that matters fell into their own time and place as regularly as possible.

When Winny got the invitation for Mick Murdock's party, which was only in the forenoon of the day before it came off, her first thought was, that she would be very tired and ill-fitted for business the day after it was over. She therefore called Jamesy Doyle to her assistance, and on that day and {664} the next, she got through whatever household jobs would bear performance in advance, and instructed Jamesy as to some little matters which she used to oversee herself, but which on this occasion she would entrust solely to his own intelligence and judgment for the day after the party. She could not have committed them to a more competent or conscientious lad. Anything Jamesy undertook to do, he did it well, as we have already seen both in the haggard, the garden, and the tub—for it was he who brought up the fippenny-bit at Murdock's, and he would lay down his life to serve or even to oblige Winny Cavana.

Having thus purchased an idle day after the party, Winny was determined to enjoy it, and after a very late breakfast, for her father, poor soul, was dead tired, she called Jamesy, and examined him as to what he had done or left undone. Finding that, notwithstanding he had been up as late as she had been herself the night before, he had been faithful to the trust reposed in him, and that everything was in trim order, she then complimented him upon his snapping and diving abilities.

"How much did you take up out of the tub, Jamesy?" she asked.

"Be gorra, Miss Winny, I took up two tenpenny-bits an' a fippenny."

"And what will you do with all that money, Jamesy? it is nearly a month's wages."

"Be gorra, my mother has it afore this, Miss Winny."

"That is a good boy, Jamesy, but you shouldn't curse."

"Be gorra, I won't, miss; but I didn't think that was cursing, at all, at all."

"Well, it is swearing, Jamesy, and that is just as bad."

"Well, Miss Winny, you'll never hear me say it agen."

"That's right, James. Is the garden open?

"It is, miss; I'm afther bringing out an armful of leaves to bile for the pigs."

Winny passed on through the yard into the garden. It was a fine, mild day for the time of year, and she was soon sitting in the bower with an unopened story-book in her lap. It was a piece of idle folly her bringing the book there at all. In the first place, she had it by heart—for books were scarce in that locality, and were often read—and in the next, she was more in a humor to think than to read. It was no strange thing, under the circumstances, if, like some heroines of a higher stamp, "she fell into a reverie." "How long she remained thus," to use the patent phrase in such a case, must be a mere matter of surmise; but a step at the gate outside the hedge, and her own name distinctly pronounced, caused her to start. Eaves-dropping has been universally condemned, and "listeners," they say, "never hear good of themselves." But where is the young girl, or indeed any person, hearing their own name pronounced, and being in a position to listen unobserved, who would not do so? Our heroine, at all events, was not "above that sort of thing," and instead of hemming, or coughing, or shuffling her feet in the gravel, she cocked her ears and held her breath. We would be a little indulgent to a person so sorely tempted, whatever our readers may think.

"If Winny Cavana," she heard, "was twice as proud, an' twice as great a lady, you may believe me, Tom, she wouldn't refuse you. She'll have six hundred pounds as round as the crown of your hat; an' that fine farm we're afther walkin' over; like her, or not like her, take my advice an' don't lose the fortune an' the farm."

"Not if I can help it, father. There's more reason than you know of why I should secure the ready money of her fortune at any rate; as to herself, if it wasn't for that, she might marry Tom Naddy th' aumadhawn if she had a mind."

"Had you any chat with her last night, Tom? Oh then, wasn't she lookin' elegant!"

{665}

"As elegant as you please, father, but as proud as a peacock. No, I had no chat with her, except what the whole room could hear; she was determined on that, and I'm still of opinion that you did more harm than good."

"Not if you were worth a thrawncen, Tom. Arrah avic machree, you don't undherstand her; that was all put on, man alive. I'm afeerd she'll think you haven't the pluck in you; she's a sperited girl herself, and depend upon it she expects you to spake, an' its what she's vexed at, your dilly-dallyin'. Why did you let that fellow take her out for the first dance? I heerd Mrs. Moran remark it to Kitty Mulvey's mother."

"That was a mistake, father; he had her out before I got in from the kitchen."

"They don't like them mistakes, Tom, an' that's the very thing I blame you for; you should have stuck to her like a leech the whole night; they like a man that's in earnest. Take my advice, Tom avic, an put the question plump to her at wanst fore Shraftide. Tell her I'll lay down a pound for you for every pound her father gives her, and I'll make over this place to you out an out. Old Ned an I will live together while we last, an that can't be long, Tom avic. I know he'll settle Rathcash upon Winny, and he'll have the interest of her fortune beside—"

"Interest be d—d!" interrupted Tom; "won't he pay the money down?"

"He might do that same, but I think not; he's afeerd it might be dribbled away, but with Rathcash, an Rathcashmore joined, the devil's in it and she can't live like a lady; at all events, Tom, you can live like a gentleman; ould Ned's for you entirely, Tom, I can tell you that."

"That is all very well, father, and I wish that you could make me think that your words would come true, but I'm not come to four-and-twenty years of age without knowing something of the way girls get on; and if that one is not set on young Lennon, my name is not Tom Murdock; and I'll tell you what's more, that if it wasn't for her fortune and that farm, he might have her and welcome. There are many girls in the parish as handsome, and handsomer for that matter, than what she is, that would just jump at me."

"I know that, Tom agra, but maybe it's what you'll only fix her on that whelp, as you call him, the stronger, if you be houldin' back the way you do. They like pluck, Tom; they like pluck, I tell you, and in my opinion she's only makin' b'lief, to dhraw you out. Try her, Tom, try her."

"I will, father, and if I fail, and I find that that spalpeen Lennon is at the bottom of it, let them both look out, that's all. For his part, I have a way of dealing with him that he knows nothing about, and as for her—"

Here Jamesy Doyle came out into the lane from the farm-yard, and father and son immediately branched off in the direction of their own house, leaving Tom Murdock's second part of the threat unfinished.

But Winny had heard enough. Her heart, which had been beating with indignation the whole time, had nearly betrayed itself when she heard Emon-a-knock called a spalpeen.

One thing she was now certain of, and the certainty gave her whole soul relief,—that if ever Tom Murdock could have had any chance of success through her father's influence, and her love for him, it was now entirely at an end for ever. Should her father urge the match upon her, she had, as a last remedy, but to reveal this conversation, to gain him over indignantly to her side.

{666}

Winny was seldom very wrong in her likings or dislikings, although perhaps both were formed in some instances rather hastily, and she often knew not why. In Tom Murdock's case, she was glad, and now rather "proud out of herself," that she had never liked him.

"I knew the dirt was in him," she said to herself as she returned to the house. "I wish he did not live so near us, for I foresee nothing but trouble and vexation before me on his account. I'm sorry Jamesy Doyle came out so soon. I'd like to have heard what he was going to say of myself, but sure he said enough. Em-on-a-knock may despise himself and his threat." And she went into the house to prepare the dinner.

Tom Murdock, notwithstanding his shortcomings, and they were neither few nor far between, was a shrewd, clever fellow in most matters. It was owing to this shrewdness that he resolved to watch for some favorable opportunity, rather than seek a formal meeting with Winny Cavana "at wanst" as had been 'advised by his father.

[TO BE CONTINUED. Page 785]

From Once a Week.

SAINT DOROTHEA.

  The sun blazed fiercely out of cloudless blue,
  And the deep sea flung back the glare again,
  As though there were indeed another sun
  Within the mimic sky reflected there;
  Not steadily and straight, as from above,
  But all athwart the little rippling waves
  The broken daybeams sparkling leapt aloft
  In glittering ruin; scarce a breath of air
  To stir the waters or to wave the trees;
  The flowers hung drooping, and the leaves lay close
  Against their branches, as if sick and faint
  With the dull heat and needing strong support.
  The city walls, the stones of every street,
  The houses glow'd, you would have thought that none
  Would venture forth, till that the gracious night
  Should come with sable robe and wrap the earth
  In softest folds, and shade men from the day.
  But see, from every street the seething crowds
  Pour out, and all along the way they stand,
  And ribald jest and song resound aloud,
  And light accost and careless revelry:
  What means this, wherefore flock the people forth?
  Ceases the hum, a sudden silence falls
  On all around, the tramp of armed men
  Rings through the air; and hark, what further sound?
  A girl's fresh voice, a sad sweet song is heard
  Above the clank of arms, men hold their breath;
  Yet not all sadness is that wondrous chant,
  That hushes the wild crowd with sudden awe.
  As when the nightingale's mellifluous tones
  Rise in the woodland, ere the other birds         {667}
  Have ceased their vesper hymn, that moment drops
  Each fluttering songster's wild thanksgiving lay,
  So for awhile did silence fall on all
  Within the seething crowd at that sweet voice.
  She comes, they bring her forth to die, for she
  This day must win the martyr's palm, this day
  Must witness for her faith, this day must reap
  The fruit of all her pains, long rest in heaven!
  Long had they spared her, for the governor
  Was loth that she should suffer, and her race
  Was noble, so they hoped to make her yield,
  And waited still and waited; but at length
  They grew enraged at her calm steadfastness,
  They knew not whence a resolution such
  As made a young maid baffle aged men,
  So she must die.

            Now as she went along
  'Midst all her guards, again burst forth the mob
  Into such bitter taunts, such foul wild words,
  As sent the hot blood mantling to her cheek
  For shame that she, a maid, must hear such things;
  And yet was no remorse within their hearts,
  No light of pity in their savage eyes,
  Like hungry wolves that scent the blood from far
  They howled with joy, expectant of their prey.
  There was one there, he in old days had loved
  Her fair young face, but he too now, with scorn
  Written in his dark eyes and on his brow,
  And in the curl of his short lip, stood by;
  It 'seemed not such a face, that bitter smile,
  For he was passing fair, in youth's heyday;
  But if contemptuous was his mien, his words
  Were worse for her to bear, for he cried out—
  He, whom her heart yet own'd its only love!
  He, whom she held first of all living men!
  He, whom she honor'd yet, though left by him
  In her distress and danger!—this man cried,
  "Ho, Dorothea! doth the bridegroom wait?
  And goest thou to his arms? Joy go with thee!
  But yet when in his palace courts above,
  Whereof thou tellest, fair one, think on us
  Who toil in this sad world below; on me
  Think thou before all others, thine old love,
  And send me somewhat for a token, send
  Of that same heavenly fruit and of those flowers
  That fade not!"

                Then she turn'd and answer'd him,
  "As thou hast said, so be it, thy request
  Is granted!" and she pass'd on to her death.
  She died: her soul was rapt into the skies.
  The vulgar horde who watch'd her torture, knew
  Nought of the great unfathomable bliss                  {668}
  Which waited her, and when her spirit fled
  None saw the angel bands receive her, none
  Heard the long jubilant sweet sound that burst
  Through heaven's high gates, swept from ten thousand harps
  By seraph choirs, for she had died on earth
  Only to enter on the life above.
  Night fell upon the earth, the city lay
  Slumb'ring in cool repose, the restless sea,
  Weary with dancing all day 'neath the sun,
  Was hushed to sleep by the faint whisp'ring breeze
  That, wanting force to sport, but rose and fell
  With soothing murmur, like to pine boughs stirr'd
  By the north wind: sleep held men's eyelids close.
  And he, that youth, slept, aye, slept peacefully,
  Nor reck'd of the vile insult he had pour'd
  Upon the head of one whom once he swore
  To love beyond all others. As he lay,
  Wrapt in the dreamless slumber of young health,
  Sudden a light unearthly clear hath fill'd
  The chamber, and he starts up from his couch,
  Gazing in troubled wonder: by his side
  What sees he?

                    A young boy he deems him first,
  But when had mortal such a calm pure smile
  Since our first father lost his purity?
  A radiant angel, rather, should he be,
  Who stands all glorious, bearing in his hands
  Such fruit and flowers as surely never grew
  On this dull earth; their fragrance fill'd the air,
  And smote the senses of Theophilus,
  That a sad yearning rose within his heart,
  Such as at times a strain of song will raise,
  Or some chance word will bring (we know not why),
  Flooding the inmost soul with that strange sense,
  Half pain, half pleasure, of some bygone time—
  Some far off and forgotten happiness,
  We know not where nor what.

                    The stranger spoke,
  And thus he said, "Rise up, Theophilus!
  And take these gifts which I from heaven bring.
  Fair Dorothea, mindful of her words,
  Hath sent thee these, and bids thee that henceforth
  Thou scoff not, but believe!"

                    With those same words
  Vanish'd the cherub, and the room was dark,
  Save where the moonbeams made uncertain light,
  And where remain'd those blossoms and that fruit,
  For from each leaf and stem there stream'd a ray
  As of the morning.

                    Down upon his couch
  Theophilus sank prone, with awe oppress'd;                {669}
  But for a moment. Starting wildly up,
  He cried, "My love, my Dorothea, list!
  If thou canst hear me in those starry halls
  Where now thou dwellest, I accept thy gift.
  Do thou take mine, for I do give myself
  Up to the service of thy Lord; thy faith
  Shall from this hour be mine, for I believe!"

Translated from Der Katholik.

THE TWO SIDES OF CATHOLICISM.

[Second Article.]

I. THE PROBLEM.

"Neither," says Jesus Christ, "do they put new wine into old bottles; otherwise the bottles break, and the wine runneth out." The parable teaches that the new spirit of Christianity requires a new form, corresponding to its essence. The essence and the form of Christianity are, therefore, intimately connected.

What is thus generally enunciated in regard to the essential connection of the spirit of Christianity with the forms of its expression, is equally true of the mutual relations subsisting between the substance and the manifestation of the Church. Christianity and the Church are virtually identical. The former, considered as a source of union and brotherhood, constitutes the Church, In a former article we have recognized Catholicism as the type of the Church Founded by Christ. Hence the interdependence of the essence with the form of Christianity in general is not more thorough than that of the spirit of the Church with the historical development of Catholicism.

These remarks will be found to designate the object of the present essay. An inquiry into the fundamental principle of Catholicism must address itself to the elucidation of the cause of the necessary connection between the spirit and the outer shape of the Church just mentioned. The direction in which the light is to be sought appears by the parable cited above.

The new wine requires new bottles, because they only correspond with its nature. By the same induction it is affirmed that if the true Church is realized only in the form of Catholicism, the reason is to be found in the inmost nature of the Church, in the catholicity of her spirit.

This idea of the inherent catholicity of the Church, as well as the foregoing assertion of a necessary inter-dependence of the essence with the image of Catholicism, is to be established on scriptural authority by the following disquisition.

II. THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH.

The shape and form in which Catholicism appears in history has its root in the papacy. It is certainly deserving of attention, that precisely in the institution of the papacy the Church is designated by a name which affords an insight into her inmost nature.

On that occasion the Church—meaning the Church as apparent in history—is called the kingdom of heaven. [Footnote 146] The Lord says to Peter, "I will give {670} unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven;" a promise substantially the same with that given in the same breath to the same apostle, though under a different metaphor, when Jesus calls him the rock upon which he will build his Church. The primate is the subject of both predictions. The apostle Peter is to be the foundation of the Church, and he is to receive the keys of the same edifice, that is to say, he is to be the master of the house.

[Footnote 146: Matt. xvi. 18, 19. ]

That the epithet of "kingdom of heaven" expresses the essential character of the Church, is easily shown by a glance at the passages of Scripture in which the Church is mentioned. Such is always the case where the kingdom of God or of heaven is represented as in course of realization on earth. In this respect the parables of Jesus are especially significant. They address themselves principally to the spirit, the organization, and the most essential peculiarities of the new order of things which Jesus Christ had come into the world to establish. In these discourses the new foundation is constantly brought forward as the kingdom of God or of heaven. Thus we cannot but recognize in this expression a designation of the inner essence of the institution of Jesus.

At a time when his destined kingdom had not yet become historically manifest, Jesus might still say, in the same acceptation of the term, that it was already present, and palpable to all who sought to grasp it. This actual presence of the kingdom is deduced by the Lord from the efficacy of his miracles. In them the vital principle of Catholicism was already at work. It had entered the world at the same instant with the person of the Son of Man. But not until after Christ was exalted did it assume a historical palpability. No less does the declaration of Jesus, that from the days of John the Baptist the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, display Catholicism as a power even before it came to figure in history. For this very forwardness with which even then the violent took it by force, was a product of the Christ-like power which had entered humanity simultaneously with the person of the Messiah. And where the Jews are called sons of the kingdom, it is likewise in reference to this elementary principle of Catholicism. It had been planted in the first instance on the historical soil of Judaism, thence, of course, to spread its benign influence over the earth, and thus to make historically manifest the vital substance of the Church in its only adequate expression. "Many shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom." On the other hand, the kingdom shall be taken from the Jews, because they have made it unfruitful.

No Christian sermon should omit to give this inner view of Catholicism, or of the advent of the kingdom. Therein lies its peculiar force. The preacher of the gospel has no more effective word of consolation for the pious souls who give him a ready hearing, than the assurance that the kingdom of God has come nigh unto them. In this word, also, the apostle of Christ has his most potent weapon against the assailants of the Church. If they receive you not, says the Lord unto his disciples, go your ways out into the streets of the same city, and say, Even the very dust of your city, which cleaveth on us, we do wipe off against you; yet know this, that the kingdom of God is at hand. The invincibility of Catholicism grows out of the power of its principle. As of old in enabling the apostles to heal the sick, so at the present day in her varied fortunes the Church approves herself the kingdom of God.

But how is the interior of the Church related to the exterior? The word of the kingdom is the seed of Catholicism. According to the quality of the hearers of the word, the growing grain is fruitful or empty, the members genuine or spurious. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like to a net, cast into the sea, and gathering together all kind of fishes. The kingdom of the Son of Man is not without scandals, and them that work {671} iniquity. [Footnote 147] Hence the kingdom of God on earth embraces the entire Church in her temporal existence. The latter is shown to be a kingdom of long-suffering, in preserving her connection even with ingredients estranged from her in spirit, leaving the ultimate separation of the false members to the final judgment. Even these erring ones carry on their souls the impress of the kingdom, the signature of baptism. Nevertheless their adhesion to the kingdom is external and objective merely. In the more accurate sense of the word, the idea of the kingdom applies only to the marrow, the soul of the Church. The good seed only are the real children of the kingdom.

[Footnote 147: Matt. xiii. 41.]

This account of the formation of the kingdom of God explains how the essence of the true Church becomes a historical reality in the actual condition of Catholicism, notwithstanding its imperfections. The position, therefore, that the spirit of the Church is inseparable from her temporal existence by no means denies that this historical exterior of Catholicism may be infected with elements having nothing in common with, and even hostile to, the character of the true Church. This results from the fact that the true Church, though always preserving a unitary organization, realizes herself by degrees only. The form of Catholicism is gradually purified and disclosed by the sanctifying virtue of its inner life. Thus it is that parasites take root in the soil of the Church.

It is therefore a shifting of the real issue when Mr. Hase defines the Catholic antagonism to the ideal Church of Protestantism as consisting in a notion of Catholicism that in all essential attributes there is a perfect congruity between the idea of the Church and the concrete Church of Rome; or in other words, that the latter Church is at all tunes the perfect type of Christianity. Two distinct things are here confounded. The position of Catholicism—that the essence of the true Church, so far as realized at all, exists only within the Catholic Church, where alone, therefore, a further development of this essence can be accomplished or the ideal of the Church attained—is by no means equivalent to the pretension, attributed to Catholicism by Hase, that Catholicism has already attained the ideal, or that it is at all times the most perfect representation of Christianity. After this misrepresentation of the position of Catholicism, Hase has no difficulty in distorting the well-known Catholic doctrine that sinners also belong to the Church into an unconscious acknowledgment of the ideal Church of Protestantism.

While the toleration of spurious members is a mandate of the educational mission of the Church, it involves, moreover, a special dispensation of Divine Providence. Like her divine principle, the Church appears as a servant among men. The beauty of her inner life is veiled beneath an exterior covered with manifold imperfections. This serves as a constant admonition to the Church not to rely upon externals. Yet even these shadows on the image of the Church are evidences of her vitality. How superhuman must be an organization which outlasts all enemies in spite of many deficiencies! It is error, therefore, to infer from the undeniable, practical incongruity between the essence of the Church and her outward form that there cannot be an exclusive, concrete realization of the true Church in history.

To make the growth of Catholicism intelligible to his hearers, Jesus compares the kingdom of heaven with a grain of mustard, which unfolds the least of all seeds to a stately tree. Immediately thereafter it is said that the kingdom of heaven penetrates the mass of humanity like leaven. The law of development of Catholicism is further illustrated by the following parable: The earth, says Jesus, bringeth forth fruit; first the blade, then the ear, afterward the full corn in the ear; man has but to cast the seed into the earth; then he may sleep, and the seed shall {672} spring and grow up, he knoweth not how. Even so is the kingdom of God. The Church therefore carries the germs of her growth in her inmost nature. Catholicism is gradually developed out of itself, from within. Thanks to the energy of her own principle, the Church with her arms encircles nation after nation. The faculty of being all things unto all men she owes to her being the kingdom of God. Here is the root of Catholicism. As the kingdom of God, the Church is fraught with a wealth adequate to the mental requirements of all individuals and all nations. As the kingdom of God, the Church is adapted to every age and clime.

The word "Church" is used by Jesus Christ far more rarely than that of the "kingdom of heaven;" indeed but twice, and on each occasion in direct reference to the external form of the Church.

That this historical exterior of Catholicism, designated the Church, is the manifestation of the kingdom of God, We have already deduced from Matt. xvi. 18, 19, and xiii. 41. The same truth is expressed in the parable of the treasure hid in the field. He who would possess the treasure, that is to say, the kingdom of heaven, or the vital principle of Catholicism, must buy the field in which the gem is concealed. The field, the Catholic exterior of the Church, is not the inner life; but the latter is realized only in the historical form of Catholicism.

It now behooves us to more precisely expound this relation between the spirit and the outer form of the Church from the words of Jesus. The way to do this is indicated by our Lord himself. It consists in an extended analysis of the biblical idea of the kingdom of God. In it is disclosed the inmost nature of the Church and thereby the ultimate origin of her historical figure as instituted by Christ, or the principle of Catholicism, which is the object of our search.

My kingdom, says the Lord, is not of this world; that is to say, its origin is not here, and it is not established by the exercise of worldly power. Regnum meum non est hinc. True, the kingdom of Christ is established in the midst of the world, but it was not generated there: from above, from heaven, it was planted in the world as a supernatural realm of grace. Therefore its existence and its extension is in no wise dependent on worldly power; its foundations lie deeper, in the principle of truth which has entered the world with Christ. For this cause came he into the world, that he should bear witness unto the truth. All they that are of the truth, do him homage as their king, and hear his kingly voice. The same principle works in them as that of a new worship; they worship the Father in spirit and in truth.

But this elevated sense of truth in individual souls is the fruit of a higher form of being. He that is of God heareth the words of God; but they hear them not who are not of God. The entrance into the kingdom of God therefore necessarily presupposes a new beginning of man's life, a new birth of water and of the Spirit. Wherever the kingdom of God obtains a foothold, it assumes the form of an entirely new state of things, of a new creation, of the principle of a new mental activity, a new nature of the spirit.

A transmutation of our souls, such as just described, necessarily involves a rupture with the natural man, a discarding of the original individuality. Without this alteration we are impervious to the new light which is to enter our souls together with the kingdom of God. This indispensable self-denial is accomplished by a two-fold instrumentality—by the love of God, which is the first commandment, and by the love of our neighbor as ourselves. Whoever is in this frame of mind is pronounced by Jesus to be not far from the kingdom of God.

What has been said reveals another peculiarity of the kingdom of God on earth. It is a supernatural kingdom. At this point only do we fully comprehend the title of the Church to {673} the designation of the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of God historically manifested in the Church is intimately connected with the intro-divine relations or the inmost life of the Deity. By admission into the Church God the Father translates us into the kingdom of his beloved Son. This is not merely an exercise of the creative love common to the three persons of the Trinity. On the contrary, it is an evidence what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called the sons of God. Precisely in this is the peculiar supernatural character of this dispensation made manifest. It is this supernatural characteristic of the Church which accounts for the bestowal upon the Church of the name of the coming realm of glory. The germ of the latter is already contained in the existing Church. While, for this reason, the Church visible is called the kingdom of heaven, so the latter continues to bear the name of the Church even in the splendor of its eternal glory. This circumstance warrants the bold utterance of the apostle that our conversation is in heaven. In the same sense it is laid down in the catechism of the council of Trent that the Church militant and the Church triumphant are but two parts of the one Church, not two churches; and with entire consistency the same authority speaks of the Church militant as synonymous with the kingdom of heaven.

It is but another expression for the supernatural character of the Church if she is called the Jerusalem which is above, even in her historical form and figure. And precisely because this epithet applies to her, she is free and is our mother. The catholicity of the Church, her faculty of enfolding all mankind, of being the spiritual mother of us all, is owing to her supernatural character.

This doctrine of the supernaturalness of the Church is the connecting link between the essence and the form of Catholicism. As the latter is supernatural in its character, so must the form of its establishment bear a supernatural impress. How can anything utterly supernatural attain an adequate form of expression by mere natural development? It assumes a historical reality in so far only as it assumes simultaneously with its supernatural essence a corresponding supernatural image. The form as well as the substance of the Church must needs be the fruit of an immediate interposition of God, because the substance must needs exercise its supernatural functions.

The idea just expressed may have been dimly present to the mind of Moehler when he wrote: "But it is the conviction of Catholics that this purpose of the divine revelation in Christ Jesus would not have been attained at all, or at least would have been attained but very imperfectly, if this embodiment of the truth had been but momentary, and if the personal manifestation of the Word had not been sufficiently powerful to give its tones the highest degree of intensified animation, and the most perfect conceivable efficacy, that is to say, to breathe into it the breath of life, and to create a union once more setting forth the truth in its vitality, and remaining emblematically the conclusive authority for all time, or, in other words, representing Christ himself."

Viewed in this light, the historical manifestation of the Church, instituted Matt. xvi. 18, 19, presents itself as a postulate of her essence. Because the Church was essentially destined historically to manifest the kingdom of God, the Lord built her upon Peter, the rock. A temporal establishment of the kingdom of heaven in the midst of this world required the divine installation of an individual keeper of the keys. Thus the idea of the papacy flows from that of a kingdom of God on earth.

If, then, this explanation presents Catholicism as a supernatural kingdom, and if this very attribute constitutes the characteristic feature of its being, its inmost life and fundamental {674} principle, it is manifestly inadmissible to place the kingdom of God as established in the Church on the same footing with the works of creation. A juxtaposition like this would entirely ignore the vital essence of the Church, that is to say, her superiority to nature.

The same distinction is overlooked by those who regard Church and state as simply two manifestations of the same kingdom of God. Such is the point of view of a system of moral theology, the influence of which upon the opinions prevailing among a considerable fraction of the present generation of theologians is not to be mistaken. In the eye of that doctrine "Mosaism and Christianism—state and Church—both externally represent the kingdom, and both represent one and the same kingdom; the former [the state] rather in its negative, the latter [the Church] rather in its positive aspect. And thus we have two great formations in which the kingdom on earth is made manifest, Church and state." Could Hirscher have reached any other conclusion? He regards it as his task "to dispose of the question whether the germs of the divine kingdom, like seeds, are implanted in the character of man as in a fruitful soil, and whether they can spring forth from it [i.e., from the character or nature of man himself] and blossom as the kingdom of God."

Although it is here said that "God abode in man with his Holy Spirit and with its sanctifying grace," yet the Holy Spirit or his grace is not made the foundation upon which the kingdom is erected; that foundation is sought, on the contrary, in the "divine powers" infused into man at his creation. God only assists at the upraising of the kingdom through them by "dwelling in them for ever as the principle of divine guidance."

The logical inference from these premises, which seek the germs of the kingdom of God as established on earth in human nature itself, that is to say, in the "heavenly faculties" inherent in man, is well disclosed in the definition of the kingdom of God on earth given by Petersen, a theologian reared in the school of Schleiermacher. "The kingdom of God on earth," says he, "is at once Church, state, and civilization, i.e., it is an organism of community in religion, morals, and society, and by these three special organisms it essentially approaches, develops, and perfects its organic unity, in organizing its religious principle in the Church, its moral framework in the state, and its natural base in civilization, thus in the unity of all three rounding its proportions as a universal organism of genuine humanity." If "the germs of the divine kingdom, like seeds, are implanted in the character of man as in a fruitful soil," it is entirely consistent to regard the kingdom of God on earth as "substantially identical with the idea of the human race," as "the realization of that idea."

It gives us pleasure to state that the notion of the kingdom of God on earth just alluded to has been declared unscriptural even in a Protestant exegesis of greater thoroughness. [Footnote 148]

[Footnote 148: Hofman, Schriftbeweis, 1855. ]

III. THE BODY OF CHRIST.

Next to the idea of the kingdom of God, the most significant expression for the inner essence of Catholicism is found in the scriptural conception of the body of Christ. As his body, the Church is intimately connected with him. Christ and the Church belong together as the head and the body; both constitute a single whole. This intimate relation between Christ and the Church is described by the Scriptures in animated terms. The Church, it says, is for Christ what our own body is for us; as members of the Church we are members of the body of Christ, of his flesh, and of his bones. On one occasion, indeed, the apostle uses the word Christ as synonymous with the Church, so intimate is their relation.

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And it is the Son of Man, or Christ in his human capacity, as whose body the Church is regarded. For as the head thereof the apostle designates him who was raised from the dead. The Church here enters into a profoundly intimate relation to the sacred humanity of Christ. We shall seek further profit from this idea in the sequel.

Immediately after having called the Church the body of Christ, he calls her the . This epithet results from the foregoing. It is because she is the body of Christ that the Church is the . I translate these difficult words, the fulness of him who filleth all in all. God who filleth all things with his essential presence, in whom we live, and move, and have our being, hath his fulness in the Church. The Church is entirely filled with God. But how? Is not God, in his very nature, present everywhere? How then can the Church be filled with God in a greater degree than the world without? As the body of Christ, she has this capacity. For if the Church, as Christ's body, assumes a special relation, peculiar to herself, to his sacred humanity, then, by that very assumption, she acquires a share in the of the Deity which dwells bodily in that sacred humanity. She thereby becomes the spot where God is especially revealed and glorified. For while God, in the fulness of his nature, is present over all the world, nevertheless this presence is more largely apparent in the Church than elsewhere. By the Church alone the manifold wisdom of God is known unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places. In him is glory in the Church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Thus she stands approved as his pleroma, as entirely filled with God.

But how are we to understand this repletion of the Church with God? It is well known that Moehler sees in the visible Church the "Son of God continually appearing among men in human form, constantly re-creating, eternally rejuvenating himself, his perpetual incarnation." In this sense he apprehends the scriptural conception of the body of Christ, the "interpretation of the divine and the human in the Church." This proposition, which has become celebrated, was intended, in the first instance, to afford a more profound insight into the visibility of the Church, in addition to which it is inseparable from Moehler's views on the subject of the means of grace. In this twofold light we must make it the subject of examination.

Moehler goes on to argue that, if the Church is a continuance of the incarnation, she must be, like the latter, a visible one. This can mean no more than that even as the Son of God during his stay upon earth wrought visibly for mankind in the flesh, so also the saving efficacy of Christ, abiding after his departure from the earth, requires a visible medium. Such a point, however, Protestantism is far from disputing. In the separate congregations, in their visible means of grace, and in the audible exposition of the word of God, even Protestants admit that the efficacy of Christ is visibly perpetuated, and the idea of Christianity and the Church gradually realized. Every Protestant denomination aspires to be the palpable image, the living presentment, of the Christian religion. Moehler's conception of the Son of God continually appearing among men in human form has even become a favorite theme of modern Protestant theology. This will appear from the mere perusal of the disquisitions on this head of the so-called Christological school. The advantage gained for the Catholic interpretation amounts to nothing. For the point is not that the efficacy of Christ is perpetually exercised among men in a visible manner, but it is in question whether this continued exercise ensues only in the fold of a particular institution, and by particular means of grace.

Moehler arrived at his doctrine in {676} reference to the Church through the medium of his views regarding the means of grace. In his opinion "the Eucharistic descent of the Son of God" (and the same must be inferred to apply to all the means of grace which it is the function of the Church to administer [Footnote 149]) "is a part of the totality of his merit, wherewith we are redeemed." The sacramental offering of Christ is "the conclusion of his great sacrifice for us," and in it "all the other parts of the same sacrifice are to be bestowed upon us; in this final portion of the objective offering, the whole is to become subjective, a part of our individual being." But the incarnation of God, or, in other words, the work of our salvation accomplished by Christ during his walk upon earth, stands in need of no continuation or completion by a posthumous labor of Christ, constituting "a part of the totality of his merit, wherewith we are redeemed." The perpetual condescension of Christ, administered by the Church, to our helplessness, does not form a complement to the objective work of salvation; it is not an integral part of it, but only its continued application. "Christus" says Suarez, "jam vero nos non redimit, sed applicat nobis redemptionem suam" [Footnote 150] If this work of redemption were even now in progress—that is to say, if "the Eucharistic descent of the Son of God" were "a part of the totality of his merits, wherewith we are redeemed," then Christ would not have fully taken away the sin of the world once for all on Golgotha. Who would maintain such a proposition? Moehler would be the last man to do so. He would therefore undoubtedly have renounced the opinion in question if these, its logical results, had presented themselves to his mind. The sacramental offering of Christ, as indeed the whole of his perennial saving efficacy in the sacraments of the Church, wherewith we are saved, is only the means by which it is applied to our salvation. The ground of salvation for all mankind was perfected in the sufferings and death of Christ. The realization of salvation for individuals is accomplished by their appropriating to themselves the salvation purchased or achieved for all mankind by the precious blood of Jesus Christ; a work in which, undoubtedly, Christ himself co-operates as the head of the Church.

[Footnote 149: For, according to St. Thomas, "the Eucharist is the perfectio omnis sacramenti, habens quasi in capitulo et summo omnia, quae alia sacramenta continent singillatim; the perfection of the whole sacrament, having as it were in an epitome and a summary all the virtues which, other sacraments contain singly."—IV. Sent. a. 8. q. 1, a. 2, solut. 2 ad. 4.]

[Footnote 150: At present Christ does not redeem us, but applies to us his redemption. De Incarnat., Par. I., Disp. 39, Sec. 3.]

In this sense the apostle says that he fills up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ in his flesh. By faithfully following Christ, we partake more and more of the fruits of redemption. Thus is Christ likewise gradually fulfilled in the individual Christians—that is to say, he finds in them a more and more ample expression. And in the same degree in which Christ stamps himself upon the single members of the Church, the latter also is more and more filled with him.

Scarce has the apostle declared of Christ, in Col. ii. 9, that in him dwelleth all the of the Godhead corporally, when he turns to the Colossians with the words, "And you are filled in" God—that is to say, "in him," i.e. in Christ, in so far as ye stand in communion with him, "which is the head of all principality and power." This communion of individuals with Christ, and their attendant participation in the fulness of the Godhead which dwelleth in him, is accomplished by the instrumentality of the Church, particularly by the sacrament of baptism, which incorporates the individual with the Church. Verse 10-12: "Et estis in illo repleti. In quo et circumcisi estis, circumcisione non manu facta, sed in circumcisione Christi, consepulti ei in baptismo."

Thus the Church is seen to be the pleroma of the Godhead in a twofold {677} point of view. First, in her members, which, being gradually filled with God, become partakers of the divine nature. In the second place, in the active cooperation of the Church herself in the performance of this work.

In the first regard, the repletion of the Church with God is not a state attained once for all. It is rather a process of measured growth . The measure of the age of the fulness of Christ is the goal and the objective point of the entire development of the Church. It will be attained when every individual shall have become complete in Christ, and therewith also in his own person a pleroma of Christ. In the edifying of the body of Christ, or in the establishment of the Church, therefore, we must work without repose till we all meet in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God. In this sense only can it be said that there is a progress in the Church. This continued development of Catholicism the apostle regards as a gradual repletion of the single members of the Church with all the fulness of God,

We have as yet, however, come to know but the one phase of this relation of the Church to Christ, or to the pleroma of the Godhead. The Church is not only destined to present herself at the close of her historical development as the pleroma of him that filleth all in all; she is even now entitled to this attribute, by virtue of her essential character.

On this head we derive instruction from a nearer contemplation of the process of development in which the erection of the Church is completed. "The whole body," says the apostle, meaning the body of Christ himself, "maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in charity." The Church therefore carries within herself, in the inmost recesses of her being, the principle and the germinal power of her whole development. This fundamental principle of Catholicism is Christ himself, who pervades the Church as his body.

There is a subjective and an objective repletion of the Church with Christ. The former progresses gradually, in so far as the single members of the Church assimilate themselves more and more to Christ. The latter is a given state of things from the first. In it consists the most subtle essence of the Church. This objective presence of Christ in her approves itself as the vital power of her growth. The gradual ripening of the Church therefore grows up into Christ ( , Eph. iv. 15) on the one hand, and proceeds from him ( ) on the other. From him—that is to say, by means of the vivifying influence of the Son of God, present in the Church, she maketh increase of herself unto the edifying of herself in charity.

It is the same idea, when the apostle characterizes the growth of the Church as an , an augmentum Dei, i.e., a growth emanating from God. God effects it, but by the instrumentality of the Church, within her and as issuing from her. For this purpose God hath installed her as his pleroma. Precisely because the Church is filled with God, or is his pleroma, the members of the Church may gradually become complete in him. Thus there is a development and a progress only for the individual members of the Church. She herself, by virtue of her essential character, is superior to development, and acts as the impelling force of this development. Christianity has a history, but it is not itself a history. The essence of Christianity, which is that of the Church, is not a thing in process of formation, it is a thing accomplished and perfect from the beginning.

The scriptural idea of the body of Christ presents the principle of Catholicism in a new light. The Church alone has Christ for her head. It is her exclusive privilege to be the body of Christ. This gives her a fellowship of life with Christ, by which she is distinguished from the world, the {678} latter sustaining to him no relation but that of subjection and dependence. But upon what rests this privilege of the Church? Why is she alone the body of Christ, the pleroma of the God-head?

Christology must supply the fundamental reason. According to the Catholic dogma of the person of Christ, he filleth the universe only by virtue of his Godhead. With his life as the Son of Man he filleth only the Church, his body. But how much more largely does God reveal himself by his personal inhabitation of the sacred humanity of Christ than by the creative power wherewith he penetrateth and filleth all in all! Here a single ray, a faint reflection of his glory, flutters through the veil of created nature, there the fulness of the Godhead dwelleth bodily.

The idea of Catholicism, therefore, coincides with that of fulness. As the pleroma of him who filleth all in all, the Church harbors in her bosom a treasure, the richness of which is inexhaustible. Every created thing, every single period, every particular phase of the culture of the human mind, has some good attribute. Yet this attribute is a mere special advantage, a peculiar quality, a feeble reflex of the chief good, a single ray of the shining sea of goodness inclosed in the unfathomable abyss of the divine essence, of the fulness of the Godhead. The completeness of the revelation of God's goodness is found only in the sacred humanity of Christ, and therefore in the Church. Hence the Church is the highest good that is to be found on earth. Let the productions of the human mind, at a given stage of its development, be ever so glorious and sublime, they can never supplant the pleroma of the Church. Her wealth is fraught with all the possible results of the human intellect and imagination; and these, in the fulness of the Church, are intensified, raised, as it were, to a higher power of goodness. Every production of the human mind is more or less in danger of falling short of the requirements of later ages. The metal of all such fabrics needs to be recast from time to time, as forms and fashions change. In default of this, it gradually degenerates into mere antiquity, or, in the most fortunate event, it preserves only the character of an honored relic. From this fate of all that comes into existence the Church is exempt. She alone is ever young, and always on a level with the times. This qualifies her to be the teacher of the world from age to age. Hence, also, she is enabled to minister an appropriate remedy for the disease of every generation. How, then, can a movement which makes war on the Church claim to be an advance of the human mind in the right direction? The interests of true civilization will never interfere with those of the Church.

As well that the Church is the body of Christ as that in her is the fulness of him who filleth all in all—both of these attributes adhere to her in virtue of her divine foundation. Thus Catholicism, whose fundamental principle we have contemplated in this twofold scriptural aspect, is not the product of the combination of any external circumstances. It is grounded in the very idea of the Church, in the inmost depths of her being. Therefore she remains the Catholic Church in every vicissitude of her external condition, whether in the splendor of princely honors, or under the crushing weight of Neronic persecution.

If, then, Catholicism is of the essence of the Church, the momentous conclusion is irresistible, that the true Church is capable of realization in such an image only as enables her to present herself in her essential feature of catholicity. It follows that the papacy, as necessary to the Catholic manifestation of the Church, is imperatively demanded by the law of her being.

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From Once a Week.

THE CATHEDRAL LIBRARY.

It is now between forty and fifty years ago that I obtained leave from the dean and chapter of Winterbury Cathedral to read for some weeks in their cathedral library. The editions of the fathers and of some important middle-age writers which are preserved in that quiet library boast of peculiar excellence, and I well remember the exultation with which I, then a very young man, received news of the desired information to ransack those treasures. Having secured a small lodging in the close, or cathedral enclosure, I set out for Winterbury early in the year 182-. Through the kindness of one of the canons, who seldom had to consult the library on his own account, I was provided with a key to the library buildings, and allowed to keep undisturbed possession of it as long as my visit lasted. This key gave access not only to the library, but to all parts of the cathedral likewise, including even the cloisters, so that I was able to let myself in and out of the noble edifice at all hours of the day or night, and to ramble unchallenged through aisle, crypt, stalls, triforium, and organ-loft.

I have never forgotten, and shall never forget, the day on which I first took my seat in the room which was to be the special scene of my labors. The library lay on the south side of the cathedral, being a lower continuation of the south transept, and forming one side of the cloister court. It was obviously, therefore, raised above the height of the cloister vaulting, and it was reached by a flight of stairs opening into the cathedral itself. Narrowness (it measured about eighty feet by thirty), and a certain antique collegiate air (and smell, too, to be perfectly accurate) about the bindings of the books and the coverings of the chairs, were its chief characteristics. There was a bust of Cicero at one end, and of Seneca at the other. Some smaller busts of the principal Greek fathers adorned the side-shelves, and a dingy portrait of the "judicious" Hooker abode in a musty frame over the heavy stone mantelpiece. The fender itself was of stone, or rather the fireplace was not protected by a fender at all, but by a small stone wall, about three inches thick and six inches high, which afforded blissful repose to the outstretched foot.

One April evening, shortly after sunset, when there was still daylight enough to read the titles on the backs of books, I walked across the close in order to fetch and bring away with me a couple of volumes of which I stood in need. It was an hour when the grand old cathedral is accustomed to put on its very best appearance. The heaven-kissing spire and the far lower, but beautiful, western towers are tinted with the faint rose color which suits old stonework so admirably; and the deep gloom of the cloisters, tempered by the glow from the noble piles of masonry overhead, makes it possible and easy to realize some of the rapturous visions of the recluse. I passed as usual down the nave, and having ascended the little staircase, let myself into the library, and was on the point of attacking the necessary bookshelf, when instead of placing the key in my pocket, as it was my habit to do, I tossed it carelessly on to the sill of an adjoining window. The woodwork of the library was by no means in a sound condition, and between the inner edge of the sill and the wall there was a wide chink, opening down into unseen depths of distance. Into this chink, impelled by my evil genius, or by one of the ghostly beings that (as {680} I was assured by the verger) haunt the library and cloisters, down tumbled my unlucky key. I saw it disappear with a sharp twinge of vexation, principally, however, at the thought of the time and trouble that would be consumed in bringing it to light again. To-morrow, I said to myself, I shall be forced to get a carpenter to remove this sill, and rake up the key from heaven knows where; while smirking Mr. Screens, the verger, will watch the whole proceeding, and insinuate with silent suavity a doubt whether I am a fit person to be entrusted with Canon Doolittle's key. It was not until I had come down from the short ladder with the books under my arm, and, warned by the deepening shades, was about to leave the library, that the full effect of the key's disappearance presented itself to my mind. The outer gate and inner door of the nave had been carefully shut by me, according to custom, on entering the cathedral. All the gates and doors were fitted with a spring-lock, so that without my key I was double-locked into the building. My first thought was one of amusement, and I fairly laughed aloud at my own perplexity. It seemed an impossible and inconceivable thing that one might really have to pass the entire night in this situation. Presently I left the library, the door of which I had not shut on entering, and went down the staircase into the transept, and then into the nave. I carefully tried the inner door, but without effect. I had done my duty on entering, and it was hopelessly and mercilessly fastened against me. Resolved on maintaining unbroken self-possession, I returned to the library. It was now quite dark, the only light being that reflected from the shafts of the cloisters, on which the moonbeams were now beginning to fall. I sat down in a large arm-chair which stood at one end of the library table, and thought over all the possible means of extricating myself from an unexpected durance. Should I go up to the belfry in the north-western tower and toll one of the bells until the verger, roused from his first sleep, should come to see what was the matter? but even this I could not do without the key, which would be required to open the door at the entrance of the tower. Or should I make my way into the organ-loft, and filling the bellows quite full, strike a succession of loud chords, until the music might attract the attention of some passer-by? this might be done, but it would be a perilous experiment. Half Winterbury would be seized with the belief that their old cathedral was haunted. The organ-loft would be invaded by vergers, beadles, and constables—there were no blue-coated police in those days— and I should move about the ancient city ever after with the stigma of a madcap on my head. People would nod knowingly to one another as I passed, and significantly tap their foreheads, by way of hinting that I was "a little touched." Canon Doolittle would recall his key, and abstain from inviting me to his hospitable table. Gradually, therefore, I gave up the scheme of saving myself by means of the organ; and the belfry being already set aside, no other resource remained but to stay where I was, and quietly to pass the hours as best I could until Mr. Screens should open the doors at about half-past six in the morning, ready for the seven o'clock prayers in the Lady chapel.

I was luckily undisturbed by any fears arising from the possible anxiety of my landlady. Winterbury is near the sea; and I had on more than one occasion spent the greater part of the night on the cliffs, watching the glorious moonlit effects upon the romantic coast scenery of that district. These Mrs. Jollisole was accustomed to call my "coast-guard nights;" and I made no doubt that, should I fail to appear, the sensible old lady would go contentedly to bed, supposing me to have mounted guard on the cliffs.

I therefore lost no time in composing myself, if not to sleep, at any rate to an attempt at sleep. The library table was always surrounded by an {681} array of solemn old oak chairs, padded with cushions of yellowish leather, and looking as though—if their own opinion were consulted—no mortal man of lower degree than a prebendary should ever be allowed to seat himself upon them. At each end of the table there was a chair of a superior order—a couple of deans, as it were, keeping high state amidst the surrounding canons. These chairs were made of precisely the same kind of oak, and covered with leather of exactly the same yellowish tinge as the others, but their whole design was larger and more imposing, and what was of the most consequence to me in my present position—they were arm-chairs, affording opportunity for all manner of easy and sleep-inviting postures. Throwing myself into one of these dignified receptacles, I soon fell asleep, and soon afterward took to dreaming.

Leaning in my dream on the sill of the library window, I fancied myself to be gazing down into a peaceful church-yard. One by one, like gleams of moonlight in the dark shade of the surrounding cloisters, I saw a number of young girls assemble, and fall with easy exactitude into rank, as if about to take part in a procession. Each slender figure was draped in the purest white muslin, with a veil of the same material arranged over the head, and partially concealing the face. Just as one sees at the present day in Roman Catholic churches at the more important fêtes, the procession was arranged according to the gradations of height. The very young children were in the front, and as the other end of the line was approached, the pretty white figures grew gradually taller, until girls of eighteen or nineteen brought up the rear. They presently began to move, and it was clear that they were about to take part in some solemn office for the dead. With two priests at their head, they made the circuit of the cloisters, moving along with graceful regularity of step. Between each pair of the slender columns of the cloister building, I imagined that a small stone basin (or "benitier") was set, standing on a low pedestal, and filled with holy water. Each girl walking on the side next to these basins was furnished with a small broom of feathers, like those which may at any time be seen in the Continental churches. Dipping these brooms from time to time into the basins of water, they waved them in beautiful harmony with their own harmonious movements, sprinkling the ancient monumental slabs over which they were stepping. They sang to a strain of rare melody the familiar words of Requiem AEternam.

Presently they seemed to change time and tune, and to sing a hymn of many verses, each verse ending with a refrain. A single voice would give the verse, but all joined together in the plaintive music of the refrain:

  "Through life's long day and death's dark night,
  O gentle Jesus! be our light!"

I have heard much music, secular and sacred, since then; but I know of no musical effect which abides with me so constantly as that imagined chanting of young voices heard long ago.

One girl in particular attracted my attention as I dreamt. She was one of the pair who closed the procession, and was of a commanding height and extremely elegant figure. She had, as it seemed to me, taken excessive precaution in drawing her ample veil closely around her head and face,

* * * *

On a sudden I awoke. There, in one of the decanal arm-chairs, I was sitting—in an easy, familiar posture, as if I had been myself a dean— and there beside me, close at hand, within reach of my outstretched arm, was a tall figure in white, clearly a female form, and the precaution had been taken of drawing an ample veil closely around the head and face. Any one but an imbecile would have acted as I did, though I remember taking some credit to myself at the time for my coolness and presence of mind. I simply sat still and stared; and by degrees I observed, I conned. Years before, in my boyhood, I had walked a good {682} deal on the stretch; and I had known what it was in North Devon to wake up "upon the middle of the night," to feel the hard, unyielding turf underneath one's back, and see and gaze, gaze wistfully upon the bright unanswering stars above one's head. Even then one could divine the true value of a bed. But to wake on the downs in the small hours is a trifle compared with waking in a cathedral any time between dew and dawn. More especially when, as was my case, you have a ghost at your elbow. Not that my ghost remained long stationary. She did not. Starting from my arm-chair, she began a survey of the shelves by moonlight in so active and business-like a manner that I felt no doubt, given her quondam or present mortality, she was or had been a "blue." In five minutes, my powers of decision were wide awake, and the question of her mortality was settled. She was not a thing of the past, but alive as I myself was; and the only scruple was, how or how soon to awaken her from her somnambulist's dream. While I was debating with myself the best means to pursue, she suddenly passed out of the library door on to the stone staircase. My alarm was now fairly excited. She had two courses to pursue in her sensational career—I employ the word in a more correct use than it is commonly put to. She might either turn downward toward the floor of the church itself, in which case she could do herself little or no harm; or she could mount the ascending staircase, and reach an outward parapet, with heaven knew what mad scheme in view, before I had time to overtake her. She chose the second alternative, and—she leading, I following—we mounted the lofty staircase that leads to the base of the spire. I was aware that the door at the top of this particular ascent was not furnished with a lock; it was fastened by a simple bolt, and I had little doubt that my sleep-walking friend would shoot that bolt back as readily as she had taken down and replaced the books on the library shelves. My greatest fear was that she might begin playing some mad prank upon the parapet before I was sufficiently near to arrest her movements. I need hardly add that, influenced by the dread of consequences commonly said to follow on a sudden awakening from a fit of somnambulism, I inwardly resolved to try every means of humoring and coaxing my companion down again to terra firma, and only as a last resort to attempt arousing her. In a few moments we stood side by side on the platform looking down on Winterbury, which lay outstretched in the white moonlight. It was a tranquil and beautiful scene. There was the church of St. Werburgh, a noble monument of thirteenth century building, which would attract instantaneous admiration anywhere but under the shadow of Winterbury cathedral. There was the fine old market-place, with the carved stone pump at which Cromwell drank as he passed through the city; and the charmingly quaint guildhall, and the ruins of the abbey skirting the river in the distance. I was not permitted, however, long to enjoy the prospect. Before I could lift a finger to arrest her rapid movements, my mysterious companion had stepped lightly on to the parapet, and began a quick and perfectly unembarrassed walk around it. Dreading the experiment of forcible rescue, it occurred to me to try the effect of quietly accosting her, and endeavoring—by humoring her present mental condition—to decoy her away from her perilous amusement. It was an awful moment of suspense. Should she lose her balance and her life, it would be next to impossible for me ever totally to clear up the enigmatical circumstance of my having been actually present by her side during that weird moonlit dance upon the parapet. If, on the other hand, I were to seize and lift her from the top-stone, she might rouse the whole close with frightful screams, she might faint—might even die—in my arms, or from the shock of sudden awakening she might lose her reason.

{683}

But there was no time to stand balancing chances. Accordingly, I gently drew toward her side, and said, in as easy and collected a tone as I could command,

"I think we left the library door unlocked; before you complete your rounds, had we not better go down the stairs and secure it? Having been allowed the entry of the cathedral, I think we are bound in honor to shut doors after us."

"To be sure," she replied, and instantly, to my intense relief, dropped cleverly down into the space between the parapet and the lower courses of the spire. "To be sure, the door should be locked at once. Let us go down. I cannot make out who you are. In none of my former visits to the cathedral have I met you; but you seem to be no intruder, and I will certainly go down and secure the door as you suggest."

All this was uttered quickly and easily, but with an abstracted air, and without the slightest motion of her steadfast eyes. While still speaking, she stooped under the low door-way at the stair-head, and began to descend. I followed, busily devising plans for preventing any fresh ascent, and yet still avoiding the necessity of breaking the curious spell which bound her. We reached the library door. To my surprise, she produced a key of her own, and was about to turn the lock, when I remembered that at this rate I should be deprived for the rest of the night of my only comforts, the warm atmosphere of the library and the decanal arm-chair. I therefore extemporized a bold stroke.

"Excuse me," I said, "I have left my hat and a few papers inside, and having a canon's key, I will save you the trouble of locking up. But permit me to suggest that it is still very early in April and the night is cold. Why not give up the rest of your walk for to-night, and return again on one the glorious nights in May or June?"

Without uttering a syllable in reply, she turned on her heel, and began slowly descending the staircase into the transept. My curiosity was now fairly on the alert, and I resolved to unravel the mystery, at least so far as to discover by what means she would leave the cathedral, and in what direction she would go. Stepping for a moment inside the library, I hastily but quietly slipped off my shoes on the matting of the floor, and followed her barefoot and silent. She was just stepping from the staircase into the transept, when I caught sight of her again. With the same steady and self-possessed action which she had displayed throughout, she crossed the transept, and made straight for a small postern door which led, as I knew, into the garden of the bishop's palace. This she unlocked, and I made sure that, having passed through, she would lock it again behind her. Whether, however, she was a little forgetful that night, or whether the unexpected rencontre with a stranger had ruffled the tranquil serenity of her trance, it so happened that she omitted to turn the lock, and I was able, after gently reopening the door, to trace her progress still further. Under the noble cedars of the episcopal gardens, past long flower-beds and fresh-mown lawns, I followed her barefoot, until we arrived within a few yards of the hinder buildings of the palace. Here I stopped under the dark shade of a cedar, and watched my companion walk coolly up to a little oaken, iron-clamped door, open it, and disappear within the house. Then of course I retraced my steps toward the cathedral. But stopping again under one of the magnificent cedars, I could not avoid a few moments' reflection on the exceedingly odd position into which accident had brought me. Here was I, alone and barefooted, standing, at two o'clock in the morning, on the lawn of the palace, where I had no more business than I had at the top of the spire; and the only place in which I could find shelter for the night was the cathedral itself, a building {684} that most people would rather avoid than enter during the small hours. The queerness of my situation, however, did not prevent me from enjoying to the full the extreme loveliness of the gardens, and the glorious view of the splendid edifice, rising white and clear in the moonlight above their shady alleys and recesses.

On regaining the library, I dozed away the remainder of the dark hours in the same commodious arm-chair, and as soon as the bell began to toll for the seven o'clock prayers, I passed unnoticed out of the building and regained my lodgings.

"Been keeping a coast-guard night, sir?" said Mrs. Jollisole, as she set the breakfast things in order.

"Why, yes, Mrs. Jollisole," I answered; "I did enjoy some rather extensive prospects last night."

And that was all that passed. I had fixed it in my own mind that I would keep my own counsel strictly until I should have called at the palace, and communicated the whole of the circumstances in confidence to the bishop, with whom I was slightly acquainted.

This plan I carried into effect in the course of the morning. His lordship was at home, and listened with his customary kindness and courtesy to the whole of my romantic recital. Just as I was finishing, his study door opened, and a young lady entered, dressed in black, tall, and strikingly beautiful, though looking pale and fagged. Glancing at me she gave a slight start, and taking a book from one of the shelves, instantly left the room, after a few muttered words of apology for disturbing the bishop. It was my companion of the library and the tower.

"I see," said his lordship, "that you have recognized the ghost. That young lady is an orphan niece of mine, and has been brought up in my house from her infancy. Never strong, she has reduced what vigor she possesses by her ardent love of books, and her intellectual interest is awake to all kinds of subjects. She is equally unwearied in visiting amongst the poor, and often returns home from her rounds in a state of exhaustion from which it is difficult to rouse her. About a twelvemonth ago we first noticed the appearance of a tendency to somnambulism. She was removed for several weeks to the sea-side, and we began to hope that a permanent improvement had set in. A severe loss, however, which she has lately sustained, has, I fear, done her great injury, and here is proof of the old malady returning. We are indebted to you, sir," added the kind old man, "for your judicious and thoughtful way of proceeding under the circumstances of last night, and for at once putting me in possession of the details, which will enable me to take the necessary precautions."

Before leaving the bishop's company, I begged him to go with me into the cathedral, and to be present while a carpenter removed the woodwork of the library window in order to recover the key. This he consented at once to do, and we crossed the gardens by the very route which "the ghost" and I had traversed during the night. On removing the panelling, we found that the depth of the chink was comparatively trifling, and the key was soon seen shining among the dust.

I was further gratified by another discovery, which, together with the extreme pleasure that it gave the bishop, quite indemnified me for my night's imprisonment. We noticed, partially concealed by rubbish in a niche of the wall below the panelling, the corner of a vellum covering. On further examination, this proved to be a MS. copy of St. Matthew's Gospel, not indeed of the most ancient date, but adorned with very rare and curious illumination, and making an excellent addition to the stores of the library. After a tête-à-tête dinner that evening with the friendly bishop, we spent a pleasant hour or two in a thorough inspection of the newly-found treasure.

It was little more than a month afterward that I heard the great bell in the western tower toll the tidings {685} of a death. One week more, and a sorrowing procession of school-children and women of the alms-houses filed from the transept into the quiet cloister-ground, there to bury the last remains of one who would seem to have been to them in life a loving and much-loved friend. It was so. The eager brain and the yearning heart, worn out with unequal labors, were laid to rest for ever. The bishop's frail nursling was dead.

From The Month.

CATHOLIC PHILOSOPHY IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

The errors of the present day are generally the consequences of some false principle admitted long ago, and many may be traced clearly to the calamities of the sixteenth century. One of these is, that the mediaeval learning preserved (as was declared at the Council of Trent) chiefly among the monks was in its nature useless and trifling, fitted only to amuse ignorant and narrow-minded men in the darkness of the middle ages, and consisted in certain metaphysical speculations and logical quibbles, called scholastic teaching. Several French writers have done much to disabuse men of this prejudice, by making known the amount of knowledge and science attained by mediaeval scholars, whose works are despised because they are too scarce to be read, and perhaps too deep to be understood in a less studious age. One of these champions of he truth is Ozanam, who has traced with a master-hand the preservation of all that was valuable in antiquity, through the downfall of the empire; and he has rendered a subject which otherwise it would have been presumption to approach a plain matter of history, which the reader has only to receive, like other facts; so that we see how, under the safeguard of the Church, the same powers which were formerly used in vain by the philosophers for the discovery of truth, were successfully used for the attainment its deeper mysteries. But all that is human is marked by imperfection; and the very instinct which led philosophers to "feel after" their Creator, and seek that supreme good for which we were created, was misled by errors which all ultimately ended in infidelity. It is not necessary to dwell on these. A few words will remind the classical scholar that the Ionian school, which sought truth by experiment, through the perception of the senses, leads to fatalism and pantheism; while Pythagoras, who sought by reason and the sciences him who is above and beyond their sphere, left the disappointed reason in a state of doubt and indifference, or else despair. Plato alone pursued a course of safety. Taking the existence of God as a truth derived perhaps from patriarchal teaching, he used the Socratic method of induction only for the destruction of falsehood, and received with fearless candor all that the poets taught of superhuman goodness and beauty; for though the symbolism of the poets degenerated into disgusting idolatry, they have been called the truest of heathen teachers. It is well known how Aristotle strengthened the reasoning power; but the mighty power had no object on which to put forth its strength, and the more noble minds rejected at once both reasoning and experiment, and sought for religion in the mysticism of Alexandria. Such was the wreck and waste of all that man could do without revelation, {686} and so sickening was the disappointment, that St. Augustin would fain have closed the Christian schools to Virgil and Cicero, which he loved once too well; but St. Gregory, brought up as he was a Roman and a Christian, had nothing to repent of or to destroy, and classic letters were preserved by Christians.

Ozanam found pleasure in believing that Christianity, while as yet concealed in the catacombs, was "in all senses undermining ancient Rome," and that it had an ameliorating effect on the Stoic, which was then the best sect of the philosophers; so that Seneca, instead of following the lantern of Zeno, who confused the natures of God and man, learnt from St. Paul not only to distinguish them, but also the relation in which man regards his Creator and Father, whom he serves with free-will and love, by subduing his body to the command of his soul. But the pride of philosophy may be modified without being subdued. The principle of heathenism is "the antagonist of Christianity: one is from man, and for man; the other from God, and for God." It was the object of St. Paul and the first fathers of the Church to liberate the intellect as well as the affections from perversion, and to teach how the treasures of antiquity might be used by Christians for religion, as the spoils of Egypt and the luxurious perfumes of the Magdalen. And after the fierce battle of Christianity with paganism was over, the triumph of the Church was completed under Constantine by the Christianization of literature; that is, by using in the service of truth all those powers which had been wasted in the ineffectual efforts for its discovery. "A mixed mass of ancient learning was saved from the wreck of the Roman world; and as Pope Boniface preserved the splendid temple of the Pantheon, and dedicated it to the worship of God glorified in his saints, so the doctors of the Church employed the logic and eloquence of the philosophers without adopting their theories. This was not always easy, and some, like Origen and Tertullian, fell into error; for the distinctive character of Christian teaching is to be dogmatic, not argumentative, submitting the conclusions of reason to the decisions of inspired authority, and the province of reason has bounds which it cannot pass."

Gradually a Christian literature arose. Not only in the still classical Roman schools, but in those of Constantinople, Asia, and Africa, pagan writings were used as subservient to the training of Christian authors, and the fourth century was the golden age of intellect as well as sanctity. The fathers employed their classical training in the study of the Holy Scriptures; but, according to the true principle of sacred study, they sought from Almighty God himself the grace which alone can direct the use of the intellectual powers. "From the three senses of Holy Scripture" (says St. Bonaventure, in a passage quoted by Ozanam out of his Redactio Artium ad Theologiam) "descended three schools of Scriptural teaching. The allegorical, which declares matters of faith, in which St. Augustin was a doctor, and in which he was followed by St. Anselm and others, who taught by discussion. The moral, on which St. Gregory founded his preaching and taught men the rule of life, in which he was followed by St. Bernard who belongs also to the mystical school and by a host of preachers. While from the third or analogical sense, St. Dionysius taught by contemplation the manner in which man may unite himself to God." Ozanam names a chain of authors as belonging to this school of "Boethius, who on the eve of martyrdom wrote the consolations of that sorrow which is concealed under the illusions of the world; Isidore, Bede, Rabanus, Anselm, Bernard, Peter Damian, Peter the Lombard, who rejoiced 'to cast his sentences like the widow's mite into the treasury of the temple, Hugo, and Richard of St. Victor, Peter the Spaniard, Albert, St. Bonaventure, and St. Thomas."

{687}

"Under the barbarian rule, all the intellectual, an well as the devout, took sanctuary in the cloister; so that when the Arian Lombards attacked the centre of Christendom, they were opposed only by the teaching and discipline of the Church as perfected by St. Gregory; and the power of these must have been supernatural, as the influence of letters was nearly lost in Rome. Then, in defence of the faith, St. Benedict marshalled a new band of devoted champions in the mountains of Subiaco, and he made it a part of their duty to preserve the treasures of learning, and to employ them in the service of religion; and these monks," says Ozanam, "who spent six hours in choir, transcribed in their cells the historians and even the poets of Greece and Rome, and bequeathed to the middle ages the most valuable writings of antiquity."

It is agreed by all that Charlemagne was the founder of the middle ages; and he opened the schools in which theology was formed into a science, and gained the title of scholastics. Alcuin was the instrument by whom Charlemagne remodelled European literature, with the authority of the Church and councils, tradition and the fathers. Of these the Greek were little known west of Constantinople; and the chief representative of the Latin fathers was St. Augustin. There were a few later writers, as Boethius on the "Consolation of Philosophy," and Cassidorus, who wrote De Septem Disciplinis.

"Every one knows," says Ozanam, "that when Europe was robbed of ancient literature by the invasion of barbarians, the remains of science, saved by pious hands, were divided into seven arts, and enclosed in the Trivium and Quadrivium." These arts were grammar, rhetoric, logic, and mathematics, which last comprehended arithmetic and geometry, music and astronomy. "The establishment of public schools in cent, ix.," says Ozanam, "assisted the progress of reasoning, till it became in itself an art capable of being employed indifferently to prove either side of an argument. The science of words was no longer that of grammar, but became dialectics; and words were used lightly as a mere play of the intellect, or as a mechanical process to analyze truth." But it can never be lawful for a Christian to discuss what has been revealed, as though it were possible that those who reject it may be right; nor to consider truth as an open question, which is still to be decided, and may be sought by those rules of reasoning which had been laid down by Aristotle for the discovery of what was as yet unknown. It was for this reason that, as Ozanam says, Tertullian called Aristotle the patriarch of heretics; yet his rules of reasoning were right, and the error lay in using them amiss. Thus the Manichaeans reasoned when they should have believed, and the Paulicians subjected the Holy Scriptures to their own interpretation, and rejected all that was above their comprehension; and thus in after-times did the Albigenses, and then the Protestants of the sixteenth, and the Liberals of the nineteenth, century.

It was in 891 that Paschasius wrote, for the instruction of his convent, a treatise on the Holy Eucharist, in which he proved by reasoning that doctrine which "the whole world believes and confesses;" but he was contradicted by Ratram, who first put forth the heresy that the real presence is only figurative, and then the Church pronounced the dogma of transubstantiation. From that time theologians were obliged to confute the intellectual heresies of philosophers by fighting, as on common ground, with the weapons of argument which were used by both, in order to defend the doctrines which had been hitherto declared simply and by authority, as by our Lord himself. "Now," says Ozanam, "mysteries were subjected to definitions, and revelation was divided into syllogisms. And as the love of argument 'increased, the disputants took up the question which {688} had been discussed among heathen philosophers as to the abstract existences which are called universal forms or ideas; types of created things eternally existing in the mind of God, according to the teaching of St. Bonaventure. And when these were discovered by metaphysics, logic was exercised upon them; and a dispute arose as to whether truth exists independently of the perceptions of man. The Platonists asserted that it does, and this belief, which they called idealism, was held by the divines, and was called realism, while those who denied that it exists independently of man were said to be nominalists." In modern days the dispute of realism and nominalism is laughed at as an idle war of words; but the war is, in truth, on principles, and still divides the orthodox and unbeliever, and the names of realism and nominalism are only changed for objective and subjective truth.

A painful experience had long prevailed that the spirit of controversy is destructive of devotion; and the more devout, weary of the wars of philosophers, rejected logic, and found in the mystic school that repose which had been sought even by heathens in a counterfeit mysticism, in which the evil powers deluded men by imitating divine inspirations. According to Ozanam, "Christian mysticism is idealism in its most brilliant form, which seeks truth in the higher regions of spontaneous inspiration;" and he goes on to explain, from the writings of St. Dionysius, that its nature is contemplative, ascetic, and symbolical. It is contemplative, as it brings man into the presence of the immense indivisible God, from whom all power, life, and wisdom descend upon man through the hierarchies of the angels and through the Church, and whose divine influences act in nine successive spheres through all the gradations between existence and nothing. It is ascetic, as it acts on the will through the link which connects the body with the mind, and regulates the passions through the inferior part of the soul. This "medicine of souls" was taught by the fathers of the desert, who were followed by all the mystic doctors; and it was on this reciprocal action of physics and morals that St. Bonaventure afterward wrote the Compendium. It is symbolic, because it takes the creation as a symbol of spiritual things, and the external world as the shadow of what is invisible. The union of man with God is the object and fullness of the knowledge which regards both the divine and human nature, and levels all intellects in the immediate presence of God. This was imparted to Adam, and restored by Christ our Lord, who left it in the keeping of the Church. The first uninspired teacher of this mystic theology is thought to have been Dionysius the Areopagite, and the martyred Bishop of Athens, or, as some say, of Paris. In the festival of his martyrdom it is declared "that he wrote books, which are admirable and heavenly, concerning the divine names, the heavenly and ecclesiastical hierarchy, and on mystical theology." Ozanam quotes a fragment from his writings, which teaches that the indivisibility of God is intangible by mathematical abstractions of quantity, and indefinable by logic, because definition is analysis; and it is incomparable, because there are no terms of comparison.

The teaching of St. Dionysius was not forgotten when the knowledge of Greek was lost in the west. He was succeeded in this religious and Christian philosophy by St. Anselm in the eleventh century. In his Monologium, De Ratione Fidei, he supposes an ignorant man to be seeking the truth with the sole force of his reason, and disputing in order to discover a truth hitherto unknown. "Every one, for the most part," he says, "if he has moderate understanding, may persuade himself, by reason alone, as to what we necessarily believe of God; and this he may do in many ways, each according to that best suited to himself;" {689} and he goes on to say that his own mode consists in deducing all theological truths from one point—the being of God. All the diversity of beautiful, great, and good things supposes an ideal one or unity of beauty, and this unity is God. Hence St. Anselm derives the attributes of God—the creation, the Holy Trinity, the relation of man to God, in a word, all theology. The Proslogium, or truth demonstrating itself, is a second work, in which St. Anselm proposes to demonstrate truth which has been already attained. "As in the first he had, at the request of some brothers, written De Ratione Fidei in the person who seeks by reasoning what he 'does not know, so he now seeks for some one of these many arguments which should require no proof but from itself. He was the first to use the famous argument, that from the sole idea of God is derived the demonstration of his existence. He thus begins the Proslogium: 'The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God. Wherefore the most foolish atheist has in his mind the idea of the sovereign good, which good cannot exist in thought only, because a yet greater good can still be conceived. This sovereign good therefore exists independently of the thought, and is God.'" It is not worth while to follow out the errors which arose in the middle ages from nominalism. In the eleventh century Roscelin carried it to the absurdity of saying that ideas are only words, and that nothing real exists except in particulars. And Philip of Champeaux asserted the opposite extreme, and denied the existence of all but universals; as that humanity alone exists, of which men are mere parts or fragments. It was in the twelfth century that Abelard, who had been trained in both these systems, came forth in the pride of his vast intellect to reconcile them by a new theory, but his search after truth was by a mere intellectual machinery, to be employed by science in order to construct general scheme of human knowledge; while it led to the rejection of that simple faith which believes without examination, and substituted the system of rationalism, so fruitful to this day of error and unbelief.

It was while men were constructing this intellectual tower of Babel that Almighty God raised up as the champion of the truth the meek and holy St. Bernard. Like David he laid aside his weapons of reasoning, and left his cloister to overthrow the gigantic foe. In the cowl of St. Benedict, he declared that the truth, which men sought by human efforts, was to be received in faith as the gift of God, from whom all knowledge and light proceeds. And it was not the powers of his well-trained faculties, nor his classical and poetical studies, but his prayers, which gained the victory; so that, as by miracle, Abelard, the most eloquent disputant of his age, stood mute before the saint, who taught that faith is no opinion attained by reasoning, but a conviction beyond all proof that truth is revealed by God. This had been the teaching of St. Gregory, who said that faith which is founded on reason has no merit; and of St. Augustin, who said that faith is no opinion founded on reflection, but an interior conviction; and of the apostle, who said that faith is the certainty of things unseen. It is consoling to read that the holy influence of St. Bernard did not only silence his adversary; the heart of Abelard was melted, he laid aside the studies in which he had so nearly lost his soul, and he made his submission to the Church, and sought the forgiveness of St. Bernard. Soon afterward he died a penitent, sorrowing for his moral and intellectual offences. But evil does not end with the guilty; and his school has continued brilliant in intellect and taste, but presumptuous in applying them to the examination of truth. On the other hand, the two folio volumes of St. Bernard have been always a treasury of devotion, where the saints and pious of all succeeding ages have been trained. It is impossible for words to {690} contain more thought; and he had the gift of penetrating thoughts contained in the inspired writings; as when he wrote twenty-four sermons on the three first verses of the Canticles. Ozanam says that St. Pierre perceived a fresh world of insects each day that he examined a single strawberry-leaf; and thus in the spiritual world the intellect of St. Bernard contemplated and beheld wonders with a sort of microscopic infinity, while his vast comprehension was analogous in its discoveries to the telescope. Such were the gifts conferred by God on the humble abbot of Clairvaux.

There were in the time of St. Bernard other great teachers: Peter the Venerable, St. Norbert, Godfrey, Richard, and Hugo, all monks of St. Victor. Ozanam says that he embraced the three great modes of teaching—that is, the allegorical, moral, and analogical; and preceded St. Bonaventure in a gigantic attempt to form an encyclopaedia of human knowledge, based on the truth declared by St. James, that every good and perfect gift descends from the Father of light, who is above.

With a vast amount of literary treasures the crusaders had brought from the east, in the twelfth century, the Greek authors, with their Arab commentators. They brought the physics, metaphysics, and morals of Aristotle; and they brought also the pantheism, which, says Ratisbon, the Saracens, like the early Stoics, had learnt from the Brahmins, who believe that men have two souls—one inferior and led by instinct, the other united and identical with God. This fatal error was received by a daring school, to which Frederic of Sicily was suspected to belong. It was to confute this school that St. Bernard had taught in his sermons on the Canticles that union with God is not by confusion of natures, but conformity of will. The poison entered Europe from the west as well as the east; the Arabs in Spain mixed the delusions of Alexandria with the subtleties of Aristotle, and the result was such men as Averroes and Avicenna. Gerbert, afterward Silvester II., had himself studied in Spain, and brought back into the European schools not only the philosophy of Aristotle, but the Jewish translations of Averroes. The unlearned monks of the west were naturally alarmed at the new works on physics, astronomy, and alchemy, and especially at the logic of Aristotle, and the terrible eruption of pantheism. It was then that the Church exercised her paternal authority, and condemned the confusion of the limits between faith and opinion, and the degradation of the sciences to mere worldly purposes. Ozanam gives the bull issued in 1254 by Innocent IV., in which he complains that the study of civil law was substituted for that of philosophy, and that theology itself was banished from the education of priests. "We desire to bring back men's minds to the teaching of theology, which is the science of salvation; or at least to the study of philosophy, which, though it does not possess the gentle pleasures of piety, yet has the first glimpses of that eternal truth which frees the mind from the hindrance of covetousness, which is idolatry."

The tendency of philosophical errors was now rendered apparent by their development, so that what was at first a vague opinion was now a broad and well-defined system. Those who were firm in the teaching of the Church found it necessary to use every means for opposing such multiplied evils, and they boldly ventured on a Christian eclecticism, which should employ all the faculties and all the modes of using them in the service of religion; but it was not like the eclecticism of Alexandria, where the ideas of Plato were united with the forms of Aristotle, and adorned by the delusions of magic. The strength of Christian eclecticism lay in the pure unity of faith, defended by all the powers of man. {691} "Both analysis and synthesis," says Ozanam, "are harmonized in true science: they are the two poles of the intellectual world, and have the same axis and horizon. The intersecting point of the two systems was the union of what is true in realism and nominalism with mystic teaching, and the eclectic admitted the experience of the senses as well as the deductions of reason and the intuition of mysticism with the testimony of learning. Thus were united in the study of truth the four great powers of the soul, reason, tradition, experience, and intuition." But it has been remarked that some of the masters who taught by experiment and tradition were persecuted as magicians, and some of those who used reason and intuition were canonized. Both, however, observed the ascetic life, of which the abstinence of Pythagoras and the endurance of the Stoics were imitations, and all practised the virtues most opposite to heathen morality, namely, humility and charity. The first attempt at uniting the different opinions of the learned was made by Peter Lombard, who collected the sentences of the fathers into a work, which gained him the title of Master of the Sentences, and which was afterward perfected in the Summa of St. Thomas. Albert the Great left the palace of his ancestors for the Dominican cloister. He studied at Cologne, and was unequalled in learning and psychology. While he reasoned on ideas, he made experiments on matter; nay, he used alchemy, to discover unknown powers and supernatural agents. It is said that his twenty-one folio volumes have never been sufficiently studied by any one to pronounce on their merits. His work on the universe was written against pantheism, and declares the presence of God in every part of creation, without being confused with it. That divine presence is the source of all power. "He was," says Ozanam (p. 33), "an Atlas, who carried on his shoulders the whole world of science, and did not bend beneath its weight." He was familiar with the languages of the ancients and of the east, and had imbibed gigantic strength at these fountains of tradition. He believed in the title of magician, which his disciples gave him; and he is remembered by posterity rather as a mythological being than as a man.

The contemporary of Albert, says Ozanam, was Alexander Hales, who wrote the "Summa of Universal Theology." William of Auvergne was a Dominican and preceptor of St. Louis; he wrote Specimen Doctrinale, Naturale, Historiale; a division of the sciences and their end, containing—1, theology, physics, and mathematics; 2, practice, monastic, economic, and politic; 3, mechanics and arts; 4, logic and words. Duns Scotus, a Franciscan, was more accurate in learning than Albert himself; sound, though no discoverer in physics, and deep in mathematics. He commented on Aristotle and Peter Lombard. From his strength, sagacity, and precision, he was named the Doctor Subtilis. He wrote on free will, and says that its perfection is conformity to the will of God; and derives the moral law from the will of God, according to St. Paul, "Sin is the transgression of the law." When St. Thomas taught that the moral law is necessarily good because God is good, and this question divided the learned into the schools of Scotists and Thomists, Roger Bacon, an English Franciscan, was the pupil of Scotus; but he was eclectic, and admitted both exterior and interior experience, and the deductions of reason, into the intercourse of the soul with God. Though he condemned magic as an imposture, he wrote on alchemy, and with the simplicity of enthusiasm he hoped to find the philosopher's stone, and to read the fall of empires in the stars. He believed in the powers of human science, and he hints at the possibility of a vessel moving without sails or oars; and imagined a balloon, a diving-bell, a suspension bridge, and other miracles of art, especially a telescope and a multiplying-glass. Speaking of Greek {692} fire and unquenchable lamps, he says that art as well as nature has its thunders, and describes the effect of gun-powder, the attraction of the loadstone, and the sympathies between minerals, plants, and animals; and says, "When I see the prodigies of nature, nothing startles my faith either in the works of man or in the miracles of God;" concluding, that Aristotle may not have penetrated the deepest secrets of nature, and that the sages of his own time will be surpassed by the novices of future days. He had the same clear and sound views of supernatural things, and wrote on the secret works of art and nature, and the falsehood of magic. "Man cannot influence the spiritual world except by the lawful use of prayer addressed to God and the angels, who govern not only the world of spirits, but the destinies of man." Though called the Doctor Mirabilis, he was suspected of magic, and died neglected in a prison, where he had no light to finish his last works. His manuscripts were burned at the Reformation, in a convent of his order, by men "who professed," says Ozanam, "to restore the torch of reason, which had been extinguished by the monks of the middle ages."

Raymond Lulli, the Doctor Illuminatus, was a Franciscan, the great inventor of arts; but he was a philosophical adventurer, whose cast of mind was Spanish, Arabian, African, and eastern. His youth was licentious, his life turbulent, and his imagination restless; but he died as a saint and a martyr on his return from liberating the Christian slaves in Spain.

The glory of the Franciscan order is the Seraphical Doctor, St. Bonaventure. He was educated under Hales, the Irrefragable Doctor. His genius was keen and his judgment just, and he was a master of scholastic theology and philosophy. But when he studied, it was at the foot of a crucifix, with eyes drowned in tears from incessant meditation on the passion of Christ. His life was dedicated to the glory of God and his own sanctification; yet he spent much time in actual prayer, because he knew from mystic theology that knowledge and obedience are the gifts of God; and devoted himself to mortifications, because they alone prepare the soul for the reception of divine grace and intuition. Yet though he obtained the gift of ecstacy and the grace of crucifying the human nature, he placed Christian perfection not in heroic acts of virtue, but in performing ordinary actions well. Ozanam quotes his words: "A constant fidelity in small things is a great and heroic virtue; it is a continued crucifixion of self-love, a complete sacrifice of self, an entice submission to grace." And his own pale and worn countenance shone with a happiness and peace which exemplified his maxim that spiritual joy is a sign that grace is present in the soul. Though his desire for sacramental communion was intense, yet we are told his great humility once kept him at a distance from the altar, till an angel bore to him the consecrated host; and the raptures with which he always received his God are expressed, though doubtless imperfectly, in the burning words, Transfige Domine, etc., which he was wont to utter after he had himself offered the holy sacrifice. His devotional works, written for St. Louis and others in his court, fill the heart with their unction, and rank him as the great master of spiritual life. It was during the intervals of ecstasies that he wrote; and while he was occupied on the life of St. Francis, St. Thomas beheld him in his cell raised above the earth, and the future saint exclaimed: "Leave a saint to write the life of a saint."

It is with profound reverence that we must inquire what was the intellectual teaching of so holy a man; and it is, indeed, so vast and yet so deep that it exhausts all the human powers in contemplating the nature of God and the end of man, which is his union to God. Ozanam gives a passage from his work on the "Reduction of Arts to Philosophy," in which he {693} says that philosophy is the medium by which the theologian forms for himself a mirror (speculum) from created things, which serve him as steps by which he may ascend to heaven. He begins by the revealed truth, that every good and perfect gift descends from the Father of light, and teaches of its descent by these four ways—exterior, inferior, interior, and superior—through successive irradiations, namely, Holy Scripture, experimental mechanics, and philosophy, which succeed each other like the days of creation, all converging in the light of Holy Scripture, and all succeeded by that seventh day in which the soul will rest in the perfect knowledge of heaven.

1. Exterior light, or tradition, relates to the exterior forms of matter, and produces the mechanical arts, which were divided by Hugo into seven—weaving, work in wood and in stone, agriculture, hunting, navigation, theatricals, and medicine.

2. Inferior light, or that of the senses, awakens in the mind the perceptions of the five senses, as St. Augustin says, by that fine essence whose nature and whose seat baffles all our discoveries.

3. Interior light, or reason, teaches us by the processes of thought those intellectual truths which are fixed in the human mind by physics, logic, and ethics, through rational, natural, and moral action on the will, the conduct, and the speech, which are the triple functions of the understanding, and on the three faculties of the reason—apprehension, judgment, and action; this interior light acts on outward things by physics, mathematics, and metaphysics, and perceives God in all things by logic, by physics, and by ethics. And he goes on to consider truth as it is in the essence of words, things, and actions.

4. The superior light proceeds from grace and from the Holy Scriptures, and reveals the truths relating to salvation and sanctification. It is named from its raising us to the knowledge of things above us, and because it descends from God by way of inspiration and not by reflection. This light also is threefold. Holy Scripture contains, under the literal sense of the words, the allegorical, which declares what must be believed concerning God and man; the moral, which teaches us how to live; the analogical, which gives the laws by which man may unite himself to God. And the teaching of Holy Scripture contains three points—faith, virtue, and beatitude. The course by which knowledge must be sought is by,

1, tradition; 2, experiment; 3, reason; and 4, a descent as it were by the same road, so as to find the stamp of the divinity on all which is conceived, or felt, or thought. All sciences are pervaded by mysteries; and it is by laying hold of the clue of the mystery that all the depths of each science are explored.

It was to Mount Alvernia, where his master, St. Francis, so lately received the stigmata, that St. Bonaventure retired to write the Itinerarium Mentis ad Deum, in which he treats on the divine nature, and considers God as manifesting himself in three modes, and man as receiving the knowledge of him by the three functions of memory, understanding, and will.

Ozanam says: "To these triple functions of the mind God manifests himself in three ways: 1, by the traces of his creation in the world; 2, by his image in human nature; 3, by the light which he sheds on the superior region of the soul. Those who contemplate him in the first are in the vestibule of the tabernacle; those who rise to the second are in the holy place; those who reach the third are within the holy of holies, where the two cherubim figured the unity of the divine essence and the plurality of divine persons." He likens the invisible existence of God to the light, which, though unseen, enables the eye to perceive colors; and proves from his existence his unity, eternity, and perfection; and from the eternal action of his goodness he deduces the doctrine of the Trinity.

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The Breviloquium treats on the nature of man, who exists not of himself, nor by emanation from God, but was called into life out of nothing by the Creator, and lives by no mortal life borrowed from the outer world, but by its own and immortal life, intelligent and free. These attributes of God are communicated by him to his creatures according to his own law, "that the superior shall be the medium of grace to the inferior." The happiness of the soul must be immortal and is in God, and she can exist separated from this body which she inhabits and moves. Ozanam says: "The Compendium Theologies Veritatis treats of the connection between physics and morals, and inquires how the body indicates the variations of the soul by that mysterious link on which the scientific speculate, but which the saint treats as a subject not for dogmatizing but for contemplation, assisted by the mortification which alone brings the passions into subserviency. But the Seraphic Doctor left his teaching unfinished. Some of his spiritual works have been translated by the Abbé Berthaumier; and the reader will find that what has been said gives an imperfect idea of the writings of this doctor of the Church, which fill six folio volumes, and have scarcely been mastered by a few, though they have warmed the devotion of many; and one short treatise, called the "Soliloquy," is of such a nature as to include the whole science of devotion. It represents the soul contemplating God, not in his creatures, but within itself, and asking what is her own position in his presence: created by him, and sinning against him; redeemed by him, and yet sinning; full of contrition, yet firm in the hope of glory. The teaching of St. Paul is continued by St. Augustin, St. Ambrose, and St. Bernard; and it seems as if no other book were needful. One passage, and one only, may show the treasures it contains. The soul is convinced of the vanity of created things, and asks how men are so blinded as to love them. Because the soul is created with so glorious and sensitive a nature, that it cannot live without love; and while the elect find nothing in created things which can satisfy their desire of happiness, and therefore rest in the contemplation of God, the deluded multitude neglect themselves for passing objects, and love their exile as if it were their home. But Ozanam does not leave his history of intellectual progress to treat of spiritual gifts.

St. Thomas was born nearly at the same time as St. Bonaventure, in the same wild valleys of the Apennines. They studied together at Paris; they lived and died and were canonized together.

It was said by Pallavicini that "when, in the twelfth century, the Arabs made Cordova a second Athens, and Averroes used the philosophy of Aristotle as a weapon against the faith, God raised up the intellect of St. Thomas, who, by deep study of Aristotle, found in his own principles a solution of the arguments used by infidels; and the scholastics, following him, have so employed Aristotle to defend Christianity, that whosoever rebels against the Vatican rebels also against the Lycaeum." St. Thomas had, however, to confute the errors of Aristotle, and of Abelard and others who had followed them, while he set forth the great truths of reason which he taught. It was in 1248 that he published a comment on the "Ethics." He had himself, says Ozanam, the learning and the weight of Aristotle; his power of analysis and classification, and the same sobriety of language. He had also studied the Timaeus of Plato, the doctrines of Albert, Alexander Hales, and John of Salisbury. He followed the school of St. Augustin, and drew from St. Gregory his rule of morals. His comments on the Sentences contain a methodical course of philosophy, as his Summa contains an abridgment of divinity. In an extract given by Ozanam, St. Thomas says, faith considers beings in relation to God; philosophy, as they {695} are in themselves. Philosophy studies second causes; faith, the first cause alone. In philosophy the notion of God is sought from the knowledge of creatures, so that the notion of God is second to that of his creatures; faith teaches first the notion of God, and reveals in him the universal order of which he is the centre, and so ends by the knowledge of creatures; and this is the most perfect method, because human understanding is thus assimilated to the divine; which contemplating itself contemplates all things in itself. Theology, therefore, only borrows from philosophy illustrations of the dogmas she offers to our faith.

It was in 1265 that, at the request of St. Raymond de Pennafort, St. Thomas wrote the Summa Theologies against the infidels in Spain; a book which has ever since been considered as a perfect body of theology and the manual of the saints. "In the philosophy of St. Bonaventure," says Ozanam, "the leading guide was perhaps rather the divine love than the researches of intellect." St. Thomas combined all the faculties under the rule of a lofty meditation and a solemn reason, uniting the abstract perceptions beheld by the understanding with the images of external things received by the senses. "It was a vast encyclopaedia of moral sciences, in which was said all that can be known of God, of man and his relations to God; in short, Summa totius theologies. This monument, harmonious though diverse, colossal in its dimensions, and magnificent in its plan, remained unfinished, like all the great political, literary, and architectural creations of the middle age, which seem only to be shown and not suffered to exist." And the Doctor Angelicus left the vast outline incomplete. That outline is to be appreciated only by the learned; the ignorant may guess its greatness by a catalogue, however meagre, of its contents. In the first part, or the natural, St. Thomas treats of the nature of God and of creatures; his essence, his attributes, and the mystery of the Holy Trinity; then, in relation to his creatures, as their Creator and Preserver. In the second, or moral, part he treats of general principles, of virtues and vices, of the movement of the reasonable creature toward God, of his chief end, and on the qualities of the actions by which he can attain it, of the theological and moral virtues. In the third, or theological, part he examines the means of attaining God, the incarnation and the sacraments. In the Summa, says Ozanam, "the notions of things lead to the attributes of the divinity, unity, goodness, and truth; thus, natural theology arrived at the unity as well as the attributes of God, while from his action is deduced his Personality and Trinity. Then follows the nature of good and bad angels, of souls in a separate state; and then the science of man considered as a compound being of soul and body, endowed with intellect for receiving impressions from the divine light above, and from its reflection on things below. He is also endowed with desire, by which he is formed to seek goodness and happiness, but is free in will to chose vice or virtue; and the rejection of sin, and acquisition of virtue, in a life regulated by divine human law, is a shadow of life in heaven. Enough has been said to show how lofty was the teaching of the saint; to whose invocation large indulgences are attached, and who had the task of composing the office used on the festival of Corpus Domini. The great object of his adoration and contemplation was the mystery of the real presence; and his Adoro Te devote may be used as an act of worship at the holiest moment of the sacrifice of the altar. The ecstasy of his joy in communion is expressed in the Gratias Tibi ago; and he declared his faith in the mystery as he lay on the ashes where he died. And this pure faith is recorded by Raphael, who represents him in his picture of the 'Dispute on the Blessed Eucharist' among the doctors of all ages before the miraculous host."

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Like all other saints, he sought detachment by mortification, and the love of God by prayer. His principle was, that prayer must precede study, because more is learnt from the crucifix than from books; and his last maxim was, that in order to avoid being separated from God by sin, a man must walk as in the sight of God and prepared for judgment. When he laid aside his religious studies to prepare for eternity, he used the words of St. Augustin: "Then shall I truly live when I am full of thee and thy love; now am I a burden to myself, because I am not entirely full of thee."

Mystic theology was now carried to perfection by Gersen, abbot of the Benedictine monastery of Verceuil from 1220 to 1240. Many attribute to him the authorship of the "Imitation of Christ;" there are, however, a number of others who do not agree with this opinion. The "Imitation" is generally ranked as coming very close after the inspired writings. What is said of the interior life is more or less intelligible to those who are endeavoring after perfection, but must be unintelligible to any who have not the faith: "Una vox librorum" (iii. 43), says the author; but the one voice does not teach all alike, for he who is within is the teacher of truth. The four books are in the hands of all. The contents of the first are on the conduct of men as to the exterior world, and the qualities necessary for the following of Christ—humility, detachment, charity, and obedience; then grace will be found, not in external things, but within, in a mind calm, obedient, and seeking not to adapt but to master circumstances. The second teaches him who turns from creatures that the kingdom of God is within, and that the government of this inner world is the science of perfection: "Give room to Christ and refuse entrance to others; then will man be free amid the chaos, and creatures will be to him only the speculum vitae." Seek Christ in all, and you will find him in all; seek self, and you will find it everywhere: one thing is above all, that leaving all you leave self. In the third book the soul listens to the internal voice of God, who makes known to her that he is her salvation; and she therefore prays for the one gift of divine love. It is impossible, perhaps not desirable, to repeat the devout aspirations of this divine love. May those who read the holy words receive their import through the light of grace! The fourth book relates to the union of the soul with her Lord through sacramental communion; and this can only be read in the hours of devotion.

It is presumptuous to say even thus much of the great saints who lived in the thirteenth century, how is it possible to undervalue the progress they made in all the highest powers of the soul? or who can speak of the schools of the middle ages as deserving of contempt in days which cannot comprehend them?

Ozanam desires to show that Dante was trained in this exalted learning, and has embodied what he learnt in his Divina Commedia. He speaks of the full development attained by scholastic teaching in those great teachers, after whom no efforts were made to extend the limits of human knowledge; and he speaks of the perplexities which arose with the anti-papal schism. "It was to the calm and majestic philosophy of the thirteenth century," says Ozanam, "that Dante turned his eyes; and his great poem declared to an age, which understood him not, the contemplative, ascetic, and symbolical teaching of the mystic school, which he had studied in the Compendium of St. Bonaventure and the Summa of St. Thomas;" and he proves by an analysis of that wonderful poem that it contains not only the great truths of revelation, but the spirit of the decaying mediaeval philosophy:

  "O voi che avete gli intelletti sani,
  Mirate la dottrina che ascende
  Sotto 'l velame del versi strani."

{697}

Translated from the Revue du Monde Catholique.

WHAT CAME OF A PRAYER.

In the fifth story of an old house in the Rue du Four-Saint-Germain, lay a sick woman whose pale emaciated face bore traces of age and sorrow. Beside her bed was a young man, whose tender care showed him to be her son. The furniture of the apartment, though of the plainest kind, was neatly and carefully arranged, while the crucifix at the head of the bed and a statue of the Blessed Virgin marked the Christian family. The youth had just given his mother a spoonful of gruel, and she had fallen asleep smiling on her son—that quiet sleep attendant on recovery from severe illness. He knelt to thank God for having saved his mother's life, and while he prays, and she sleeps, without disturbing the prayer of the one, or the sleep of the other, I will tell you their story in a few words.

The father was a printer at Sceaux. Industrious, prudent, of scrupulous integrity, loving justice and fearing God, he acquired by his honest labor a competence for his old age and a fair prospect for his son. Losses, failures, and unforeseen misfortunes ruined him, and he found himself bankrupt. This blow sensibly affected him, but did not overwhelm him. He was offered a situation as compositor in a printing office in Paris, resumed the workman's dress, and courageously began to work. His wife, as strong as he, never uttered a complaint or regret. Their son was withdrawn from college to learn his father's trade, and although so young, his heart was penetrated with profound religious faith. Thus lived this humble household, resigned and happy, because they loved each other, feared God, and accepted trials. Several years elapsed, years of toil in their endeavors to liquidate the debts of the past: fruitful, however, in domestic joys. The child became a young man, and fulfilled the promises of his childhood. God blessed these afflicted parents in their son.

Suddenly the father fell sick and died. Those of us who have wept at the death-bed of a father, know the anguish of those hours when we contemplate for the last time the beloved features which we are to see no more on earth; the impressions of which grief time softens but can never efface. For those who live entirely in the domestic circle, the separation, in breaking the heart, breaks at the same time the tie to life. Left thus alone, the mother and son were more closely united, each gave to the other the love formerly bestowed upon him who was no more. Jacques Durand was now twenty-five years old. His countenance was frank and open, but serious and grave. He had the esteem of his employer, the respect of his companions, and the sympathy of all who knew him. He was not ashamed to be a mechanic, knowing the hidden charm of labor when that labor is offered to God. During the month of his mother's illness he did not leave her pillow. The physician pronounced her, the day before our story opens, out of danger. You understand now why the young man prayed with so much fervor while his mother slept. His devotions were interrupted by a knock at the door. It was Mme. Antoine, the porter's wife, a little loquacious, but obliging to her tenants, in a word, such a portress as we find only in books. Jacques, who was going out, had requested her to take his place beside his mother. She entered quietly for fear of disturbing the patient, received the directions which the young man gave her in a low voice, and seating herself near the bedside, busied her skilful fingers with her knitting. Old Antoine, the porter, stopped our friend Jacques at the foot {698} of the staircase. He was polite, benevolent, attached to his tenants, did not despise them if they were poor, and rendered them a service if he could. He was an old soldier of 1814. He delighted to speak of the French campaign, wore with pride the medal of St. Helena, and showed a seal which he received at Champaubert. "In remembrance of Napoleon," he says, raising his hat and straightening his bent figure. I don't know of any fault that he had except relating too often the battle of Champaubert.

"Well," said he, "how is Mme. Durand?" "Much better," replied the youth, "she has just fallen into a quiet sleep, which the doctor declares favorable to her recovery." "God be praised," resumes Antoine. "Beg pardon, M. Jacques, I can tell you now Mme. Durand has made us very uneasy." In saying this he gave the young man a cordial shake of the hand, which the latter heartily returned.

In going out Jacques took the Rue du Vieux-Colembier, and entered the office of the Mont-de-piété at the corner of La Croix-Rouge.

During his mother's illness he had spent many hard-earned savings, for you already know he had imposed on himself the obligation of paying the debts of the failure, and beside, detained at home with his mother, he had been unable to earn anything during the month. Still the doctor had to be paid, and medicines bought; the small sum advanced by his employer was nearly exhausted, and he was now on his way to pawn a silver fork and spoon. A young girl stood beside him in the office, and as there were many to be served before himself, he relieved the weariness of waiting by watching her. Her cap had no ribbons, but was gracefully placed on her light hair; a woollen dress, not new, nor of the latest fashion, but clean and well kept, a wedding ring (doubtless her mother's legacy), and a plain shawl, completed her poor toilette. Jacques was attracted by her modest air. Some industrious seamstress, he said to himself. As his turn had now come, he presented the fork and spoon—the value was ascertained—and the sum paid. The girl, following him, drew from a napkin a half worn cloak, which she offered with a timid air.

"Ten francs," says the clerk.

"Oh!" said she blushing, "if you could give me fifteen for it! See, sir, the cloak is still good."

"Well, twelve francs; will you trade at that price?"

Having given her assent, she took the money and the receipt, and went out. Jacques preceded her, and before passing out the door, he saw her dry a tear. "She is weeping," he said to himself; "I suppose the rent is unpaid. Poor girl! Stupid clerk!" With these reflections he arrived at the druggist's; he bought the remedies prescribed by the doctor; then certain that Mme. Antoine was taking good care of his charge, he thought he should have time to say a prayer at the church of St. Sulpice. Jacques had a particular devotion to the Blessed Virgin. It is to her intercession he attributed his mother's cure: it is before her altar that he knelt. His prayer was an act of thanksgiving and a petition for a new favor. His mother wished him to marry; he had often dreamed of cheering her old age by the affection of a daughter, and he asked the Virgin to guide him in his choice.

Happiness disposes the soul to charity. He thought of the motherless, the suffering, and the sorrowful, and prayed for them. He remembered the young girl he had just seen weeping, and prayed for her. At this moment, a woman kneeling in front of him rose, and as she passed him to leave the church he recognized the young girl. Prayer has the secret of drying our tears; her face had resumed its usual serenity. He still prayed for her: "Holy Virgin, watch over that child, grant that she may be ever pious and chaste, and all else shall be added to her." As he prepared to leave, he saw a letter beside the chair where {699} the girl had knelt. He made haste to rejoin her in order to restore it; but she had already left the church. He put it in his pocket, intending to burn it when he reached home.

That evening, as he sat by his mother's side while she slept, here-viewed the events of the day, according to his custom, preparatory to his examination of conscience. Thus he recalled the incidents of the morning, and having drawn the letter from his pocket prepared to burn it. He approached the fire and was about to throw it in. What restrains his hand? In the letter he feels something—a piece of gold, perhaps. It was not sealed; he opened it, and drew out a medal of the Blessed Virgin. The open letter excited his curiosity; he was tempted to read it. Do not blame him too severely, reader, if he yields to the temptation. He has finished his perusal, and I see he is affected. His emotion excites my curiosity, and I am tempted to read it in my turn. Will you be angry with me, or will you be accomplices in my fault? Here are the contents of the letter:

TO M. LUCIEN RIGAUT,
CORPORAL IN THE 110TH REGIMENT, METZ.

"MY DEAR BROTHER:—I cannot send you the hundred francs you ask me for. Do not blame me, it is not my fault; work is not well paid, and everything is very dear in Paris, and you must know last month I had to pay something to the man who takes care of mamma's tomb. When you return I am sure you will be much grieved if that is neglected. You shall receive fifty francs. Here are thirty from me; the remainder is from the good Abbé Garnier whom I went to see, and who wishes also to assist his extravagant child. At the same time he gave me for you a medal of the Blessed Virgin, which you will find in my letter, and which you must wear on your neck. That, my naughty brother, will preserve you from danger and keep you from sin. Promise me never more to associate with bad companions, who lead you to the cafes and who are not too pious, I am sure. You must say your prayers morning and night, go to mass on Sunday, confess, and live like a good Christian. I will not reproach you for having neglected your duties, but I am grieved, and if you could have seen your poor sister weep I am sure you would reform. Do you remember when mamma was about to leave us, and we were beside her bed restraining our tears that she might have as a last joy in this world the smile of her children, how she made us promise to be always good and religious? Never forget that promise, Lucien, for the good God punishes perjured children. What will you think of my letter? Oh, you will call me a little scold. You will be angry at first, then you will pardon me; you will put the medal around your neck, and you will write me a good letter to restore gaiety to my heart. You do not know how well I have arranged my room. When you return you will recognize our old furniture. Mamma's portrait hangs over the bureau, and I have placed our first communion pictures on each side. When I have money I buy flowers, and for four sous I give to my abode the sweet odor of the country. Shall I tell you how I employ my time? I am an early riser. First my housekeeping, then my breakfast; afterward I hear mass, and from the church to my day's work. Thanks to the recommendation of the Abbé Garnier and of the sister at the Patronage, I do not want for work. In the evening, before returning, I say a prayer in the church; then my supper, and a little reading or mending till bed-time. On Sunday after mass I go to the cemetery to pray at mamma's tomb, afterward to the Patronage, where we enjoy ourselves much. I wish you could see how good the sister is, how she spoils me, how gently she scolds me when I am not good, for in spite of all my sermons it sometimes happens that I deserve to be scolded. You see, brother, that I have no time to be sad. If in the evening I feel {700} lonely, I think of God, who is always near us, of my good friends, of you, whom I shall see next year, and these sweet thoughts make me forget the isolation of my little room. How proud I shall be to go out leaning on your arm, and to walk with you on Sunday in the Luxembourg! With the corporal's ribbons and the Italian medal, I am sure everybody will turn round to look at you. Do you know I have made a novena that you may be made sergeant before the beginning of next year? I will send you every month ten francs to finish paying your debt. Have no scruples in accepting them; it is superfluous money which would have served to buy gew-gaws. You do me a favor in taking it, as I shall be prevented from becoming a coquette. What shall I say more to you? Be good, be a Christian; but I have already said that. Do not forget me, but write often. We must love one another, since each of us is all the family of the other. Farewell, Lucien.
"Your affectionate sister,
MADELEINE."

I do not regret having been curious. I understand the emotion of Jacques. I am also moved. This letter from a sister to a brother, so simple and naive, breathes in every word the perfume of sincere piety, and in each line is found the candor of an innocent heart. When Jacques had finished reading it, he still lingered before throwing it into the fire. He wished to read it again. He read it several times; then he shut it up in a drawer, and put the medal around his neck. He was charmed. He loved this simple letter, and he loved, almost without knowing it, this child whose thoughts had been accidentally made known to him. He guessed what the sister did not tell her brother, the pawning of the cloak to complete the fifty francs, the privations to which she submits in order to send every month the promised ten francs. "I understand now," said he, "the secret of her tears. Three francs are wanting for the required sum."

He was still more moved by her tears now that he had the secret of them. "A good Christian girl," thought he. In his evening prayer she was not forgotten.

The following day, as his mother was tolerably restored, he returned to the printing office. As he worked he thought of Madeleine, and was sad that he should see her no more. It was a folly, but who has not been foolish? A little folly is the poetry of youth.

Time passed, the impression grew fainter, but was not effaced. It was like a dream we try to retain on awakening, but whose brilliant colors fade by the light of day. Mme. Durand was fully restored, but although occupied with the care of the household, she did not go out, and this explains why on Easter Sunday Jacques was alone at high mass in the church of St. Sulpice. This festival, when the faithful are united in one common joy, disposes the heart to serene impressions. After having thanked God for his mother's recovery, he dreamed of a new affection, and begged the blessed Virgin to guide him in his choice. Mass being ended, a young girl on her knees in front of him rose to leave the church, and he recognized Madeleine. He left in his turn, and during the day he thought of that sweet face, which had twice appeared to him, as if in answer to his prayer. It is Madeleine whom he will marry, her smile shall make the joy of his Christian fireside; still, how is he to see her again? He knows not; the Blessed Virgin, when she chooses, will bring him back to her.

In their evening chats, when his mother made plans of marriage for him, he never uttered Madeleine's name.

Again, on one of those mild days which are the charm of the month of April, he was walking in the Luxembourg. It was a beautiful Sunday, the lilacs were in flower, and the old garden seemed rejuvenated in its new dress. As he thought of Madeleine, {701} two verses from Brizeux recurred to his memory:

  "Vienne Avril, et jeunesse, amours, fleurs sont écloses;
  Dieu sous la même loi mit les plus belles choses."

At the turn of a walk, in a fresh, simple dress, he saw her once more. When she had passed he followed her. He knew not why himself, but an indescribable charm attracted and retained him near her. He left the Luxembourg, went down the Boulevard Mont Parnasse, and saw her enter a house which he recognized as an asylum for young work-women.

One morning, as he stopped at Antoine's lodging, he saw on his face traces of sorrow.

"You seem sad," he said to him; "has any misfortune happened to you?"

"No," replied Antoine, "but I am grieved. A young woman, beg pardon, who has lived above for two months, has just fallen ill, of bad fever, the doctor says. She is a good girl, M. Jacques—a good industrious girl. She has worked hard and sat up late, which brought on fever, and when I think of it I am troubled."

"Is she alone?" asked Jacques.

"Entirely alone; but so gay, of a disposition so sweet, that though poorly fed and overworked she never complained. When she passed, morning and night, she had always a pleasant word for old Antoine. You will not believe it, but for three days she has not been down. I have been as much afflicted as if she were my own child."

So saying, he wiped a tear which fell on his white mustache.

During the day Jacques recalled the words of the old man. He was sad at the thought of the poor girl, sick without a friend near her, for even Antoine was detained at the lodge during his wife's absence. He did not know her (and that was not surprising, as in Paris two neighbors often live strangers to each other) and had never seen her: he was troubled that she suffered, and that no one was near her to alleviate her suffering. He resolved to speak to his mother in the evening of her case, that she might go and take care of her. He thought how Madeleine might fall sick, and have no one near her. He determined to confide to his mother the secret of his love, and to beg her to see Madeleine and obtain her consent to their marriage.

In the evening he informed his mother of their neighbor's illness, and the next day Mme. Durand took her place at her bedside. It was a dangerous illness, but youth, good care, prayer, and a novena to the Blessed Virgin triumphed, and at the end of fifteen days she began to improve. During this time Mme. Durand devoted herself to this sweet, patient child. When her care was no longer necessary she continued to go every morning to her patient's room. They worked and talked together. Mme. Durand spoke of her son and she of her mother whom she had lost, and insensibly a mutual affection sprang up between them. Jacques listened with interest to his mother's praise of the sick child, and was for a moment distracted from his remembrance of Madeleine. He had, moreover, that modesty of true love which shrank from the avowal of its tenderness. His mother knew nothing of his love, and touched by the sweetness and patience of the young girl whom she had nursed, hoped she might yet become her son's wife.

One evening in the month of June he was walking with his mother in the gardens of the Luxembourg. He remembered his last meeting with Madeleine, which recalled these verses of Brizeux:

                "Un jeune homme
  Natlf du même eudroit, travailleur, économe
  En vòyant sa belle âme, en voyant sou beau corps
  L'airnée: les vieilles gens firent lea deux accords."

He was about to speak to his mother of Madeleine when she said to him, "My son, you are entering your {702} twenty-sixth year, it is time for you to marry, and if you wish, I should like to call our neighbor, the young girl whom I have nursed, my daughter."

"Mother," said Jacques, "I cannot marry her, I love another." He then related his simple story, and pronounced for the first time Madeleine's name. Mme. Durand listened much moved. She understood and shared the trusting faith of her son. "My child," said she, "it shall be as you desire. I will go on Sunday to the Patronage."

The week passed. Mme. Durand continued to see her patient often, and she, nearly restored, came sometimes to her apartment at the time Jacques was at the printing office, for his mother wished to prevent a meeting which might perhaps trouble an innocent heart. But on Saturday, having returned sooner than usual, he found the young girl in his mother's room. They conversed a moment, and she withdrew. In the pallid face he recognized the sweet countenance of Madeleine. When she had gone, he embraced his mother, weeping and smiling at the same time. "It is she, it is my sweet Madeleine." His mother, returning his embrace, exclaimed, "She shall be your wife and my daughter."

I must tell you how, on Jacques' return from work, Mme. Durand went for Madeleine, how they passed many a pleasant evening in conversation or in reading a good book, and under their mother's eye loved each other with a pure and earnest love.

At the end of a month Mme. Durand obtained the consent of Madeleine, but she said nothing to her of her son's secret, of their meeting, of the letter, of the feelings so long cherished, nor of the protection of Mary, who had brought together these two Christian souls. This she left for him to relate one day when he was alone with his betrothed. She listened much affected, and you may be surprised to learn that she forgot to ask for the lost letter and the medal of the Virgin.

Mme. Durand saw the good abbé and the sister at the Patronage, and they approved the marriage. The consent of the soldier brother was asked and obtained.

The marriage was to take place in a few days. "Beg pardon," says Antoine, "these two young people were made for each other—a fine match really. You will not believe me, but I love them as if they were my own children."

Lucien came to Paris for the wedding. From the first he made a conquest of Antoine. It turned out that Antoine too had served in the 110th. The two heroes talked of their campaigns. One related the battle of Champaubert, the other that of Solferino. The medal of St. Helena fraternized with the Italian medal; they drank to the laurels of the old 110th, to the triumphs of the new. The veteran and the conscript became the best friends in the world.

The great day arrived. The abbé blessed the union and Antoine gave away the bride. He straightened his bent figure; he put a new ribbon in his medal. He was prouder than on the evening of Champaubert, when Napoleon said, "Soldiers of the 110th, you are heroes?" Brother Lucien, with his corporal's badge and his Italian medal, added much to the brilliancy of the cortege. Mesdames Durand and Antoine put on their richest dresses. What shall we say of Madeleine in her bridal dress? of her veil, and the wreath upon her auburn tresses? of the sweet face reflecting the purity of an innocent heart and a chaste love? of the tears which flow when the heart is too full? of the sacred hour when this Christian couple unite in a common prayer?

Now they are married they do not seek pleasures abroad. Their happiness is found in their daily labor, their evening conversation, or reading; on Sunday, after mass, a walk to the Tuileries, while their mother at their side smiles on their love. Their hearts are drawn so near together that {703} they beat in unison, they think and feel at the same time. At last a child makes one more joy in this joyous house—one stronger bond between these united souls. Such is their pure affection: a love which age can never wither, a love born of a prayer, and blest by God.

Jacques has reaped the fruit of his labor; he has paid all the debts of the past, and ease and plenty have returned to the household. He hopes to be soon taken into partnership with his employer.

They do not wish to leave the old house in the Rue du Four-Saint-Germain, so filled with sweet memories, but they have taken a lower floor, they have a large apartment, and are almost rich. The poor have their share of their riches.

Lucien, the soldier, has entirely reformed, and has risen to the rank of sergeant. Perhaps he may yet wear an officer's epaulettes.

Old Antoine grows old, but his heart remains young; his figure is more bent, but he still straightens it when he speaks of Napoleon, and relates to our friends the battle of Champaubert. He was the godfather of the little boy. "A fine child," said he "Beg pardon, we will make a general of him." "I am willing, I am sure," said Madeleine, "but we must first make him a Christian."

From The London Review.

CATHOLIC PROGRESS IN LONDON.

There are few questions upon which there exists a greater variety of opinion, and with regard to which such contradictory statements are published, as upon the increase of Roman Catholicism in the metropolis. There are those on one hand who believe that it has made no progress at all, and that the rumors of "conversions," and even those Roman Catholic buildings which have of late years sprung up in such abundance around us, are not to be taken as proofs of such an increase in the numbers of Roman Catholics as the latter at least seem to indicate. Others believe without doubting that the Catholic Church is silently and energetically spreading its ramifications over the metropolis, and that there is hardly a household of any respectability in which its agents, in some form or other, have not contrived to get a footing; while there are persons who go so far as to assert that many of the Protestant clergy themselves are the direct emissaries of Rome, doing her work, and doing it consciously—nay, doing it under compact—while receiving the pay of the National Church. We believe that the truth will be found to lie between these extreme views. Not only has the Church of Rome gained ground in London, but it is steadily progressing, even at the present time, though by no means at such a rate, except in certain parishes, as to occasion the slightest danger to the Protestant cause, if only a moderate amount of energy and good will is shown by the Reformed denominations in securing their flocks within their own folds. We have already stated our belief that the fact of a clergyman holding High or Low Church views is not in any manner whatever necessarily connected with the increase of Catholicism among his congregation, but that such increase is owing either to the lack of a sufficient staff of the Protestant clergy to {704} repel its advances, or to the apathy or inefficiency of the incumbent, or, as may be especially shown in some wealthy districts, to that mysterious want of power in the clergy of the Church of England over the minds of the rich and influential of their parishioners. And that this view is not without some basis in fact, will be seen when we have described the present relative position of the Catholic and Anglican Churches in the wealthy, aristocratic, and populous parish of Kensington, comprising as it does the three wards of Notting-hill, Kensington, and Brompton.

Formerly, for the accommodation of the whole of the Roman Catholics of the parish of Kensington, there was but one small chapel near the High street, which appeared amply sufficient for the members of that creed. But ten or twelve years ago a Roman Catholic builder purchased, at an enormous price, a plot of ground about three acres in extent beside the church of the Holy Trinity, Brompton. For a time considerable mystery prevailed as to the uses it was to be applied to; but, shortly after the buildings were commenced, they were discovered to be for the future residence and church of the Oratorian fathers, then established in King William street, Strand. As soon as a portion of the building was finished, the fathers removed to it from their former dwelling; and the chapel, a small and commodious erection, was opened for divine service. At first the congregation was of the scantiest description; even on Sundays at high mass, small as the chapel was, it was frequently only half filled, while, on week days, at many of the services, it was no uncommon circumstance to find the attendances scarcely more numerous than the number of priests serving at the altar. By degrees the congregation increased, till the chapel was found too small for their accommodation, and extensive additions were made to it; but these, again, were soon filled to overflowing, and further alterations had to be made, till at last the building was capable of holding without difficulty from 2,000 to 2,500 persons. It is now frequently so crowded at high mass that it is difficult for an individual entering it after the commencement of the service to find even standing room. In the meantime the monastery itself, if that is the proper term, was completed—a splendid appearance it presents— and we believe is now fully occupied.

The Roman Catholic population in the parish, or mission, under the spiritual direction of the fathers of the Oratory, now comprises between 7,000 and 8,000 souls. The average attendance at mass on Sundays is about 5,000, and the average number of communions for the last two years has been about 45,000 annually. But in addition to this church, Kensington has three others, St. Mary's, Upper Holland street, St. Simon Stock, belonging to the Carmelite Friars, and the church of St. Francis Assissi in Notting Hill. Of monasteries, or religious communities of men, it has the Oratorians before mentioned, and the Discalced Carmelites, in Vicarage place. Of convents of ladies, it has the Assumption in Kensington square, the Poor Clares Convent in Edmond terrace, the Franciscan Convent in Portobello road, the Sisters of Misericorde, 195 Brompton road, and the Sisters of Jesus, 4 Holland villas. Of schools, the Roman Catholics possess, in the parish of Kensingtion, the Orphanage in the Fulham road, the Industrial School of St. Vincent de Paul, as well as the large Industrial Schools for girls in the southern ward. All these schools are very numerously attended, the gross number of pupils amounting to 1,200, those of the Oratory alone being 1,000. The kindness and consideration shown by the Roman Catholic teachers to the children of the poor is above all praise, not only in Kensington, but in all localities where they are under their charge.

It might be imagined from this account of the Roman Catholic institutions in Kensington, that a general {705} rush had been made upon that parish, and that the surrounding districts were comparatively free from Roman Catholics. Such, however, is very far from being the case. In the union of Fulham and Hammersmith we have the Roman Catholic church of St. Thomas of Canterbury, the church of the Holy Trinity, Brook-green, and the church of Our Lady of Grace, Turnham-green. Of monasteries there are the St. Mary's Training College and the Brothers of Mercy, and for ladies there is the order of the Good Shepherd. Of charities and schools they have the Holy Trinity alms-houses on Brook-green, a home for aged females, a refuge for female penitents, most admirably managed and producing a most beneficial effect, an excellent reformatory for criminal boys, the large industrial schools of St. Vincent de Paul, and a home, St. Joseph's, for destitute boys. In Bays-water there is the cathedral of St. Mary's of the Angels (of which the celebrated Dr. Manning is the superior) and the convent of Notre Dame de Sion. In Chelsea there is the church of St. Mary's, Cadogan terrace, a convent for the Sisters of Mercy, another for the Third Order of Servites, as well as two well conducted and numerously attended schools.

In the united parishes of St. Margaret's and St. John's, Westminster, a few years since, the priests opened their campaign with considerable energy. In addition to their church in the Horsferry road, which was opened in 1813, they erected those of St. Peter's and St. Edmond's in Palace street, the superior priest of the latter being the celebrated Father Roberts, a man not only respected for the energy he shows in the cause of his religion, but beloved by all classes for his philanthropy. To these some schools and convents were added, the most celebrated of the latter being that of the Sisters of Charity in Victoria street. At first the priests seemed to be sanguine of success in the parish; but their advance was met by men of as much ability, courage, and energy as themselves.

On the Surrey side of the water the Catholic Church has the magnificent cathedral dedicated to St. George, in St. George's Fields; the church of the Most Holy Trinity, Parker's road, Dockhead, Bermondsey; the church of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, Trinity road, Rotherithe; that of Our Lady of La Salette and St. Joseph, Melior street, Southwark; and the church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Windham street, Camberwell; beside several others in Peckham, Clapham, Lambeth, and the surrounding districts. Of communities of men there are the Capuchines at Peckham and at Clapham, the Redemptorists, and the Brothers of the Christian Schools. Of convents they have the Religious of the Faithful Virgin at Norwood, which also comprises an orphanage; the order of the Sisters of Mercy in Bermondsey; the order of the Sisters of the Christian Retreat, St. Joseph's, Kennington; the Little Sisters of the Poor, Fentiman road, Lambeth; beside one or two others of minor importance. It should also be remarked that all these establishments, with one or two exceptions, have sprung up within the last ten or twenty years. Of the numbers of the congregations of the different churches it would be difficult to form a just idea, but they are certainly very great; that properly attached to St. George's cathedral alone we have been assured, on most reliable Roman Catholic authority, amounting to 12,000 or 13,000. The number of children attending the schools is doubtless proportionably great.

In the north-eastern portion of the metropolis, we find the Roman Catholics, although they have lately built several new churches, are fully occupied in holding their own ground without exerting themselves to make converts. And here, opposed as we are to their creed on doctrinal points, it would be unjust to withhold our meed of praise to the exertions of the priests in relieving the temporal miseries of {706} their poor. It would be difficult to imagine charitable efforts carried on more indefatigably or nobly. Few who have not visited and personally inspected the different courts and alleys in the neighborhood of Spitalfields, Bethnal-green, St. George's-in-the-East, and Ratcliffe Highway, inhabited as they are by the poor Irish, can have an idea of the abject poverty which reigns in them, or the amount of patience, courage, and Christian feeling necessary to relieve it. Yet all this is cheerfully performed by the Roman Catholic priesthood, their energies appearing to increase in proportion as the difficulties and dangers before them become greater. It would perhaps be an injustice to their body in this district to select any for notice in preference to the rest; but we cannot refrain from making special mention of the labors of the Rev. Father Kelley, of Ratcliffe Highway, and the Rev. Father Chaurain, of Spitalfields, into the results of whose exertions we have made personal investigation.

In the northern districts of the metropolis, especially in Islington and its surrounding neighborhoods, the Roman Catholics appear to have made considerable progress. They have lately built several new churches as well as houses for religious communities, both for men and women. That their progress in the metropolis is not solely the result of the High-Church practices in the establishment may be presumed from the fact that, although the inhabitants of Islington and its vicinity are particularly noted for their attachment to Low-Church principles, Catholicism has gained more ground there than in localities where Puseyism is dominant. In the north-western districts it does not appear to have increased, though the churches are well attended, and the congregations apparently very numerous. That of one of the largest, Our Lady's church, in St. John's Wood, is 6,000, and the children in the schools 600. In the central districts of London Roman Catholic churches are very numerous and proportionately well attended; those in Moorfields, and those in the neighborhood of Covent Garden and Piccadilly, being particularly so.

One of the most effective means employed by the Roman Catholics to make the conversions is the opening of schools for the education of children of the poor; nor do they hesitate to admit that these schools are not only open to the children of their own persuasion, but to all who may choose to avail themselves of them. This is clear from the speech of the late Cardinal Wiseman at the Roman Catholic Congress held at Malines in the autumn of 1863. Speaking of the hundreds of ragged children, scarcely knowing their parents, he had been accustomed to meet in the different lanes and alleys of the poorer London localities, he says: "We are doing all we can to gather these poor little outcasts together, and to give them Christian training. The schools in which they are taught, and to which I am at present alluding, are themselves situated in a truly fearful spot, Charles street, Drury lane. We owe them in a great measure to the great zeal of the fathers of the Oratory. Their cost has been no less than £12,000. The Religious Sisters from Tournay, with a devotion truly heroic, have undertaken the care of the girls' school. For some time past we have had the consolation of seeing increased, by 1,000 a year, the number of children attending our schools for the poor; there still remain 17,000 poor children who attend no school."

The Catholic Church judges rightly that a few years hence the children under its care will not only augment the number of adult members of its faith, but will proportionately swell their ranks in the next generation. Nor is this danger to the Protestant cause to be despised. All their schools are admirably managed, and the children in them are treated with the greatest kindness and consideration. We have visited several, and in all we remarked a great affection and {707} respect existing in the minds of the pupils for their teachers, the latter not considering that their duties are over when the classes are dismissed, but afterward entering into their amusements and occupations with great patience and good humor. We lately visited unexpectedly the school alluded to by Cardinal Wiseman, and although lessons were over we found one of the masters in the large play-room busily employed in instructing a dozen of the most ragged urchins it would be possible to find in that squalid and impoverished locality in the mysteries of spinning peg-tops. Such acts of kindness to children are not forgotten when they grow up, and a better means of binding them to their faith when adults it would be impossible to imagine.

In Gate street, Lincoln's Inn-fields, is another school of the same description. We have watched its progress since its establishment, and marked the great increase in the number of its scholars. It commenced with very few, but must now number several hundreds. Those in Drury-lane have more than four hundred children, among whom, perhaps, not ten before the buildings were erected were receiving any instruction whatever. All the Roman Catholic charities appear to be admirably managed; their orphanages especially so. Those of the Sisters of Charity in Victoria street, Westminster, and Norwood, considering the comparatively small means at the disposal of their priesthood, are perfect models of what institutions of the kind ought to be; at the same time, it must not be imagined that the Roman Catholic charities in London are solely of a description calculated to obtain converts to their creed. Their reformatories for fallen women and their exertions for the relief of the sick are worthy of the highest praise. An hospital, with a church attached, solely for chronic and incurable diseases, has for some time been established in Great Ormond street, at the expense of a gentleman of wealth. The hospital is under the care of the prioress and sisters of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, and we never saw an infirmary of the kind better managed. A large staff of nuns nurse the sick; and not only are their numbers greater in proportion to those of the patients than in any of our metropolitan hospitals, but their attention and kindness to those under their charge might serve as a model to many of our Protestant institutions of a similar character.

{708}

From Chambers's Journal.

A VANISHING RACE.

The residence of Captain C. F. Hall in the arctic regions, and his explorations among the solemn and majestic wastes surrounded by the "hyperborean seas," have invested the Esquimaux with a degree of interest which they had never previously excited. The savage inhabitants of the more beautiful and fertile regions of the earth have been observed by travellers with close and careful attention, which leads to hopeful efforts for their civilization. As the map of the world is opened up to our comprehension, new schemes and prospects for the advance of the human race are opened with it; savans, artists, missionaries, merchants, gird themselves to the contest with the material and moral conditions of the peoples yet, though the world's day has lasted so long, in their infancy, whose unknown future may contain histories as brilliant as those of the civilizations of the present and the past. But there is a race who have not excited such hopes, who have not given rise to such exertions—a race whose life of unimaginable hardship gives them a mysterious resemblance to the phantoms of mythological belief, and places them beyond the reach of the sympathies of civilization by its physical conditions, the amelioration of which is impossible. Beyond the stern barrier which nature has set in the northernmost part of her awful realm, behind the terrible rampart of snow and ice, and storm and darkness, these creatures of her wrath, rather than of her bounty, dwell. To reach their land, the traveller must leave behind him every familiar object, and abandon every habit or need of ordinary life. He must bid farewell to green trees, to fertile fields, to the crops which give food to man and beast, to the domestic animals, to every mode of conveyance, to every implement of common use, to food and clothing such as even the poorest and roughest sons of a less terrible clime may command; to the thousand voices of nature, even in its secluded nooks, It is a mockery to speak of the arctic regions as the land of the Esquimaux, for nowhere on the earth is man less sovereign. Here nature is indeed grand beyond conception, but also terrible, implacable, and impenetrable. She sets man aside in her awful scorn; he is a thing of no moment, a cumberer of the ice-fields, learning the simple lessons whereby he supports his squalid existence from the brutes, which are lordlier than he, inasmuch as the ice-slavery is no chain of servitude to them; and heedless of him, of his terrible hunger and destitution, of his hopeless isolation, she builds her ice-palaces upon the seas, and locks the land in her glittering ice-chains, and flings her terrific banners of flame wide against the northern sky; and sends her voice abroad, without a tone of pity in its vibrations, sounding through the troubled depths of the waters and the rent masses of the many-tinted icebergs. Nature is indeed beautiful in her northern strongholds, but her beauty shows only its terrible aspects, its dread grandeur. The face of the mighty mother does not soften into a smile for the feebleness of her youngest-born offspring, but is fixed in its awful sublimity. There is no point of contact between this ice-kingdon and European civilization, and men of our race and tongue shrink from it with an appalled sadness, for has it now been the tomb of many of our brave and beloved? Three centuries ago it earned that evil reputation, which, in the then elementary state of geographical knowledge, and the general prevalence of superstition, assumed a weird and baleful form. It has but increased {709} in degree, though differing in kind, in our days, and we think of the arctic regions as the sepulchre of the beloved dead, the land toward which the heart of England yearned, and which kept pitiless silence through long years of hope deferred. But of its people we do not think; we are satisfied to have but a vague notion of them; to wonder, amid the many marvels of that mighty problem—the distribution of the human race—how human beings ever found their way to those dreadful fastnesses, more cruel in their exaction of human suffering than the desert and the forest. This indifference gives way when we learn what manner of people these are whom we call Esquimaux, a word which signifies "eaters of raw food," but who call themselves Innuit, or "the people," and explain their own origin by a story which is a pleasing testimony to the common possession of self-conceit by all nations. They say that the Creator made white men first, but was dissatisfied with them, regarded them as worthless unfinished creatures, and straightway set about making the Innuit people, who proved perfectly satisfactory.

Captain Hall lived among this strange race for two years and a half, and he is about to return and prosecute his researches in Boothia and King William's Land. This time, his object is to trace the remnants of the Franklin expedition, which—as he finds the history of the few events which have ever marked the progress of time in that distant land handed down by oral tradition with extraordinary distinctness—he has no doubt of being able to do. His first journey was in search of relics of the Frobisher expedition, and was as successful as it was daring, patient, and persevering. His experiences were strange in all respects, and in many most revolting; but we owe much to this cheerful, courageous, simple-hearted American gentleman, who has revealed the Esquimaux to us as Captain Grant has revealed the African tribes, and oriental tourists the dwellers in the deserts. There is poetical harmony in the stern conditions of life among the Innuits; there is the impress of sadness and of sterility upon them all. Time itself changes its meaning in a land where

  "The sun starts redly up
  To shine for half a year,"

and dim wintry twilight lasts throughout the other half, and hunger is the normal state of the people. The traveller's route is to be traced on the map, which is mere guess-work hitherto, up the western side of Davis's Strait; and once away from Holsteinborg, the journey assumes all its savage features. The terrible icebergs rear their menacing masses in the track of the ship; the sun pours its beams upon them, and bathes them in golden light; they appear in fantastic shapes of Gothic cathedral, of battlemented tower, of clear single-pierced spire, of strong fenced city, of jewel-mountain, of vast crystal hills; and so, as the voyager leaves art and civilization behind, their most supreme forms flash a mirage-like reminiscence upon him, intensifying the contrast of the prospect, and luring him to a frantic and futile regret.

A grand and terrible confusion reigns around; the voyager shrinks from the overwhelming scene, where ranges of mountains, islands, rocks, castles, huge formless masses, and gorgeous prismatic lights, surround that laboring speck upon the mystic sea, of whose littleness he is so small an atom; and a strange sense, which is not fear, but awe, comes to him with the knowledge that nothing of this sublime confusion is real, on the horizon or beyond it. For all the time of his stay in the arctic regions he is to be surrounded by contradictions, by the sublimest manifestations of nature, by the lowest conditions of humanity, by gorgeous and majestic optical delusions, and by the hardest and most grovelling facts of daily existence; he must share, to their fullest extent, the relentless physical needs of the {710} people, and live, if he would live at all, in close contact with them—and yet his solitude must be inwardly profound and unapproachable; his purposes unintelligible to his associates; and their language, elementary in itself, dimly and scantily comprehended by him even in its most sparing forms. All this without any of the alleviations of life among savages in southern countries—without the warmth, which, if sometimes oppressive, is ordinarily grateful—without the rich and genial beauties of nature—without the resources of sport without the natural fruits of the earth—without the intellectual occupation of speculating upon development, of ascertaining capabilities, or of investigating sources of wealth. The civilized dweller in arctic regions has none of these. He beholds, with admiration so solemn as to be painful, the unapproachable dignity and hard implacable stillness of nature; but he never dreams of treasure to be wrested from the cells of the ice-prison; he seeks the dead—the dead of centuries ago—the dead of a decade since, to be found, it may be, incorporated with their frozen resting place; for the fiat of nature arrests decay in these terrible regions, where death and life are always at close gripes with one another. While the mind is ceaselessly impressed with sadness and solemnity, the body asserts its claim to superiority; it will not be forgotten or neglected, for cold encompasses it with unrelaxing menace of death, and hunger preys upon the vitals, whose heat wanes rapidly in the pitiless climate, and which crave for the nutriment so hard to procure, so repulsive when procured.

Toil is the law of the ice-clad land—toil, not to wrest from the bosom of the earth her children's sustenance, but to tear from the amphibious creatures, from whom they have learned how to shelter themselves from the cold, and whose skins cover them, the unctuous flesh, which they devour raw in enormous quantities. The Innuit are, on the whole, a gentle people, driven by the relentless need and severity of their lives into close and peaceful companionship. They have no king, no government, no law, no defined religion, no property; they have, for all these, custom—the oldest law; they are animated by the same spirit that dictated the reply once made to one who sat by Jacob's well: "Our fathers worshipped in this mountain, and we worship." As "the old Innuits" did, so do their successors. They have no bread, no medicine, no household furniture; they are poor human waifs upon the wide white bosom of the frozen seas; and they have, no help or resource but in the seal, the walrus, the white bear, the rein-deer, and the wonderful Esquimaux dogs, which are by far the noblest living creatures in all those sterile wastes. From the seal they have learned to make the igloo, which is the house of the Innuit. They eat the flesh of this animal, and drink its fresh warm blood; they kill its young, and eagerly swallow the milk of the mother, found in the stomach of the baby seal. When the sudden summer comes, and the snow melts, and leaves the surface of the ice bare, they are houseless; the igloo melts away; their home is but of frozen water, and suddenly it disappears. Then they have recourse to the tupic, which is a huge sheet of skins hung across a horizontal pole, supported at either end. Their bed is a snow platform, strewn with the moss which is the rein-deer's food, and covered with skins. Their choicest dainties are the fat of the tuktoo, or rein-deer, the marrow procured by mashing the bones of the legs, and the thick, white, unctuous lining of the whale-hide.

The interior of an igloo presents a picture more repulsive than that of any African hut or Indian wigwam, more distressing to human feelings and degrading to human pride. The igloo is a dome-shaped building, made of ice-blocks, with an aperture in the roof, and a rude doorway at one side, closed {711} with ice-blocks, when the inmates are assembled. The snow platform which forms the bed is occupied by the women and the stranger. Men and women are clad in skins, put together with neatness and ingenuity. The dress of the sexes differs only in two particulars; that of the women is furnished with a long tail, depending from the jacket, and has a sort of hood, in which loads and children are carried. The life of the infant is preserved by its naked body being kept in contact with that of the mother. One household implement they possess—it is a stone lamp; something like a trough, with a deep groove in it, in which the dried moss, used as a wick, floats in the seal oil, expressed by the teeth of the women from lumps of blubber, which they patiently "mill" until the precious unguent is all procured. But this lamp too often fails them, and darkness and hunger take up frequent abode with the Innuit. Days and nights are passed by the men, sitting singly, in death-like stillness and silence, by the hole which they have found, far under the snow, at which the seal will "blow." It is strange and terrible to think of those watches, in the midst of the desolation, under that arctic sky, with the cold dense fog now swooping, now lifting, in the enforced stillness, with famine gnawing the watcher, and famine at home in the igloo, and the chance of food depending on the sureness of one instantaneous stroke, down through the snow, through the narrow orifice in the ice, into the throat of the animal with the sleek skin, and the mournful human eyes, which vainly implore mercy from raging hunger.

When the Innuit brings the seal to the igloo, a crowd invades the narrow space, for the simplest hospitality prevails, and the long watch, the skilful stroke, do not constitute sole ownership of the prize. The skin is stripped off the huge unsightly carcass, and a horrible scene ensues. The flesh is torn or cut with the stone knives in large lumps, and having been first licked by the women, to remove any hairs or other adhesive matter, is distributed to the party, and devoured raw; the blood is drunk, the bones are mashed, the entrails are greedily eaten, the dogs sharing in all; and the blubber is made to yield its oil by the disgusting process already described. One turns silenced from the picture; from the sights, and sounds, and scents; from the vision of dark faces, eager with gluttonous longing, gathered round the red, flaring light; from the skin-clothed bodies, reeking with grease and filth, and the foul exhalations of the mutilated animal; from the lumps of flesh torn by savage hands, and crammed dripping into distended mouths; from the steaming blood, and the human creatures who rapturously quaff it in the presence of the white man, who sits among them and feeds with them, whose heart yearns with dumb compassion for them, who has wonderful scientific instruments in his pockets, and his Bible in his breast. As the seal teaches the Innuits the art of housing themselves, so the white bear teaches them how to kill the walrus, their most plentiful and frequent food, when the ice is drifting, and the unwieldy creatures lie upon the blocks close inshore; then the bear climbs the overhanging precipice, and taking a heavy block in his deft forepaws, he hurls it with rare skill and nicety of aim upon the basking monster below. So brutes train men in those dreadful regions, and not men brutes. The life of the Innuits is full of such contradictions. And their deaths? From the contemplation of these one turns away appalled, for they die in utter solitude.

When Captain Hall first heard of this horrible custom, he started off at once to see its truth; and having removed the blocks with which the doorway had been built up, entered an igloo, and found a woman who had yet many days to linger thus fastened up in her living tomb. Again, hearing that a woman had been abandoned to die, at a great distance, he set forth, {712} and having reached the spot with immense difficulty and danger, he managed to remove the snow and the block which closed the hole in the top of the igloo, lowered himself into it, and found the woman dead, and frozen as hard as her bier and her tomb, with a sweet serene smile upon the marble face. So this is the close of a life of toil and privation—the withdrawal of every kindred face, the fearful solitude of the ice-walls, the terrible arctic darkness and silence, and the frozen corpse lying unshrouded, naked, beneath the frozen skins, until the resurrection. Surely the angel of death is an angel of mercy there, and does his errand gently, bearing away the lonely, terrified spirit to the city of gold, the gates of pearl, the jasper sea, the land where there is no darkness, physical or mental, for evermore. The earth, always pitiless to them, which never feeds them from her bosom, does not suffer her dead children of the Innuit people to sleep their last sleep in her lap. Their graves are only blocks of ice piled around and above the corpses, which remain unharmed, unless when the blocks melt, as they sometimes do, and the wolves, dogs, or bears gain access to the frozen remains. The Innuits are dying out; disease is making havoc among them; consumption, formerly unknown, is thinning their numbers by its slow, furtive, murderous advance; their children are few, and fewer still are reared; and the long story of awful desolation draws to a close. Who can regret it? Who can do aught but desire that the giant wastes of the arctic regions should be left to the soulless creatures of God; that the great discord between them and human life has ceased to trouble the harmony of creation; that the mystery of such an existence is quietly laid at rest, among the things which "we know not now, but which we shall know hereafter?"

MISCELLANY.

SCIENCE.

A New Kind of Mirror.—The Chemical News states that M. Dode, a French chemist, has introduced platinum mirrors, which are greatly admired, and which present this advantage, that the reflecting metal is deposited on the outer surface of the glass, and thus any defect in the latter is concealed. The process, which is patented in Paris, is described as follows: Chloride of platinum is dissolved in water, and a certain quantity of oil of lavender is added to the solution. The platinum immediately leaves the aqueous solution and passes to the oil, which holds it in suspension in a finely divided state. To the oil so charged the author adds litharge and borate of lead, and paints a thin coat of this mixture over the surface of the glass, which is then carried to a proper furnace. At a red heat the litharge and borate of lead are fused, and cause the adhesion of the platinum to the softened glass. The process is very expeditious. A single baking, M. Dode says, will furnish 200 metres of glass ready for commerce. It would take fifteen days, he says, to coat the same extent with mercury by the ordinary plan.

African Silkworm.—A silkworm before unknown in Europe has been introduced into France from Senegal, and without suffering from change of climate. It yields a richer silk than that of any other worm known to naturalists, and its cocoons are twice the ordinary weight. It is to be tried in Algiers, and if successful there, this new and rich silk may become in time an important article of commerce.

Science in a Balloon.—Mr. Glaisher has {713} given, in a lecture at the Royal Institution, a resumé of his scientific experiments in balloons. Tables recording the decline of temperature with elevation, show that when the sky was clear a more rapid decline took place than when the sky was cloudy. Under a clear sky, a fall of 1° takes place within 100 feet of the earth, but at heights exceeding 25,000 feet it is necessary to pass through 1,000 feet of vertical height to obtain a fall of 1° in temperature. At extreme elevations, in both states of the sky, the air became very dry, but as far as his experiments went, was never quite free from water. From ascents made before and after sunset, Mr. Glaisher concludes that the laws which hold good by day do not hold good by night; indeed, it seemed probable that at night, for some little distance, the temperature may increase with elevation, instead of decreasing. From experiments made on solar radiation with a blackened bulb thermometer, and with Herschel's actinometer, it was inferred that the heat rays from the sun pass through space without loss, and become effective in proportion to the density or the amount of water present in the atmosphere through which they pass. If this be so, the proportion of heat received at Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn may be the same as that received at the earth, if the constituents of their atmospheres be the same as that of the earth, and greater if the amount of aqueous vapor be greater, so that the effective solar heat at Jupiter and Saturn may be greater than at either the inferior planets, Mercury or Venus, notwithstanding their far greater distances from the sun. This conclusion is most important as corroborating Professor Tyndall's experiments on aqueous vapor. Experiments on the wind showed that the velocity of the air at the earth's surface was very much less than at a high elevation. A comparison of the temperature of the dew point, as shown by different instruments, gave results proving that the temperatures of the dew point, as found by the use of the dry and wet bulb thermometers, and Daniell's hygrometer, are worthy of full confidence as far as the experiments went.

The Eruption of Mount Etna.—At a recent meeting of the Paris Academy of Sciences, an important letter was read from M. Fouqué to M. Saint-Claire Deville on the eruption of Etna, which has presented several phenomena of great scientific interest.

The eruption commenced at half-past ten on the evening of January 31. On the previous day two successive shakings of the earth had been noticed. Just before the eruption began a violent earthquake was felt, the wave travelling to the north-east; after this, slight oscillations continued until about 4 A.M. Large flames now rose from a point on the north-east side of Etna 5,500 feet above the snow line, and lava began to flow rapidly. In two or three days the lava traversed a space of 19,000 feet, with a width of from 10,000 to 12,000, and a variable thickness, but often reaching to the depth of 30 or 60 feet. After destroying for some distance everything in its passage, the current of lava struck one of the old craters, and then bifurcated. The stream on the west side moved very slowly, and, becoming subdivided, it nearly ceased to move; the stream on the east side fell over a deep and precipitous valley, which it soon filled, being then able to continue its progress, until finally it was stopped by a lava mound of a previous eruption.

The number of the craters is seven; of these five form a vast elliptical enclosure, the major axis of which is directed toward the north-east. A deep fissure, 1,500 feet in length, opened from the base of a former crater, Frumento, to the nearest of the present cones. This chasm, M. Fouqué shows, was probably formed by the shock at the commencement of the eruption. This fissure, and also a depression of the crater Frumento, is in a right line with the major axis of the ellipse formed by the craters. The same general fact has been several times noticed in previous eruptions.

The vapors attending an eruption have been divided into the dry, containing chiefly chloride of sodium and no water, the acid, which contain a large amount of watery vapor, the alkaline, and the carbonic. The first indicates the maximum, and the last the minimum of volcanic action. Each of these varieties of vapor, succeeding in their order, were noticed at this eruption. M. Fouqué found the dry vapor upon the still incandescent lava; the acid vapor in those parts where the temperature was over {714} 400°; the alkaline, where the temperature was lower, but generally over 100°; and finally, carbonic acid has been detected in one of the adjacent old craters, which was at the ordinary temperature. The first three varieties of vapor were thus found upon the same transverse section of the lava, less than 150 feet distant from each other. In all these vapors the atmospheric air which accompanied them was deprived of part of its oxygen, generally containing only from 18 to 19 per cent., and in some alkaline vapors the proportion was still less.

In this eruption there was a remarkable absence of sulphur and its compounds; chemical tests as well as the sense of smell could detect no trace of them. The eruption indeed was characterized by the absence of the compounds of sulphur and the abundance of the compounds of chlorine. Hydro-chlorate of ammonia, which was found in abundance, has generally been regarded as exclusively belonging to the alkaline vapors; but here it has been discovered among the other varieties, whilst the alkaline vapors were distinguished by the carbonate rather than by the hydrochlorate of ammonia.

At the present time, M. Fouqué writes, the eruption is most active in the four lowest craters; these throw liquid lava into the air, and emit a nearly colorless smoke; the three superior craters eject solidified lava and black stones, at the same time pouring out a dense smoke charged with aqueous vapor and brown-colored ashes.

The three higher craters produce every two or three minutes a very loud report resembling the rolling of thunder; the four lower craters, on the contrary, send forth a rapid succession of ringing sounds, which it is impossible to count. These sounds follow each other without any cessation, and are only to be compared to the noise produced by a series of blows from a hammer falling on an anvil. If the ancients heard these noises in former eruptions, it is easily conceivable how they imagined a forge to exist in the centre of the volcano, with Cyclops for the master workman. The lava is black, rich in pyroxene, and strongly attracted by a magnet. Since the commencement of the eruption, the central crater of Etna has emitted white vapors, which continually cover its summit. Several good photographs of the eruption have been taken by M. Berthier, who accompanied M. Fouqué in his explorations, which were by no means unattended with danger.

M. Saint-Claire Deville then made some observations on this paper. He explained the almost entire absence of sulphur by the fact that M. Fouqué only examined the vapors from the lava. These nearly always contain chlorine for their electro-negative element, and scarcely show, and that not until later, sulphuretted and carbonic vapors. After the eruption of Vesuvius in 1861, very light deposits of sulphur were found covering the hydrochlorate of ammonia, which shows that the former body is not absent from the lava. The existence of hydrochlorate of ammonia in the emanations does not necessarily exclude that of the vapors of hydrochloric and sulphuric acids.

Magnetism of Iron-clad Ships.—Staff-Commander Evans, of the British navy, and Mr. Archibald Smith, who have devoted themselves for several years to investigations into the character of the magnetism of iron-built and armor-plated ships, have embodied the results of their studies in an interesting paper read at a recent meeting of the Royal Society. It is well known that iron ships have been very difficult to navigate because of the disturbing effect of the iron upon the compass, and serious accidents have happened in consequence. But underwriters, and the whole naval profession, will be glad to hear that the difficulty and risk are now greatly lessened, if not entirely removed. For the results established by the paper in question are—That it is no longer necessary to swing a ship in order to ascertain the compass deviation, or error, seeing that it is possible to determine the various forms of error by mathematics; that an iron ship should always be built with her head to the south; if built head north, there is such a confused amount of magnetism concentrated in the stern as to have a violent disturbing effect on the compass; that if, after building, a ship is to be armor-plated, the head, during the fixing of the plates, should be turned in the opposite direction— that is, to the north; and that especial pains should be taken while building an iron ship to provide a {715} suitable place for the standard-compass. Beside these particulars, the shot and shell stowed in the vessel, the iron water-tanks, and, indeed, all the iron used in her interior fittings, are to be taken into account; and it is satisfactory to know that the influence exerted on the compass by any one or all of these conditions can be ascertained, and allowed for, as in the other cases above mentioned.

"Gyges" Explained.—The London Reader gives the following explanation of a curious experiment in optics which has been performed at one of the London theatres under the name of "Eidos AEides," and reproduced in New York under the appellation of "Gyges." It consists in causing an actor or an inanimate object which is in full view of the audience at one moment to disappear instantly, and then to reappear with the same rapidity. The means by which this is accomplished are very simple, and are to some extent similar to those used in exhibiting "Pepper's Ghost." A sheet of plain unsilvered glass is placed upon the stage, either upright or inclined at a suitable angle, at the place where the actor or object is to disappear. This glass is not perceived by the audience, and it does not interfere with their view of the scenery, etc., behind the plate. A duplicate scene representing that part of the back of the stage covered by the glass is placed at the wing, out of sight of the spectators. With the ordinary lighting of the stage the reflection of this counterfeit scene in the glass is too faint to be observed; but when a strong light is thrown upon the scene, the stage lights being lowered at the same time, the image becomes visible. This duplicate scene being an exact fac-simile of the background of the stage, the change is not noticed by the audience, the only difference being that they now see by reflection that which they saw a moment previously by direct vision. The actor, standing a sufficient distance behind the glass, is completely hidden from view, and he is again rendered visible by turning down the light on the false scene and allowing the stage lights to predominate. When "Eidos AEides" was being performed at Her Majesty's Theatre, it was, however, possible, with a good opera-glass, to distinguish the outline of the figure behind the plate. The effects produced may of course be modified. An actor may be made to appear walking or flying in the air, or dancing on a tight-rope, by eclipsing or obscuring a raised platform on which he may be placed.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

HISTORY OF ENGLAND FROM THE FALL OF WOLSEY TO THE DEATH OF ELIZABETH.
By James Anthony Froude, M.A., late fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. Volumes I. and II. 8vo., pp. 447 and 501. New York: Charles Scribner & Company.

In these two luxurious volumes we have the first instalment of an important work upon the most important period of English history. Six other volumes are to follow. Mr. Froude is a thorough good Protestant. His main purpose in this history seems to have been the glorification of the English reformers. For the worst sovereigns of the house of Tudor he displays an enthusiastic admiration which, one is tempted to believe, is half genuine sentiment, and half love of paradox. Catholics, of course, he could not have expected to satisfy; but he has gone too far to please even the members of his own Church. Of Henry VIII., whose apologist he has appropriately been called, he draws a flattering portrait:

"If Henry VIII.," he says, "had died previous to the first agitation of the divorce, his loss would have been deplored as one of the heaviest misfortunes which had ever befallen the country; and he would have left a name which would have taken its place in history by the side of that of the Black {716} Prince or of the conqueror of Agincourt. Left at the most trying age, with his character unformed, with the means at his disposal of gratifying every inclination, and married by his ministers when a boy to an unattractive woman far his senior, he had lived for thirty-six years almost without blame, and bore through England the reputation of an upright and virtuous king. Nature had been prodigal to him of her rarest gifts. In person he is said to have resembled his grandfather, Edward IV., who was the handsomest man in Europe. His form and bearing were princely; and amidst the easy freedom of his address, his manner remained majestic. No knight in England could match him in the tournament except the Duke of Suffolk; he drew with ease as strong a bow as was borne by any yeoman of his guard; and these powers were sustained in unfailing vigor by a temperate habit and by constant exercise." His state papers and letters lose nothing by comparison with those of Wolsey and Cromwell. He was an accomplished musician; he wrote and spoke in four languages; he was one of the best physicians of his age, an engineer, and a theologian. "He was 'attentive,' as it is called, 'to his religious duties,' being present at the services in the chapel two or three times a day with unfailing regularity, and showing to outward appearance a real sense of religious obligation in the energy and purity of his life." In private he was good-humored and good-natured. But "like all princes of the Plantageuet blood, he was a person of a most intense and imperious will. His impulses, in general nobly directed, had never known contradiction; and late in life, when his character was formed, he was forced into collision with difficulties with which the experience of discipline had not fitted him to contend." "He had capacity, if his training had been equal to it, to be one of the greatest of men. With all his faults about him he was perhaps the greatest of his contemporaries."

Mr. Froude does not believe that the king's scruples respecting the validity of his marriage with Catharine of Aragon were inspired by his affection for Anne Boleyn. "They had arisen to their worst dimensions before he had ever seen Anne Boleyn." But Mr. Froude's narrative of the king's early intercourse with Anne is extremely unsatisfactory, not to say disingenuous. How long Henry may have cherished his scruples in secret, our author affords us no means of guessing; but the earliest intimation which he finds of an intended divorce was in June, 1527. It was in 1525, he says, that Anne came back from France and appeared at the English court. This is an error, and is inconsistent with other statements in the same chapter; the date was 1522; and almost immediately afterward the king began to pay Anne marked attention. Her celebrated love-passage with Lord Percy took place in 1523. Mr. Froude speaks of it as follows: "Lord Percy, eldest son of Lord Northumberland, as we all know, was said to have been engaged to her. He was in the household of Cardinal Wolsey; and Cavendish, who was with him there, tells a long romantic story of the affair, which, if his account be true, was ultimately interrupted by Lord Northumberland himself." Now what will be thought of our author's honesty when we say that Cavendish repeats again and again that the match was broken off by command of the king? Lord Northumberland did not appear in the matter at all until Wolsey, by his majesty's orders, had remonstrated with the young nobleman, and threatened him with dire consequences if he should persist in a pursuit which was displeasing to his sovereign. Mr. Froude carefully suppresses all allusion to intercourse between the king and his fair favorite, until the project of the divorce was well advanced,—not discussing or discrediting the statements of other historians respecting Henry's early passion for Anne Boleyn; but simply putting them behind his back, as matters of which it did not suit his purpose to take notice. This fashion of writing may do for romance, but not for history.

In demanding a divorce from his first queen, Henry has, as we might suppose, Mr. Froude's full approval:

"It may be admitted, or it ought to be admitted, that if Henry VIII. had been contented to rest his demand for a divorce merely on the interests of the kingdom; if he had forborne, while his request was pending, to affront the princess who had for many years been his companion and his queen; if he had shown her that respect which her {717} high character gave her a right to demand, and which her situation as a stranger ought to have made it impossible to him to refuse, his conduct would have been liable to no imputation, and our sympathies would without reserve have been on his side. … His kingdom demanded the security of a stable succession; his conscience, it may not be doubted, was seriously agitated by the loss of his children; and looking upon it as the sentence of heaven upon a connection the legality of which had from the first been violently disputed, he believed that he had been living in incest and that his misfortunes were the consequence of it. Under these circumstances he had a full right to apply for a divorce."

With all its faults, Mr. Froude's book tells many wholesome truths in a very forcible manner. Here is an admission which from such an out-and-out Protestant we should hardly have looked for; he is speaking of religious persecution:

"We think bitterly of these things, and yet we are but quarrelling with what is inevitable from the constitution of the world. … The value of a doctrine cannot be determined on its own apparent merits by men whose habits of mind are settled in other forms; while men of experience know well that out of the thousands of theories which rise in the fertile soil below them, it is but one here and there which grows to maturity; and the precarious chances of possible vitality, where the opposite probabilities are so enormous, oblige them to discourage and repress opinions which threaten to disturb established order, or which, by the rules of existing beliefs, imperil the souls of those who entertain them. Persecution has ceased among ourselves, because we do not any more believe that want of theoretic orthodoxy in matters of faith is necessarily fraught with the tremendous consequences which once were supposed to be attached to it. If, however, a school of Thugs were to rise among us, making murder a religious service; if they gained proselytes, and the proselytes put their teaching in execution, we should speedily begin again to persecute opinion. What teachers of Thuggism would appear to ourselves, the teachers of heresy actually appeared to Sir Thomas More, only being as much more hateful as the eternal death of the soul is more terrible than the single and momentary separation of it from the body. There is, I think, no just ground on which to condemn conscientious Catholics on the score of persecution, except only this: that as we are now convinced of the injustice of the persecuting laws, so among those who believed them to be just, there were some who were led by an instinctive protest of human feeling to be lenient in the execution of those laws; while others of harder nature and more narrow sympathies enforced them without reluctance, and even with exultation."

The following extract from an account of the feelings of the mass of the English people during the early stages of the divorce affair, must be rather unpalatable to the High-Church Episcopalians:

"They believed—and Wolsey was, perhaps, the only leading member of the privy council, except Archbishop Warham, who was not under the same delusion—that it was possible for a national church to separate itself from the unity of Christendom, and at the same time to crush or prevent innovation of doctrine; that faith in the sacramental system could still be maintained, though the priesthood by whom those mysteries were dispensed should minister in golden chains. This was the English historical theory handed down from William Rufus, the second Henry, and the Edwards; yet it was and is a mere phantasm, a thing of words and paper fictions, as Wolsey saw it to be. Wolsey knew well that an ecclesiastical revolt implied, as a certainty, innovation of doctrine; that plain men could not and would not continue to reverence the office of the priesthood, when the priests were treated as the paid officials of an earthly authority higher than their own. He was not to be blamed if he took the people at their word; if he believed that, in their doctrinal conservatism, they knew and meant what they were saying; and the reaction which took place under Queen Mary, when the Anglican system had been tried and failed, and the alternative was seen to be absolute union with Rome, or a forfeiture of Catholic orthodoxy, proves after all that he was wiser than in the immediate event he seemed to be; that if his policy had succeeded, and if, {718} strengthened by success, he had introduced into the Church those reforms which he had promised and desired, he would have satisfied the substantial wishes of the majority of the nation."

From an introductory chapter on the social condition of England in the early part of the sixteenth century, we extract the following graphic passage, as an example of Mr. Froude's fascinating style. Doubtless most of our readers will agree with us in wishing that so graceful a pen had been more worthily employed:

"The habits of all classes were open, free, and liberal. There are two expressions, corresponding one to the other, which we frequently meet with in old writings, and which are used as a kind of index, marking whether the condition of things was or was not what it ought to be. We read of 'merry England';—when England was not merry, things were not going well with it. We hear of the 'glory of hospitality,' England's pre-eminent boast,—by the rules of which all tables, from the table of the twenty-shilling freeholder to the table in the baron's hall and abbey refectory, were open at the dinner hour to all comers, without stint or reserve, or question asked: to every man, according to his degree, who chose to ask for it, there was free fare and free lodging; bread, beef, and beer for his dinner; for his lodging, perhaps, only a mat of rushes in a spare corner of the hall, with a billet of wood for a pillow, but freely offered and freely taken, the guest probably faring much as his host fared, neither worse nor better. There was little fear of an abuse of such licence, for suspicious characters had no leave to wander at pleasure; and for any man found at large, and unable to give a sufficient account of himself, there were the ever-ready parish stocks or town gaol. The 'glory of hospitality' lasted far down into Elizabeth's time; and then, as Camden says, 'came in great bravery of building, to the great beautifying of the realm, but to the decay' of what he valued more.

"In such frank style the people lived, hating three things with all their hearts: idleness, want, and cowardice; and for the rest, carrying their hearts high, and having their hands full. The hour of rising, winter and summer, was four o'clock, with breakfast at five, after which the laborers went to work, and the gentlemen to business, of which they had no little. In the country every unknown face was challenged and examined,—if the account given was insufficient, he was brought before the justice; if the village shopkeeper sold bad wares, if the village cobbler made 'unhonest' shoes, if servants and masters quarrelled, all was to be looked to by the justice; there was no fear lest time should hang heavy with him. At twelve he dined; after dinner he went hunting, or to his farm, or to do what be pleased. It was a life unrefined, perhaps, but colored with a broad, rosy English health."

THE AMERICAN ANNUAL CYCLOPEDIA AND REGISTER OF IMPORTANT EVENTS OF THE YEAR 1864.
8vo., pp. 838. New York: D. Appleton & Company.

The Annual Cyclopedia grows more and more valuable and interesting every year. The present volume is a great improvement upon all that have gone before it. The course of events has been unusually varied and startling, and the topics suggested by it appear to have been for the most part selected with good judgment and treated by competent writers. We have under the head of "Army Operations" an admirable history of Sherman's great march and of Grant's campaign in the wilderness, both illustrated with maps. The article on the "Army of the United States" abounds in information respecting the number of troops, organization, supplies, department and corps commanders, etc., such as everybody wants to have, but nobody knows where to look for. Under the titles of "Confederate" and "United States Congress" we have a complete political history of our country during the last year, while the condition and progress of the several foreign states are treated in their proper places. A great deal of interesting matter is given in the articles on the "Anglican" and "Greek" Churches, "Commerce" and "Commercial Intercourse," "Diplomatic Correspondence and Foreign Relations," "Finances of the United States," "Freedmen," "Freedom of the Press," "Geographical Explorations and Discoveries," "Literature and Literary Progress," "Military Surgery and Medicine" (profusely illustrated), "Navy," "Ordnance," "Petroleum," etc., etc. {719} Under the head of "Public Documents" is the most correct translation of the Pope's Encyclical and syllabus of errors condemned that has yet appeared in this country. Biographical sketches are also given of the most distinguished men who died during the course of the year.

SONGS FOR ALL SEASONS. By Alfred Tennyson. With illustrations by D. Maclise, T. Creswick, S. Eytinge, C. A. Barry, H. Fenn, and G. Perkins. 16mo., pp. 84. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.

HOUSEHOLD POEMS. By Henry W. Longfellow. With illustrations by John Gilbert, Birket Foster, and John Absolon. 16mo., pp. 96. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.

The series of "Companion Poets for the People," of which these two volumes are the first issues, deserves special commendation as an example of the way in which cheapness and elegance may be combined. For half a dollar Messrs. Ticknor & Fields offer us a neat little book, printed in the best style of typography, on rich tinted paper, with a clean broad margin, and some twelve or fifteen wood-cuts by reputable artists. The selections appear to have been made with good judgment, and include some late pieces of both Tennyson and Longfellow which are not to be found in previous editions of their works.

THE HISTORY OF THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION IN GERMANY AND SWITZERLAND, AND IN ENGLAND, IRELAND, SCOTLAND, THE NETHERLANDS, FRANCE, AND NORTHERN EUROPE.
IN A SERIES OF ESSAYS, REVIEWING D'AUBIGNÉ, MENZEL, HALLAM, BISHOP SHORT, PRESCOTT, RANKE, FRYXELL, AND OTHERS.
By M.J. Spalding, D.D., Archbishop Baltimore. Fourth revised edition, Two volumes in one. 8vo., pp. 494 and 509. Baltimore: John Murphy & Company.

We welcome this new and improved edition of the best antidote that has yet been prepared for English readers to the common misrepresentations of Protestant historians of the reformation. Archbishop Spalding's book has been so long before the public, and has been received with such general favor, that it would be superfluous at this late day to enter upon a general examination of its merits. It will prove a valuable guide to the student of English and continental history; he will find here the chief points made against the Church, by the long list of writers named in the title-page, taken up and answered by a prelate of high reputation for sound and thorough scholarship. Dr. Spalding of course does not deny that there were abuses in the 16th century which ought to have been abolished; but he contends that the gravity and extent of these disorders have been greatly exaggerated; that they generally originated in the world and its princes, not in the Church; most of them being due to the fact that bad men were thrust into high ecclesiastical places by worldly-minded and avaricious sovereigns; that there was a lawful and efficacious remedy for all such evils, which consisted in giving to the popes their due power and influence in the nomination of bishops and in the deliberations of general councils; in a word, that "reformation within the Church, and not revolution outside of it, was the only proper, lawful, and efficacious remedy for existing evils;" and finally, "that the fact of Christians having at length felt prepared to resort to the desperate and totally wrong remedy of revolution was owing to a train of circumstances which had caused faith to wane and grow cold, and which now appealed more to the passions than to reason, more to human considerations than to the principles of divine faith and the interests of eternity."

THE YEAR OF MARY; OR, THE TRUE SERVANT OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN.
Translated from the French of Rev. M. d'Arville, Apostolic Prothonotary. Edited, and in part translated, by Mrs. J. Sadlier. 12mo. Philadelphia: Peter F. Cunningham.

This is a work intended for the use either of private persons or of confraternities, sodalities, and similar associations formed in honor of the Blessed Virgin. The matter is distributed into exercises, the number of which is fixed at seventy-two, because our Lady is supposed to have lived seventy-two years on earth. One exercise is appropriated to each of the Sundays and principal festivals of the year.

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The reverend author writes with simplicity and unction, and has given us a really devout book. The translation seems to be very well done.

CEREMONIAL, FOR THE USE OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCHES IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. Published by order of the First Council of Baltimore, with the approbation of the Holy See. Third edition, carefully revised and considerably enlarged. With illustrations. 12mo., pp. 534. Baltimore: Kelly & Piet.

This book is almost indispensable to clergymen, and very convenient for laymen who wish to understand the beautiful ceremonies which the Church has appointed for the various festivals and services of the ecclesiastical year. It was originally compiled by Bishop Rosati, of St. Louis, and formally adopted by the council of Baltimore in 1852. The extensive additions which are now published with it were made by direction of the late Archbishop Kenrick, of Baltimore. They consist of the ceremonies of low mass, low mass for the dead, and the manner of giving holy communion within the mass or at other times; instructions for the priest who is obliged to say two masses, from the decrees of the sacred congregation of rites, approved under the present pope; the manner of singing mass without deacon and sub-deacon, and the vespers without cope-bearers, in accordance with approved usages of the best-regulated churches in Italy; the mode of giving benediction with the blessed sacrament, in which the ceremonial of bishops and the various decrees of the sacred congregation of rites are strictly followed; Gregorian notes to guide the celebrant and sacred ministers in singing the prayers, gospel, epistle, confiteor, etc.

The illustrations, intended to show the proper form of various church utensils, church furniture, etc., constitute a valuable feature of the book.

MEDITATIONS AND CONSIDERATIONS FOR A RETREAT OF ONE DAY IN EACH MONTH.
Compiled from the writings of Fathers of the Society of Jesus, by a Religious. Published with the approbation of the Most Rev. Archbishop of Baltimore. 18mo., pp. viii., 154. Baltimore: Kelly & Piet.

This little book is designed for the use not only of religious communities, but of persons in the world who may feel disposed to devote a day now and then exclusively to the affairs of their souls. The exercises consist of three meditations and a "consideration," for each month in the year, arranged after the manner of the exercises of St. Ignatius.

STREET BALLADS, POPULAR POETRY, AND HOUSEHOLD SONGS OF IRELAND.
16mo., pp. 312. Boston: Patrick Donahoe.

The poems contained in this little volume are by a great number of authors, and of course of very different degrees of merit. Most of them are of a patriotic nature; a good many are amatory; and two or three seem to have no business in the collection at all. For example, Lieut-Colonel Halpine's "April 20, 1864," is a poem of the American rebellion. Mr. John Savage's "At Niagara" is certainly neither a street ballad nor a household song, nor is it part of the popular poetry of Ireland any more than of our own country. We dare say, however, that nobody will feel disposed to quarrel with the editor for including these spirited pieces, as well as others we might mention, which do not properly belong under the categories mentioned in the title-page.

Among the best known writers whose names appear in the table of contents are William Allinghain, Aubrey De Vere, Samuel Fergusson, Lady Wilde, Gerald Griffin, and Clarence Mangan.

THE MONTH OF MARY, FOR THE USE OF ECCLESIASTICS.
Translated from the French. 32mo., pp. 207. Baltimore: John Murphy & Company.

This little manual is intended exclusively for ecclesiastics, especially students in theological seminaries. It sets forth, for each day of the month, some trait of the life of the Blessed Virgin, first as an object of veneration and love, secondly, as a model of some virtue of the clerical state, and finally, as a motive of confidence. It is brief, suggestive, and practical.

The Man without a Country (Boston: Ticknor & Fields) is a reprint in pamphlet form of a remarkable narrative which appeared originally in The Atlantic Monthly.

{721}

THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. I., NO. 6. SEPTEMBER, 1865.

From The Dublin Review.

THE CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS OF ALEXANDRIA.—ORIGEN.

Origenis Opera Omnia. Ed. De la Rue, accurante J. P. MIGNE. Paris.

Origenes, Eine Darstellung seines Lebens und seiner Lehre, von Dr. REDEPENNING. (Origen: A History of his Life and Doctrine. By Dr. REDEPENNING). 1841. Bonn.

In a former article we have given some account of the labors and teaching of Pantaenus and Clement in the twenty years after the death of Marcus Aurelius (180-202), during which the Church enjoyed comparative peace. Commodus was not a persecutor, like his philosophic father. Personally, he was a signal instance of the total break-down of philosophy as a training for a prince imperial; for whatever advantages the most enlightened methods and the most complete establishment of philosophic tutors could afford were his, probably to his great disgust. But the Church has often found that an imperial philosopher is something even worse than an imperial debauchee. Pertinax and Didius Julianus, who succeeded Commodus, had little time either for philosophy or pleasure, for they followed their predecessor, after the violent fashion so popular with conspirators and Praetorians, in less than a twelvemonth. Septimius Severus, the first, and, with one exception, the only Roman emperor who was a native African, during the earlier years of his reign protected the Christians rather than otherwise. How and why he saw occasion to change we shall have to consider further on.

During these twenty years of tranquillity the great Church of Alexandria had been making no little progress. Her children had not been entirely undisturbed. The populace, and sometimes the magistrates, often did not wait for an imperial edict to set upon the Christians, and the commotions that followed the death of Commodus were the occasion of more than one martyr's crown. We learn from Clement of Alexandria, speaking of this very time of comparative quiet, that burnings, beheadings, and crucifixions took place "daily;" whereby he seems to point to some particular local persecutions. But the Alexandrian Church, on the whole, was left in peace, and was rapidly extending herself among the student population of the city, among the Greeks, but, above all, among the poorer classes of the native Egyptians. Christianity seems to have spread in Egypt with a {722} rapidity almost unexampled elsewhere, and historians have taken much pains to point out that this was the effect of the considerable agreement there is between the asceticism of the early Church and that of the native worship. Without discussing the point, we may note that rapidity of extension was the rule, not the exception, when an apostle was the missionary; and that the Alexandrian Church was founded by direct commission from St. Peter, and, therefore, shared with Rome and Antioch the distinction of being the mother-city of Christianity. Moreover, the Nile valley, which above the Delta is nowhere more than eleven miles in width, contained a teeming population, the whole of which was thoroughly accessible by means of the river itself. For nearly five hundred miles every city and town, every least village and hamlet, stood right on the banks of the great water-way; and it is probable that half the inhabitants of Upper Egypt and the Thebaid were often floating on its bosom at one and the same time. The high road that was so serviceable for traffic and pleasure could be made of equal service to religion. How unweariedly the successors of St. Mark must have traversed it from end to end may be read in the history of those lauras and hermitages that at one time were to be found wherever its rocky barriers were indented by a sandy valley, and wherever the old builders of Thebes and Memphis had left a quarried opening in the limestone. There was not a stronger contrast between these monastic dwellings and the bosom of the gay river than there was between Egyptians Christian and Egyptians pagan. If the Church's converts rushed into the deserts and the caves, it was not especially because they liked them, but because there was absolutely no other means of getting out of a society not to be matched for immorality except, perhaps, by pagan Rome at its very worst. Of the number of Christians in Alexandria itself at the commencement of the third century we can only form an approximate judgment. On the one hand, Eusebius tells us that the Church had spread over the whole Thebaid. As the Thebaid was the southern division of Egypt proper, and, therefore, the most distant from Alexandria, we may safely say as much, at least, for the Delta and Middle Egypt. On the other hand, we are told by Origen that the Christians in the city were not so numerous as the pagans, or even the Jews. This will not appear surprising if we recollect that the Alexandrian Jews were more numerous, as well as richer and more powerful, than any other Jewish community in the world. We know enough to be quite sure that the Alexandrian Church was working quietly but vigorously. From the heads of the Catechetical school down to the humblest little child that was marked out by baptism in the great city of sin, there was a great work going on. The impulse that Pantaenus and Clement were giving was felt downward and around, and when Origen begins to rise on the scene, we can mark what an advance there has been even in the short twenty years since the death of Marcus Aurelius.

Septimus Severus had reigned for ten years, as we said above, before he began to persecute. He was undoubtedly an able and vigorous emperor; he could meet his enemies and get rid of his friends, bribe the Praetorians and slaughter his prisoners of war, with equal coolness and generally with equal success. In the course of a reign of twenty years he seems to have visited with hostile intent the greater part of his extensive empire, from the Syrtes of Africa, where he was born, to the banks of the Euphrates, and thence to Britain, where he died, at York, A.D. 211. At the time we speak of (198) he had just concluded a brilliant campaign against those pests of the Roman soldiery, the Parthians; and having then engaged the Arabs, still in arms for a chief whose head he had had the pleasure {723} of sending to Rome twelve months before, had got rather the worst of it in two battles. It was between this and the year 202 that he visited Alexandria. There can be no doubt he must have been received at Alexandria with no little triumph by one class of its citizens. Some six years before, he had restored to the Greek inhabitants their senate and municipal privileges. The Greeks, who, as far as intellect went, were the indisputable rulers of Alexandria, must have been highly elated at being now restored to civil importance; for though their senate was little more than an ornament, and their municipal rights confined to holding certain assemblies for the discussion of grievances, still, to have a recognized machinery of wards and tribes, and to be called "men of Macedon," as of old, was not without advantage, and was, indeed, all that their fathers had presumed to seek for, even in the days of the lamented Ptolemies. We cannot doubt, therefore, that by the Greeks Severus was received with much enthusiasm, and he, on his part, seems to have been equally satisfied with his reception, for we find that he enriched Alexandria with a temple of Rhea, and with public baths which he named after himself. But more came of this visit than compliments or temples. It was an hour of favor for the Greeks; the chief among them were also the chiefs and ruling spirits of the university; we know they must have come across Christianity during the preceding twenty years in many ways, but chiefly as a teaching that was gaining ground yearly among their best men; as philosophers, we know they loathed it; as worshippers of the immortal myths, they were burning to put it down. Does it seem in any way connected with these facts that Severus at this very time changes his policy of mildness, and issues a decree forbidding, under severest penalties, all conversions to Christianity or Judaism? There is something suggestive in the juxtaposition of facts, and it is not at all impossible that the commencement of the fifth persecution was a compliment to Clement of Alexandria. Severus, indeed, must have frequently come into contact with Christianity himself during the three or four years he spent in Syria and the East; he could not have visited Antioch, Edessa, and Caesarea without being obliged to notice the development of the Church. The Jews, too, had given him a great deal of trouble, which may account for that part of the edict which affected them, and perhaps the Montanist fanatics had helped to irritate him against the name of Christian. However these things may be, the prohibition, though apparently moderate in its scope, was the signal for the outburst of a tremendous persecution. Laetus, the prefect of Alexandria, was so zealous in his work, that it is impossible not to suspect that he was acting under the very eye of his imperial master. He was not content with torturing and slaying in the city itself, but sent his emissaries up the Nile to the very extremity of the Thebaid to hunt up the Christians and send them by boatloads to the capital for judgment and punishment. Numbers of the Alexandrian Christians fled to Palestine and elsewhere on the first intimation of danger. Pantaenus, who had returned from his Indian mission, had perhaps already left Alexandria; but Clement was at the head of the Catechisms, and he was of the number of those who fled. The great school was for a time broken up. The functions of the Church were suspended for want of ministers, or prevented by the impossibility of meeting in safety. It was taught in the Alexandrian Church that if they were persecuted in one city, they should flee into another; and, just at this time, the Motanist error, that it was unlawful to flee from persecution, caused this teaching to be acted upon with less hesitation than usual; and so, in the year 202, Christians in Alexandria, from being a comparatively flourishing community, became a proscribed and secret sect.

{724}

It would be very far from the truth, however, to suppose that the teachings of the Catechetical school had not been able to form martyrs. We know that multitudes stood up for their faith and shed their blood for it at Alexandria, during the first years of this persecution, and this amidst horrors so unusual even with persecutors, that it was thought they portended the coming of the last day. The name of Potamiana alone will serve to raise associations sufficient to picture both the heroism of the confessors and the enormities of the tyrants. But there is another name with which we are more nearly concerned at present. Leonides, the father of Origen, was one of those Christians who had not fled from the persecution. He was an inhabitant of Alexandria, a man of some position and substance, and when the troubles began he was living in Alexandria with his wife and family. It was not long before he was marked down by Laetus and dragged to prison. The martyr's crown was now within his grasp; but he left behind him in his desolate home another who was burning to share it by his side. His son, Origen, was not yet seventeen when his father was torn away by the Roman soldiers, and, in spite of the entreaties of his mother, he insisted upon following him to prison. His mother finally kept him beside her by a device which may raise a smile in this generation. She "hid all his clothes," says Eusebius, and so compelled him to stop at home. But his zeal was all aroused and on fire, and, indeed, in this, the earliest incident known to us of his life, we seem to read the zeal and fire of the man that was to be. He sent a message to his father in these words, "Be sure not to waver on our account." The exact words seem to have been handed down to us, and Eusebius, who gives them, probably received them from Origen's own disciples in Caesarea of Palestine. The boy well knew what would be the martyr's chief and only anxiety in his prison. The thought of the wife and seven young children whom he was leaving desolate would be a far bitterer martyrdom than the Roman prisons. But Leonides gloriously persevered, confessed the faith, and was beheaded, while the whole of his property was confiscated to the emperor.

Origen, as we have said, was not quite seventeen years old at his father's martyrdom, having been born about the year 185. Both his father and mother were Christians, and apparently had dwelt a long time in Alexandria. He had therefore been brought up from his infancy in that careful Christian training which it is the pride and joy of a good and earnest Christian father to bestow upon his son. The traces of this training, as we find them in Eusebius, are touching in the extreme. Leonides, to whom the teachings of Clement had made the Holy Scriptures a very fountain of life and sweetness, made them the principal means of the education of his son. Every day the child repeated to his father a portion of the holy books, and was instructed according to his capacity. Knowing what, in after life, was to be Origen's connection with the Holy Scriptures, we are not surprised to find that his father soon began to experience some difficulty in answering his questions. The boy, with true Alexandrian instinct, was not content with the bare letter of the book; he would know its hidden meaning and prophetic sense. Leonides discouraged these questions and speculations, not, it would seem, because he disapproved of them, but because he sensibly thought them premature in so young a child. But in the secret of his heart he was full of joy to see the ardor, eagerness, and amazing quickness of his dear child, and often, when the boy was asleep, would he uncover his breast and reverently kiss it, as the temple of the Holy Spirit. It is of very great importance for the right comprehension of the great Origen to bear in view this picture of his tender youth, and to reflect that he was no convert from heathenism, no {725} Christianized philosopher, whose early notions might from time to time be expected to crop up in the field of his orthodoxy, but a Christian child, born and bred in the Church's bosom, brought up by a father of unquestioned ability, who died a martyr and is honored as a saint. Origen began to think rightly as soon as he could think at all; his early education left him nothing to forget. As he grew up and began to be familiar with Alexandria the beautiful, he received that subtle education of the eye and imagination that every Alexandrian, like every Athenian, succeeded to as an heirloom. But with the heathen philosophers he had nothing to do, and it may be questioned whether he ever entered the walls of the Museum. His father had not neglected to teach him the ordinary branches of Greek learning. He attended the lectures of Clement, those brilliant and winning discourses, half apology, half exhortation, that he himself was afterward to emulate so well. He heard Pantaenus, also, after the venerable teacher had returned from his Indian mission. We may be sure that he dreaded worse than poison the society of the pagan youth of the university; this his subsequent conduct proves. But he had his circle of friends, and among them was a young man, somewhat older than himself, who was hereafter to leave an undying name as St. Alexander of Jerusalem. Thus, by ear and eye, by master and by fellow-student, by his father's labor, and by the workings of his own wonderful intellect and indomitable will, he was formed into a man. His education came to a premature end; but his father's martyrdom, though to outward seeming it left him a destitute orphan, really hardened the boy of seventeen into the man and the hero.

"When his father was martyred," continues Eusebius, writing, in all probability, from the relation of those who had heard Origen's own account, "he was left an orphan, with his mother and six young brothers and sisters, being of the age of seventeen. All his father's property was confiscated to the emperor's treasury, and they were in the utmost destitution; but God's providence took care of Origen." A rich and illustrious lady of Alexandria received him into her house. Whether this lady was professedly a Christian, a pagan, or a heretic, history does not say. She can hardly have been a pagan, though it is not impossible that a philosophic and liberal pagan lady should have taken a fancy to help such a youth as Origen. It is not likely that she was a heretic, for in that case Origen would never have entered her door. Thanks to the Gnostics, heretics in those days were looked upon in Alexandria as more to be dreaded than pagans. She was probably, by outward profession at least, a Christian, "illustrious," says the historian, "for what she had done, and illustrious in every other way." What she had done we are not permitted even to guess; but one fact in her history we do know, and it is very significant. She had living in her house, on the footing of an adopted son, one Paul, a native of Antioch, and one of the chiefs of the Alexandrian heretics. It is certain that Origen's patroness must have had either very uncertain or very easy notions of Christianity, if she could lend her house, her money, and her influence to an arch-heretic, who had come from Syria to trouble the Church of Alexandria, as Basilides and Valentine had come before him. Gnosticism had probably lost ground in the city, under the eloquent attacks of St. Clement. This Paul was a man of great eloquence, and his reputation attracted great numbers to hear him, not only of heretics, but also of Christians. He came from Antioch, the headquarters of an unknown number of Gnostic sects, and, with the usual instinct of false teachers, he had "led captive" this Alexandrian lady. Mark, of infamous memory, had already done the same thing by others, and perhaps by her, and Paul had succeeded to his position and was now {726} the rival of the head of the Catechisms. Such a state of things makes it easier to understand why St. Clement, in his Stromata, calls those who lean to heresy "traitors to Christ," and compares perverts to the companions of Ulysses in the sty of Circe, and why he makes the very treating with heretics to be nothing less than desertion in the soldier of Christ. It does seem a little strange, at first sight, that the uncompromising Origen should have consented to receive assistance from one whose orthodoxy must have been in such bad odor. The difficulty grows less, however, if we consider the circumstances. It was in the very heat of a terrible persecution, when the canons of the Church must have been suspended. Origen had lost his father, and had nowhere to turn for bare subsistence. We can hardly wonder if, in such a strait as this, he asked few questions when the charitable lady wished to take him in. But when the grief and agitation of his orphaned state had somewhat subsided, and when the persecutors had begun to slacken their fury, we may suppose that he began to examine the harbor of his refuge, and that it pleased him not. He was under the same roof as Paul of Antioch, a heretic and a leader of heretics; but never, young as he was, could he be induced to associate with him in prayer, or in any way that could violate the canons of the Church, as far as it was possible to keep them in such times. "From his childhood," says his biographer, "he kept the canons, and execrated the teachings of heretics;" and he tells us that this last phrase is Origen's own. And it seems that he took the most energetic measures to get away from a companionship that he must have loathed. He had been well instructed, as we have said, by his father in the ordinary branches of education. After his father's death he again applied himself to study with greater ardor than before, for he had an object in view now. It was not long before he was offering himself as a public teacher of those sciences that are designated by the general term "Grammatica." It was the first public step in a life that was afterward to be little less than the entire history of the Eastern Church. He was not yet eighteen, but there was no help for it. He must have bread, and he could not eat of the loaf that was shared by Paul of Antioch. Early writers lay much stress on this first exhibition of orthodox zeal in him who was afterward to be the "hammer" of heretics, from Egypt to Greece. Certain it is that his conduct as a boy was the same as his sentiments when he was in his sixtieth year. "To err in morals," he wrote in his commentary on Matthew, at Caesarea, forty years after his first essay as a teacher of grammar,—"to err in morals is bad, but to err in dogma and to contradict Holy Writ is much worse." If in after life he was to be so singularly earnest and so unaffectedly devout, so enthusiastic for the Gospel, so eager in exploring the depths of sacred science, and so unwavering in his faith, all this was but the growth and development of what was already springing in his soul in those early years of his trials and zeal. The strong will was already trying its first flights, the sensitive heart was being schooled to throw all its motive power into duty, and the quick, clear apprehension and the wonderful memory for which he was to be so famous, were already beginning to show what they would one day be.

Origen was now a teacher of grammar and the sciences, but he had not kept school for many months when his teachings took a turn that he can hardly have anticipated. His text-books were the common pagan historians, poets, and philosophers that have been thumbed by the school-boy from that generation to this. It was no part of Origen's character to leave his hearers in error when plain speaking would prevent it; and so it happened that his exposition of his author often took in hand not merely the parts of speech, but the doctrine. Though he was only {727} school-master by profession, his scholars soon found out he was a Christian, and a Christian of uncommon power and clear-sightedness. The Catechetical school was closed; masters and scholars were scattered in flight or in concealment. It was not long, therefore, before the young teacher found himself applied to by first one heathen and then another, who, under other circumstances, would have applied to the school of the Catechisms. Among these were Plutarchus, who soon afterward showed how a young Alexandrian student could die a glorious martyr; and Heraclas, his brother, who, after his conversion, left everything to remain with his master, became his assistant and successor in his catechetical work, and finally died Patriarch of Alexandria. These were the first-fruits of his zeal for souls. Many others followed; and as the persecution was somewhat abating, Demetrius, bishop of Alexandria, looking round for men to resume the work of the schools, saw no one better fitted to be intrusted with its direction than Origen himself. He was accordingly, though not yet eighteen, appointed the successor of Clement.

Laetus, prefect of Alexandria, who had exerted himself so strenuously to please Severus when the persecution commenced, had now been recalled; probably he had reaped the reward of his zeal, and was promoted. His successor, Aquila, signalized his entering upon office by an activity that outdid that of Laetus himself. The persecution that had calmed down a little toward the end of the first year and when Laetus was leaving, now raged with redoubled fury. We have already said that the authoritative tradition, and, in great measure, also the practice, of the Alexandrian Church was flight at a time like this. Origen, however, was very far from fleeing; never at any time of his life did he display such fearless baldness, such energetic contempt for the enemy, as during these years of blood, from 204 to 211. There was no prison so well-guarded, no dungeon so deep, that he could not hold communication with the confessors of Christ. He went up to the tribunals with them, and stood beside them at the interrogatory and at the torture. He went back with them in a sort of defiant triumph, after sentence of death had been pronounced. He walked undauntedly by their side up to the stake and the beheading block, and kissed them and bade them adieu when it was time for them to die. It is no wonder that Eusebius sets down his own safety to a miraculous interposition of the right hand of God. Once, as he stood by a dying martyr, embracing him as he expired, the Alexandrian mob set on him with stones and nearly killed him; how he escaped none could tell. Again and again the persecutors tried to seize him; as often ("it is impossible," says the historian, "to tell how often") was he delivered from their hands. He was nowhere safe: no sooner did the mob get a suspicion of where he was than they surrounded the house, and hounded in the soldiers to drag him out. He fled from house to house; perhaps he was assisted to escape by some of his numerous friends; perhaps he hid himself, as St. Athanasius in the next century did, in some of those underground wells and cisterns with which every house in Alexander's city was provided, and then sought other quarters when the mob had gone off. But it was not long before he was again discovered. The numbers that came to hear him soon let the infuriated pagans know where their victim was, and he was again besieged and hunted out. Once, St. Epiphanius relates, he was caught, apparently by a street-mob, and some of the low Egyptian priests as their leaders. It was near the Egyptian quarter of the city; perhaps, even, he was visiting some poor native convert in the dirty streets of the Rhacôtis itself. If so, the name of Origen would have been enough to empty the whole quarter of its pariah race, and bring them yelling and cursing into the {728} Heptastadion. They showed him no mercy; they abused him horribly; they beat him and bruised him; they dragged him along the ground. But before killing him outright, the idea seized them that they should make him deny his religion, and at the same time make a shameful exhibition of himself. There must have been Greeks in the crowd, for Egyptians would never have had patience to spare him so long. The Serapeion, however, was at hand, and thither they dragged him. As they hauled him along, "they shaved his head," says St. Epiphanius—that is, they tried to make him look like the Egyptian priests, who were distinguished by a womanish smoothness of face; and we may imagine that they did it with no gentle hands. When at length the rushing mob had surged up the steps of the great temple, their victim in the midst of them, they set him on his feet, and gave him some palm branches, telling him to act the priest and distribute them to the votaries of Serapis. The palm, we know, was a favorite tree with the Egyptian priests; it was sculptured and painted on the walls of their huge temples, and it was borne in the hands of worshippers on solemn festivals. On the present occasion there were, probably, priests of one rank or another standing before the vestibule of the Serapeion, ready to supply those who should enter. It was, therefore, the work of a moment to seize the stock of one of these ministers, and force Origen to take his place. If they anticipated the pleasure of seeing the hated Christian teacher humiliated to the position of an ostiarius of an idolatrous temple, they were never more mistaken in their lives. Origen took the palms, and began without hesitation to distribute them; but, as he did so, he cried out in a voice as loud and steady as if neither suffering nor danger could affect him, "Take the palms, good people!—not the palms of idols, but the palms of Christ!" How he escaped after this piece of daring, we are only left to conjecture. Perhaps the Roman troops came suddenly on the scene to quell the riot; and as they hated the dwellers in the Rhacôtis almost as much as the latter hated Origen, the neighborhood of the Serapeion would have been speedily cleared of Egyptians. However it came about, Origen was saved.

Meanwhile, he saw his own scholars daily going to death. The young student Plutarchus fell among the first victims of Aquila's new vigor; Origen was by his side when he was led to execution, was recognized by the mob, and once more narrowly escaped with his life. Serenus, another of his disciples, was burnt; Heraclides, a catechumen, and Hero, who had just been baptized, were beheaded; a second Serenus, after enduring many torments, suffered in the same way. A woman named Heraeis, one of his converts, was burned before she could be baptized, receiving the baptism of fire, as her instructor said. Another who is numbered among his disciples is Basilides, the soldier who protected St. Potamiana from the insults of the mob, and whom she converted by appealing to him three nights afterward. We are told that the brethren, and we know who would be foremost among the brethren in such a case, visited him in prison as soon as they heard of his wonderful and unexpected confession. He told them his vision, was baptized, and the following day died a martyr. Probably it was Origen who addressed to him the few hurried words of instruction there was time to say. "All the martyrs," says Eusebius, "whether he knew them or knew them not, he ministered to with the most eager affection." His reputation, it may well be conceived, suffered no diminution as these things came to be known. The horrors of the persecution could not keep scholars away from him, nor prevent increasing numbers from coming to seek him. Many of the unbelieving pagans, full of admiration for a holiness of life and a heroism they could not comprehend, came to his {729} instructions; and even literary Greeks who had gone through the curriculum of the Museum, and were deeply versed in Platonic myths and Pythagorean theories of mortification, came to listen to this fearless young philosopher, in whom they found a learning that could not be gainsaid, combined with a practical contempt for the things of the body that was quite unknown in their own schools.

The persecution seems to have died down and gone out toward the year 211, nine years after its commencement. Origen's labors became the more extraordinary in proportion as he had freer scope for pursuing them. The feature in his life at this time, which is most characteristic of the time and the city, and which more than anything else attracted the cultivated heathens to listen to him, was his severe asceticism. Times of persecution may be considered to dispense with asceticism; but Origen did not think so. It was a saying of his master, St. Clement, and, indeed, appears to have been a common proverb in that reformed school of heathen philosophy which resulted in Neo-Platonism, "As your words, so be your life." A philosopher in Alexandria at that time, if he would not be thought to belong to an effete race of thinkers who had long been left behind, or who only survived in the well-paid and well-fed professorships of the university, was of necessity a man whose strict and sober living corresponded to the high and serious truths which he considered it his mission to utter. St. Clement did not forget this, either in principle or in practice, when he undertook to win the heathen men of science to Christ. Origen, born a Christian, made a teacher apparently by chance and in the confusion of a persecution, cared little, in the first instance, for what pagan philosophy would think of him. The fact that all who pretended to be philosophers pretended also to asceticism may, indeed, have caused him to embrace a life of denial more as a matter of course. But the holy gospels and the teachings of Clement were the reasons of his asceticism. It is amazing that Protestant writers, when they write of the asceticism of the early Church, can see in it nothing but the reflection of Buddhism, or Judaism, or of the tenets of Pythagoras, and that they always seem nervously glad to prove by the assistance of the Egyptian climate or the Platonic hatred of matter, that it was not the carrying out of the law of Christ, but merely a self-imposed burden. Climate, doubtless, has great influence on food, and English dinners would no more suit an Egyptian sun than would the two regulation paximatia of the Abbot Moses in Cassian be enough for even the most willing of English Cistercians. But why go to climate, to Plato, to Pythagoras, and to Buddha, to account for what is one of the most striking recommendations of the gospels? We need not stop to inquire the reason, but we may be sure that a child who had been taught the Holy Scriptures by heart would not be unlikely to know something of their teaching. His biographer tells us expressly, with regard to several of his acts of mortification, that they were done in the endeavor to carry out literally our Lord's commands. And yet it is very remarkable, and a trait of the times, that Eusebius, in describing his mode of life, uses the word philosophy three times where we should use asceticism. Origen, soon after being appointed head of the Catechetic school, found he could not do his duty by his hearers as thoroughly as he could wish, on account of his other occupation of teacher of grammar. He therefore resolved to give it up. It was his only means of subsistence, but he might reasonably have expected "to live by the gospel" as long as he was in such a post as chief catechist. If he had expected this he would not have been disappointed, for there would have been no lack of charity. But he had an entirely different view of the matter. He would be a burden {730} to no one, and would live a life of the strictest poverty. Simple, straightforward, and great, here as ever, we may conceive how he would appreciate the fetters of a rich man's patronage. But, if we may trust the utterances of his whole life, his love for holy poverty was such that, while it makes some refer once more to Pythagoras, to a Catholic it rather suggests St. Francis of Assisi. "I tremble," he said thirty years afterward, "when I think how Jesus commands his children to leave all they have. For my own part, I plead guilty to my accusers and I pronounce my own sentence; I will not conceal my guiltiness lest I become doubly guilty. I will preach the precepts of the Lord, though I am conscious of not having followed them myself. Let us now at least lose no time in becoming true priests of the Lord, whose inheritance is not on earth but in heaven." Such language from one who can hardly be said to have possessed anything during his whole life can only be explained on one hypothesis. In order, therefore, at once to secure his independence in God's work, and to oblige himself to practise rigorous poverty, he made a sacrifice which none but a poor student can appreciate. He sold his manuscripts, and secured to himself, from the sale, a sum of four oboli a day, which was to be his whole income. This sum, which was about the ordinary pay of a common sailor, who had his food and lodging provided for him, was little enough to live upon; but miserable as it was, Origen must have paid a dear premium to obtain it. Those manuscripts of "ancient authors" were probably the fruits and the assistance of his early studies; he must have written many of them under the eye of his martyred father. He had "labored with care and love to write them out fairly," we are told, and doubtless he prized them at once as a scholar prizes his library and a laborious worker the work of his hands. For many years, probably until he went to Rome in 211, he continued to receive his twopence or threepence every day from the person who had bought his books. But we cease in great part to wonder how little he lived on when we know how he lived. In obedience to our Lord's command, and in opposition to the prevailing practice of all but the poorest classes, he wore the tunic single, and as for the pallium, he seems either to have dispensed with it altogether, or only to have worn it whilst teaching. For many years he went entirely barefoot. He fasted continually from all that was not absolutely necessary to keep him alive; he never touched wine; he worked hard all day in teaching and visiting the poor; and after studying what we should call theology the greater part of the night, he did not go to bed, but took a little rest on the floor. This "vehemently philosophic" life, as Eusebius calls it, reduced him in time, as might have been expected, to a mere wreck; insufficient food and scanty clothing brought on severe stomachic complaints, which nearly caused his death. It is not to be supposed that his disciples and the Church in general looked on with indifference whilst he practised these austerities. On the contrary, he was solicited over and over again to receive assistance and to take care of himself; and many were even somewhat offended because he refused their well-meant offers. But Origen had chosen to put his hand to the plough, and he would not have been Origen if he had turned back. It is probable, indeed, that he somewhat moderated his austerities when his health began to give way seriously; but hard work and hard living were his lot to the end, and the name of Adamantine, which he received at this time, and which all ages and countries have confirmed to him, shows what the popular impression was of what he actually went through. As might have been expected, a man of such singleness and determination had many imitators. We have seen that the very pagan philosophers came to listen to him. {731} The young scholars whom he instructed, and many of whom he converted, did more than listen to him; they joined him, and imitated as nearly as they could what Eusebius again calls the "philosophy" of his life. It was no barren aping of externals, such as might have been seen going on a little way off at the Museum; he, on his part, taught them deep and earnest lessons in the deepest and most earnest of all philosophies; they, on theirs, proved that his words were power by the severest of all tests—they stood firm in the horrors of a fearful persecution, and more than one of them witnessed to them by a cruel death.

As long as the persecution lasted, anything like regularity and completeness in a work like that of Origen was clearly impossible. But a persecution at Alexandria, though generally furious as long as it lasted, happily seldom lasted very long. Popular opinion was, no doubt, very bitter against Christianity. But popular opinion was one thing; the will of the prince-governor another. Moreover, the popular opinion of the Greek philosophers was generally diametrically opposed to that of their Roman masters, and the beliefs and traditions of the Rhacôtis tended to the instant extermination of the Jews; and though these four antagonistic elements could, upon occasion, so far forget their differences as to unite in an onslaught against the Christians, yet, before long, quarrels arose and riots ensued among the allied parties to such an extent that the legionaries had no choice but to clear the streets in the most impartial manner. Again, it is quite certain that the Christian party included in it not a few men of rank; and, what is more important, of power and authority. This we know from the trouble St. Dionysius, one of Origen's scholars, afterward had with many such persons who had "lapsed" in the Decian persecution. As everything, therefore, depended on the humor of the governor, and as the governor was, as other men, liable to be influenced by bribes suggestions, and caprice, a furious persecution might suddenly die out, and the Church begin to enjoy comparative peace at the very time when things looked worst. Until the year 211, "Adamantius" taught, studied, prayed, and fasted amidst disturbance, martyrdoms, and fleeings from house to house; but that year wrought a change, not only in Alexandria, but over the whole world. It was simply the year of the death of Septimus Severus at York, and of the accession of Caracalla and Geta; but this was an event which, if precedents were to be trusted, invited all the nations that recognized the Roman eagle to be ready for any change, however unreasonable, beginning with the senate, and ending with the Christians. It was, probably, in this same year, 211, that Origen took advantage of the restoration of tranquillity to visit the city and Church of Rome. It would seem that this episode of his journey to Rome has not been sufficiently considered in the greater part of the accounts of his life. Protestant writers, as may be expected, pass it over quietly, either barely mentioning it, or, if they do put a gloss upon it, confining themselves to generalities about the interchange of ideas or the antiquity and renown of the Roman Church. But there is evidently more in it than this. Origen was just twenty-six years of age: though so young, he was already famous as a teacher and a holy liver in the most learned of cities, and one of the most ascetical of churches. His work was immense, and daily increasing. On the cessation of the persecution, the great school was to be reorganized, and put once more into that thorough working order which had made it so effective under Pantaenus and Clement. Yet, just at this busy crisis, he hurries off to Rome, stays there a short time, and hurries back again. In the first place, why go at all? What could Rome or any other church give him that he had not already at Alexandria? Not scientific learning, certainly; not a systematic {732} organization of work; not reverence for Holy Scripture; not the method of confuting learned philosophy. Again: why go specially to Rome? Was there not a high road, easy and comparatively short, to Caesarea of Palestine, and would he not find there facilities enough for the "interchange of thought?" For there, about fifteen years before, had assembled one of the first councils ever held since the council of Jerusalem. Was there not Jerusalem, the cradle of the Church? It was then, indeed, shorn of its glory, both spiritual and historical; for it was subject, at least not superior, to Caesarea, and was known to the empire by the name of Aelia Capitolina; but its aged bishop was a worker of miracles. Was there not Antioch, the great central see of busy, intellectual Syria, the see of St. Theophilus, wherein saintly bishops on the one hand, and Marcionite heresy and Paschal schism on the other, kept the traditions of the faith bright and polished? Were there not the Seven Churches? Was there not many a "mother-city" between the Mediterranean and the mountain ranges where apostolic teachings were strong yet, and apostolic men yet ruled? Origen's motive in going to "see Rome" is given us by himself, or, rather, by his biographer in his words; but, unfortunately, in such an ambiguous way that it is almost useless as an argument; he wished, says Eusebius, "to see the very ancient Church of Rome." The word we have translated "very ancient" ( .) may also mean, as we need not say, "first in dignity." It is hardly worth while to argue upon it, but it will not fail to strike the reader that Jerusalem and Antioch, not to mention other sees, were both older than Rome, if age was the only recommendation. Origen's visit to Rome, then, is a very remarkable event in his life, for it shows undoubtedly that the chief of the greatest school of the Church found he required something which could only be obtained in Rome, and that something can only have been an approach to the chief and supreme depositary of tradition. He was at the very beginning of his career, and he could begin no better than by invoking the blessing of that rock of the Church of whom his master, Clement, had taught him to think so nobly and lovingly. We shall see that, many a year after this, in the midst of troubles and calumnies, when his great life was nearly closed, the same see of Peter received the professions and obedience of his failing voice, as it had witnessed and blessed the ardor of his youth. He was not, indeed, the first who, though already great in his own country, had been drawn toward a greatness which something told them was without a rival. Three-quarters of a century before Rome had attracted from far-off Jerusalem that great St. Hegesippus, the founder of church history, whose works are lost, but whose fame remains. A convert from Judaism, he left his native city, travelled to Rome, and sojourned there for twenty years, busily learning and committing to writing those practices and traditions of the Roman Church which he afterward appears to have disseminated all over the East, and which he conveyed, toward the end of his life, to his own Jerusalem, where he died. From Assyria and beyond the Tigris the "perfume of Rome" had enticed the great Tatian—happy if, on his return, he had still kept pure that faith which, at Rome, he defended so well against Crescens the cynic. A great mind and a widely cultivated genius found the sphere of its rest in Rome, when St. Justin finished his wanderings there and sealed the workings of his active intellect by shedding his blood at the bidding of the ruling clique of Stoics—"philosophus et martyr" as the old martyrologies call him. A famous name, too, is that of Rhodon, of Asia, well known for his steady and able defence of the faith against Marcionites and other heretics. These, and such as these, had come from the world's ends to visit the great apostolic see before Origen's day dawned. But there were others, and as great, whom {733} he may actually have met in the city, either on a visit like himself, or because they were members of the Roman clergy. There was the great Carthaginian, Tertullian, who, for many years, lived, learned, and wrote in Rome; his works show how well he knew the Roman Church, and how often afterward he had occasion, in his polemical battles, to allude to the "Ecclesia transmarina" as Africa called Rome. A meeting between Origen and Tertullian is a very suggestive idea; the only misfortune is, that we have no warrant whatever for supposing it beyond the bare possibility. But by naming Tertullian we suggest one view, at least, of the ecclesiastical society which Origen would meet when he visited Rome. Another celebrated man, whom there is more likelihood that Origen did meet, is the convert Roman lawyer, Minucius Felix, who employed his recognized talents and trained skill in vigorous apologetic writings, one of which we still possess. A third was the priest Caius, one of the Roman clergy, famed as the adversary of Proclus the Montanist, unless he had already started on his missionary career as regionary bishop. Finally, there was St. Hippolytus, who, like Caius, was from the school of St. Irenaeus, and had come from Lyons to Rome, where he seems to have been no unworthy representative of his teacher's zeal against heretics. Nearly every step of the life of St. Hippolytus is encumbered by the ruin of a learned theory or the useless rubbish of an abandoned position; but he as far as we can conjecture, the chief scientific adviser of the Roman pontiffs in the measures they took at this time regarding Easter and against the Noetians. Until scientific men have settled their disputes as to who was the author of the Philosophumena, or Treatise against All Heresies, little more can be said about St. Hippolytus. The Treatise itself, however, whose recovery some twenty years ago excited so much interest, must have had an author, and it is nearly certain the author must have been one of the Roman clergy at this very time. It is still more certain that the matters therein discussed must represent very completely one view of Church matters at Rome in the early part of the third century; and, therefore, even if Origen did not meet the author in person, he must have met many who thought as he did. Now it is rather interesting to read the Philosophumena in this light, and to conjecture what Origen would think of some of its views. The leading idea of the work, which is not even yet extant complete, is to prove that all heresies have sprung from Greek philosophy. This it attempts to do by detailing, first, the systems of the philosophers, then those of the heretics, and showing their mutual connection. The scandalous attack on St. Callistus, in the ninth book, may or may not be an interpolation by a later hand; if not, the author must have been much more ingenious than reputable. There is no denying the historical and literary value of the Treatise; but where it professes to draw deductions and to give philosophical analyses of systems, it seems of comparatively moderate worth. For instance, the author's analysis and appreciation of the philosophy of Aristotle is little better than a libel on the great "maestro di lor chi sanno;" and Basilides, though doubtless a clever personage in his way, can hardly have taken the trouble to go so far for the small amount of philosophy that seasons his fantastical speculations. But a general opinion resembling the opinion maintained in the Treatise seems to have been common in the West; and when Tertullian says of the philosophy of Plato that it was "haereticorum omnium condimentarium," he was doubtless expressing the idea of many beside himself. To Origen, fresh from the school of Clement and the atmosphere of Alexandria, such language must have sounded startling, to say the least, and we cannot help feeling he would be rather {734} sorry, if not indignant, to hear the great names he had been taught to think of with so much admiration and compassion unfeelingly caricatured into a relationship of paternity with such men as the founders of Gnosticism. He does not appear to have been very familiar yet with the Greek systems; they had not come specially in his way, though he had heard of them in the Christian schools, and there is little doubt that he had already seen the necessity of studying them more closely, as he actually did on his return to Alexandria. What effect the views of the Western Church had on his teaching, and how he treated the philosophers, we shall have to consider in the sequel. Meanwhile, his stay at Rome was over; he had studied the faith and heresy, discipline and schism, church organization and sectarian rebellion, in the most important centre of the whole Church, and his school at Alexandria was awaiting him, to reap the benefit of his journey.

On the return of Origen to Alexandria, it would almost appear as if he had wished to decline, for a time, the office of chief of the Catechisms. The historian tells us that he only resumed it at the strongly expressed desire of his bishop, Demetrius, who was anxious for the "profit and advantage of the brethren." Perhaps he wished for greater leisure than such a post would permit of, in order to carry into execution certain projects that were forming in his mind. But neither the patriarch nor his scholars would hear of his giving up, and so he had to settle to his work again; "which he did," says Eusebius, "with the greatest zeal," as he did everything. From this time, with one or two short interruptions, he lived and taught in Alexandria for twenty years. His life as an authoritative teacher and "master in Israel" may be said to commence from this point. It was an epoch resembling in some degree that other epoch, thirty years before, when Pantaenus had been called upon to take the charge of chief teacher in the Alexandrian Church. Now, as then, the winter of a persecution had passed, and the season was sunny and promising. Now, as then, men were high in hope, and set to work with valiant hearts to repair the breaches the straggle had left, and to restore to the rock-built fortress that glory and comeliness that became her so well; but with which, if need was, she could securely dispense. But there was no slight difference between 180 and 211. The tide of Christianity had risen perceptibly all over the Church; most of all on the shores of its greatest scientific centre. The possibility of appealing to those who had heard the apostles had long been past, but now even the disciples of Polycarp, Simeon, and Ignatius had disappeared; instead of Irenaeus there was Hippolytus, and Demetrius of Alexandria was the eleventh successor of St. Mark. Heretics had multiplied, questions had been asked, tradition was developing itself, dogma was being fixed. The form of teaching was, therefore, in process of change as other things changed. Greater precision, more "positive theology," a more constant look-out for what authority had said or might say—these necessities would make the teacher's office more difficult, even if more definite. The position of the Church toward its enemies, also, was sensibly changing. The "gain-sayers" were not of the same class as had been addressed by St. Theophilus or St. Justin. The state of things had grown more distinctly marked. Christianity was no longer an idea that might, in a burst of noble rhetoric, be made to set on fire, for a moment, even the camp of the enemy. It was now known to the Gentile world as a stern and unyielding praxis; susceptible, perhaps, of scientific and literary treatment, but quite distinct from both science and letters. Enthusiastic but timid dilettanti had lost their enthusiasm, and gave full scope to their fears. Amiable philosophers took back the right hand of fellowship, and retreated behind those who, by a {735} special instinct, had always refused to be amiable, and now thought themselves more justified than ever. On the Christian side the war had lost much of the adventure which accompanies the first dashing inroads into an enemy's country. Surprises were not so easy, systematic opposition was frequent, and their writers were obliged to fight by tactics, and in the prosaic array of argument for argument. Documents, moral testimony, institutions, were the objects of attack from without. The apostles were vilified, faith was proved to be irrational, the Bible was ranked with Syrian impostures and Jewish charm-books. And here, in the matter of the Bible, was a mighty enterprise for the Christian teacher. The canon had not yet been officially promulgated. A generation that would despise an apocryphal book of Homer or a false Orphic hymn would not be easily satisfied with the credentials of a religion. Great, then, would be that Christian teacher who should at once teach the faithful, and yet not "take away from" the faith; win the philosophers, and yet fight them hand to hand; and give to the world a critical edition of the Bible, yet hold fast to ancient tradition. Such was the work of Origen.

He began by external organization; he divided the multitudes that flocked to the Catechisms into two grand classes; one of those who were commencing, another of those who were more advanced. The former class he gave to his first convert, Heraclas; the latter he kept to himself. Heraclas was "skilled in theology," and "in other respects a very eloquent man;" and, moreover, he was "fairly conversant with philosophy," three qualifications in an Alexandrian catechist none of which could be dispensed with. In any case, the division was a matter of absolute necessity, for these extraordinary Alexandrian scholars, models and patterns that deserve to be imitated more extensively than they have been, gave him no respite and kept no regular school-hours, but crowded in and out "from morning till night;" "not even a breathing-space did they afford him," says his biographer. In such circumstances theological study and scriptural labors were out of the question, even if he had been the man of adamant that his admirers, with the true Alexandrian passion for nicknames, had already begun to call him. He therefore looked about among "his familiars," those of his disciples who had attached themselves to him and lived with him a life of study and asceticism; and from them he chose out Heraclas, the brother of the martyred Plutarchus, to be the chief associate of his work.

It need not be again mentioned that Origen's work, as that of Pantaenus and of Clement before him, had three classes of persons to deal with—catechumens, heretics, and philosophers. His dealings with the heretics and philosophers will be treated of more appropriately when we come to consider his journeys, the most important of which occurred after the expiration of the twenty years with which we are now concerned. As the school of Alexandria was chiefly and primarily connected with the catechumens, the account of the twenty years of his presidency will naturally be concerned chiefly and primarily with the latter, that is to say, with those whom that great school undertook to instruct in faith and discipline. And here we approach and stand close beneath one side of that monumental fane that bears upon it for all generations the name of Origen. The neophytes of Alexandria were chiefly taught out of one book; it was the custom handed from teacher to teacher; each held up the book and explained it, according to the "unvarying tradition of the ancients." For two hundred and ten years the work had gone on; but time has destroyed nearly every trace of what was written and spoken. For the first time since St. Mark wrote the gospel, Alexandria speaks now in history with a voice that shall commence a new era in the history of {736} Holy Scripture. Pantaemus had written "Commentaries" on the whole of the Bible; Clement had left, in the Hypotyposes, a summary exposition of all the canonical Scripture, not forgetting a glance at the "Contradictions" of heretics. Both these writings have perished long ago. When Origen came, in his turn, to take the same work in hand, a pressing want soon forced itself upon his mind. There was no authentic version of the sacred Word. The New Testament canon was still uncertain, one Church upholding a greater number of books, another less. The Roman canon was, indeed, from the first identical with the Tridentine (see Perrone, "De Locis Theologicis"). But the Church of Antioch, e.g., ignored no less than five of the canonical books. Alexandria, well supplied with learned expositors, and not a little influenced by the native Alexandrian instinct for criticism and grammar, had got further in the development of the canon than the majority of its sisters. Yet, so far, there had hardly been any distinct interference on the part of authority, and though, as we shall see, Origen's New Testament canon was the same as that of the Council of Trent, yet there were not wanting private writers who expressed doubts about the Epistle to the Hebrews or the Apocalypse. One thing, however, is very clear in all these somewhat troublesome disputes about the canon; whether we turn to Tertullian in Africa, to St. Jerome in Italy, to St. Irenaeus in the West, or to Clement and Origen in the East, we find one grand and large criterion put forth as the test of all authenticity, viz., the tradition of the ancients. "Go to the oldest churches," says St. Irenaeus. "The truest," says Tertullian, "is the oldest; the oldest is what always was; what always was is from the apostles; go therefore to the churches of the apostles, and find what is there held sacred." "We must not transgress the bounds set by our fathers," says Origen. It took several centuries to complete this process; but the principle was a strong and a living one, and its working out was only a matter of time. It was worked out something in this fashion. A provincial presbyter, we will say from Pelusium, or Syene, or Arsinoe, came up to Alexandria (he may easily have done so, thanks to the police arrangements and engineering enterprise of Ptolemy Philadelphus); having much ecclesiastical news to communicate, and perhaps important business to arrange on the part of his bishop, he would be thrown into close contact with the presbytery of the metropolitan Church. Let us suppose that, in order to support some point of practical morality, touching the "lapsed" or the converts, he quoted Hermas' "Shepherd" as canonical Scripture. The archdeacon with whom he was arguing would demur to such an authority; let him quote Paul, or Jude, or Peter, or John, but not Hernias; Hernias was not in the canon. The presbyter from the provinces would be a little amazed and even ruffled; how could he say it was not in the canon when he himself had heard it read on the Lord's day before the sacred mysteries in the patriarchal Church, in the presence of the very patriarch himself, seated on his throne, and surrounded by the clergy? A canonical book meant a book within the Church's general rule ( ), and the rule of the Church was that a book read at such a time was thereby declared true Scripture. The archdeacon would reply that the presbyter was right in the main, both as to facts and principles; but would point out that at Alexandria they had a set of books which were read at the solemn time he mentioned, beside regular Scripture; and if he had known their usages better, or if he had asked any of the clergy, or the patriarch, he would be aware that such writings were only read to the people as pious exhortations, not defined as the repository of the faith. The presbyter would consider this inconvenient, and would doubtless be right in thinking so. The practice was {737} condemned by various councils in the next century. But he would at once admit that if the tradition were so, then the Alexandrian Church certainly appeared to reject Hernias. But he would have another difficulty. Did not Clement, of blessed memory, consider Hernias as authentic, or, at any rate, the Epistle of Barnabas, which was quite a parallel case? And did not Origen (whom we suppose to be then teaching) call the "Shepherd" "divinely inspired?" It was true, the archdeacon would rejoin, that both Clement in former years and Origen then spoke very highly of several writings of this class; but he must refer him once more to the authoritative tradition of the Alexandrian Church, to be learned, in the last instance, from the lips of Demetrius himself: this would at once show that Clement and Origen could not mean to put Hernias on a level with Paul, and Origen himself would certainly admit so much, if he were asked. The presbyter would inquire, during his stay, of the heads of the Catechetical school, of the ancient priests, and of the patriarch; he would be satisfied that what the archdeacon said was true; and he would return to his city on the Red Sea, or at the extremity of the Thebaid, or on the north-western coast of the continent, with authentic intelligence that the Apostolic Church of Alexandria rejected Hermas from the Scripture canon, and that, therefore, it certainly ought to be rejected by his own Church. He would, perhaps, in addition to this, bring the information that the metropolitan Church, so he had found out in his researches, upheld the Epistle to the Hebrews, or the Apocalypse of the Apostle John, to be true and genuine Scripture; would it not, therefore, be well to consider whether these also should not be admitted by themselves? In this way, or in some way analogous, the Churches that lay within the "circumscription" of a patriarchal or apostolic see would by degrees be led to conform their canon to the canon of the principal Church. As time went on, the great metropolitan sees themselves became grouped round the three grand centres of Alexandria, Antioch, and Rome; and, finally, in the process of the development of tradition, at least as early as A.D. 800, the whole Church had adopted the canon as approved by Rome in the decretal of Innocent I. It is, therefore, a remarkable fact that Origen quotes the canon of the New Testament precisely as it now stands in the Vulgate. It would hardly be true to say that he formally states as exclusively authentic the complete list of the Catholic canon; but that he does enumerate it is certain. Moreover, in addition to the remarkable correctness of his investigations on the canon, Origen did much, in other ways, for a book that was emphatically the textbook of his school. The exemplars in general use were in a most unsatisfactory state: there were hardly two alike. Writers had been careless, audacious innovators had inserted their interpolations, honest but mistaken bunglers had added and taken away whenever the sense seemed to require it. It is Origen himself who makes these complaints, and nobody had better occasion to know how true they were. The manuscript used in the great Church probably differed from that used by the chief catechist; his, again, differed from every one of those brought to class by the wealthier of his scholars. One would bring up a copy of St. Matthew's Gospel, which, on investigation, would turn out to be full of Nazarite or Ebionite "improvements"—another would have an Acts of the Apostles, which had been bequeathed to him by some venerable Judaizant, and wherein St. James of Jerusalem would be found to have assumed more importance than St. Luke was generally supposed to have given him. A third would have a copy so full of monstrous corruptions in the way of mutilation and deliberate heretical glossing, that the orthodox ears of the {738} master would certainly have detected a quotation from it in two lines: it would be one of Valentine's editions. A fourth, newly arrived from some place where Tertullian had never been heard of, would appear with a bulky set of volumina, which Origen would find to his great disgust to be the New Testament "according to Marcion." That first and chief of reckless falsifiers had "circumcised" the New Testament, as St. Irenaeus calls it, to such an extent that he had to invent a quantity of new Acts and Apocalypses to keep up appearances, and what he retained he had freely cut and tortured into Marcionism; for he said openly that the apostles were moderately well-informed, but that his lights were far in advance of them. Such examples as these are, of course, extremes; but even in orthodox copies there must have been a bewildering number of variantes. Origen's position would bring him into contact with exemplars from many distant churches. The work of copying fresh ones for the "missions," or to supply the wants of the provinces, would necessitate some choice of manuscripts; and in a matter so important, we may be sure that his catechists, fellow-townsmen of Aristarchus, rather enjoyed than otherwise the vigorous critical disputes which the collation of MSS. has a special tendency to engender. It is nearly established—indeed, we may say, it is certain—that Origen wrote a copy of the New Testament with his own hand. It was not a new edition, apparently, but a corrected copy of the generally received version. He corrected the blunders of copyists; he struck out of the text everything that was evidently a mere gloss; he re-inserted what had clearly dropped out by mischance, and adopted a few readings that were unmistakable improvements. But he made no alteration of the text on mere conjecture. However faulty a reading might seem, he never changed it without authority; he had too much reverence for Holy Scripture, and probably, also, too bitter an experience of conjectural emendations, to sanction such dangerous proceedings by his own practice. This precious copy, the fruit of his labors and study, the depositary of his wide experience, and the record of his "adamantine" industry, was apparently the one from which he himself always quoted, and, therefore, we may conclude, which he always used. It lay, after his death, in the archives of Caesarea of Palestine, with his other Biblical MSS. Pamphilus the Martyr is related to have copied it; and in the time of Constantine, Eusebius sent many transcripts of it to the imperial city. Eusebius himself copied it with all the reverence he would necessarily feel for his hero, Origen; and by means of his copy, or of copies made by his direction, it became the basis of that recension of the New Testament known as the Alexandrine. St. Jerome was well acquainted with the library of Caesarea, and often mentions the "Codices Adamantii" which he was privileged to consult there; and we need not remind the reader of the well-known agreement of the Latin versions with those of Palestine and Alexandria. Now Palestine meant—first, Jerusalem, where was the celebrated library formed by St. Alexander, Origen's own college friend and an Alexandria man, as we should say, and partly under Origen's influence; and, secondly, Caesarea, which inherited Origen's traditions and teaching, at least equally with Alexandria, as we shall see later on, and in which the originals of his works were preserved with religious veneration, until war and sack of Persian or Moslem destroyed them. Thus the work of Origen on the New Testament, begun and mainly carried out during those twenty years at Alexandria, is living and active at this very day.

But if the New Testament needed setting to rights, it was correct and accurate in comparison with the Old. How he treated the Septuagint, and how the Hexapla and the Tetrapla grew under nimble hands and learned heads, we must for the present defer to tell.

{739}

From The Fortnightly Review.

MARTIN'S PUZZLE.

I.

  There she goes up the street with her book in her hand,
    And her "Good morning, Martin!" "Ay, lass, how d'ye do?"
  "Very well, thank you, Martin!" I can't understand;
    I might just as well never have cobbled a shoe!
  I can't understand it. She talks like a song:
    Her voice takes your ear like the ring of a glass;
  She seems to give gladness while limping along;
    Yet sinner ne'er suffered like that little lass.

II.

  Now, I'm a rough fellow—what's happen'd to me?
    Since last I left Falmouth I've not had a fight
  With a miner come down for a dip in the sea;
    I cobble contented from morning to night.
  The Lord gives me all that a man should require;
    Protects me, and "cuddles me up," as it were.
  But what have I done to be saved from the fire?
    And why does his punishment fall upon her?

III.

  First, a fool of a boy ran her down with a cart.
    Then, her fool of a father—a blacksmith by trade—
  Why the deuce does he tell us it hah broke his heart?
    His heart!—where's the leg of the poor little maid!
  Well, that's not enough; they must push her downstairs,
    To make her go crooked: but why count the list?
  If it's right to suppose that our human affairs
    Are all order'd by heaven—there, bang goes my fist!

IV.

  For if angels can look on such sights—never mind!
    When you're next to blaspheming, it's best to be mum.
  The parson declares that her woes weren't design'd;
    But, then, with the parson it's all kingdom-come.
  "Lose a leg, save a soul "—a convenient text;
    I call it "Tea doctrine," not savoring of God.
  When poor little Molly wants "chastening," why, next—
    The Archangel Michael might taste of the rod.

{740}

V.

  But, to see the poor darling go limping for miles
    To read books to sick people!—and just of an age
  When girls learn the meaning of ribbons and smiles,—
    Makes me feel like a squirrel that turns in a cage.
  The more I push thinking, the more I resolve:
    I never get further:—and as to her face,
  It starts up when near on my puzzle I solve,
    And says, "This crush'd body seems such a sad case."

VI.

  Not that she's for complaining: she reads to earn pence;
    And from those who can't pay, simple thanks are enough.
  Does she leave lamentation for chaps without sense?
    Howsoever, she's made up of wonderful stuff.
  Ay, the soul in her body must be a stout cord;
    She sings little hymns at the close of the day,
  Though she has but three fingers to lift to the Lord,
    And only one leg to kneel down with to pray.

VII.

  What I ask is, Why persecute such a poor dear,
    If there's law above all? Answer that if you can!
  Irreligious I'm not; but I look on this sphere
    As a place where a man should just think like a man.
  It isn't fair dealing! But, contrariwise,
    Do bullets in battle the wicked select?
  Why, then it's all chance-work! And yet, in her eyes,
    She hold's a fixed something by which I am check'd.

VIII.

  Yonder ribbon of sunshine aslope on the wall,
    If you eye it a minute, 'll have the same look:
  So kind! and so merciful! God of us all!
    It's the very same lesson we get from thy book.
  Then is life but a trial? Is that what is meant?
    Some must toil, and some perish, for others below:
  The injustice to each spreads a common content;
    Ay! I've lost it again, for it can't be quite so.

IX.

  She's the victim of fools: that seems nearer the mark.
    On earth there are engines and numerous fools.
  Why the Lord can permit them, we're still in the dark;
    He does, and in some sort of way they're his tools.
  It's a roundabout way, with respect let me add,
    If Molly goes crippled that we may be taught:
  But, perhaps, it's the only way, though it's so bad;
    In that case we'll bow down our heads, as we ought.

{741}

X.

  But the worst of me is, that when I bow my head,
    I perceive a thought wriggling away in the dust,
  And I follow its tracks, quite forgetful, instead
    Of humble acceptance: for, question I must!
  Here's a creature made carefully—carefully made
    Put together with craft, and then stampt on, and why?
  The answer seems nowhere: it's discord that's play'd.
    The sky's a blue dish!—an implacable sky!

XI.

  Stop a moment. I seize an idea from the pit.
    They tell us that discord, though discord, alone,
  Can be harmony when the notes properly fit:
    Am I judging all things from a single false tone?
  Is the universe one immense organ, that rolls
    From devils to angels? I'm blind with the sight.
  It pours such a splendor on heaps of poor souls!
    Suppose I try kneeling with Molly to-night.

GEORGE MEREDITH.

Translated from Der Katholik.

THE TWO SIDES OF CATHOLICISM.

[Third and concluding Article.]

IV. THE HEART OF THE CHURCH.

Christ approves himself as the head of the Church inasmuch as her individual members are subject to his guidance, and live and move in him. [Footnote 151] This protracted influence of Christ is exercised by means of an innate harmonizing and vivifying principle of the Church. We have arrived at the heart of the Church. Our ancient theology bestows this epithet on the Holy Ghost. [Footnote 152] The Church receives the Holy Ghost through Christ. Such is the doctrine of Scripture, clearly expressed. Jesus promises his disciples to send them after his departure the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, in whom they will find a compensation for the Master. For it is the function of the Spirit to testify of Christ, and to bring all things to the remembrance of the Church, whatsoever Jesus has said. Thus are all things taught unto the Church. This efficacy, which has the glory of Christ for its aim, the Holy Ghost derives from the fulness of Christ's Godhead, de meo accipiet. The Holy Ghost was not given until after Jesus was glorified. Christ being exalted, and having received the Holy Ghost promised of the Father, sheds forth the Spirit upon the Church. Even the prior inspiration of the apostles was the result of an act of Christ. Jesus breathed on them and said unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost.

[Footnote 151: St. Thomas, iii. 93, a. 6.]

[Footnote 152: Ibid, a. 1, ad. S: Caput habet manifestam eminentiam respectu caeterorum exteriorum membrorum; sed cor habet quandam influentiam occultam. Et ideo cordi comparatur Spiritus sanctus, qui invisibiliter ecclesiam viviflcat et unit.]

The Spirit acts as the heart of the Church under the control and influence of the head. The fundamental theological reason of this is not difficult of demonstration. The external relations {742} of the several divine persons, or their relations to the works of God, such as the one just described of the Holy Ghost to the Church, are intimately connected with the intro-divine relations of the members of the most Holy Trinity to each other. It is in this sense that Holy Writ makes mention of a mission of the Son and of the Spirit. The expression implies that the person concerning whom it is used, occupies toward the remaining divine persons a position admitting of the giving of a mission by them or one of them, that is to say, of a particular work done by the one by the power and at the delegation of the other. For one person of the Trinity to act in a mission, therefore, it is requisite that the power and the will to act must emanate from the person conferring the mission. Thus Jesus says that his doctrine is not his own, but the doctrine of him by whom he was sent. But one person of the Trinity can be a recipient from another in so far only as the recipient issues from the giver for ever and ever, or only in respect of the eternal procession. It follows that a divine person can receive a mission only in emanating from another, that is to say, none but the personae productae, the Son and the Holy Ghost, can be sent; while, on the other hand, only the personae producentes, the Father and the Son, can confer a mission. Hence the fundamental reason why the sway of the Spirit in the Church is exercised under the influence of Christ, is to be found in the manner of the eternal procession, i.e., in the coming of the Spirit from the Father and the Son.

The essence of Christianity consists in spiritual intercourse and spiritual influence. As distinguished from the old covenant, the characteristic of the New Testament dispensation consists in this: that it is done by the agency of the Holy Ghost, sent down from heaven. The Spirit of Christ was in the prophets; but the same Spirit manifests a new activity since the mission from heaven. When the apostle desires to make the true foundation of faith clear to the Galatians, he contents himself with asking them whence they had received the Spirit? By its descent the blessing of Abraham came on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ, in fulfilment of the prophecies. The pouring out of the Holy Ghost is the crowning work of Christ's mediation.

But what is the badge of this more profuse dispensation of the Spirit, thus recognized in Scripture as the peculiar mark of Christianity? Under the ancient covenant, answers St. Gregory of Naziance, the Holy Ghost was present only by its efficacy ( ); now it abides among us i.e., in its essence, or substantialiter, as our theologians phrase it. The efficacy of the Spirit in the prophets is described by St. Cyril of Alexandria as a mere irradiation [ ]; they received only the effulgence of the light, as those who follow a torch-bearer [ ]; while the Spirit in proper person enters into the souls of those who believe in Christ, and dwells therein [ ]. It is only since the ascension of Christ that the inhabitation of the Spirit in the souls of men has reached its completion as . This is the reason assigned by St. Cyril for the declaration of the Lord that he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than John the Baptist, than whom there hath not risen a greater among them that are born of women. He interprets the kingdom of heaven here referred to to be the impartment [ ] of the Holy Ghost. From this interpretation he deduces the reason wherefore the humblest citizen of the kingdom of heaven is above the Baptist. For the latter is born of woman, the former of God. In consequence of this regeneration we are partakers of the divine nature, which St. Cyril interprets to mean neither more nor less than the dwelling of the Holy Ghost in our souls. [Footnote 153 ]

[Footnote 153: Comment, in Joann. Evangel., lib. 5. Oper Lutet, 1638, A. IV., p. 474 et seq. ]

As the head of the Church, the Son {743} of man, being lifted up from the earth, draws all men unto him. The Scripture concludes the narration of the miraculous events of the first Christian Passover and of their immediate results with the remark that the Lord added to the Church daily such as should be saved. Therefore, immediately after the outpouring of the Holy Ghost, began the daily increase of the Church through the fructifying influence of the grace of its head. They were multiplied in proportion as they walked in the comfort, the [Greek text], of the Holy Ghost. By one Spirit the Church of Christ is baptized into one body, which Spirit overflows it and saturates it with its essence. In him we were sealed as the possession of Christ, and we know that he abideth in us by the Spirit which he hath given us. On being received into the Church the members are built into an edifice, the foundation of which has its cornerstone in Christ. By this incorporation they are united into a mansion of God in the Spirit. In so far as we are joined unto the Lord we are one spirit with him, and our bodies are temples of the Holy Ghost.

On account of its intimate relations with Christ, the Spirit is called the Spirit of Christ. Even the Lord himself is directly called the Spirit. By him, the Spirit of the Lord, we are transformed into his image, the image the Lord. Thereby the Spirit evinces itself the principle of our liberty.

The main result of the action of the Spirit in the Church is, therefore, the union of the latter and of her individual members with Christ, the Christ who is within us. The union between Christ and the Church is effected by the Spirit, who acts as the connecting link, while Christ himself is the efficient cause of the union, in so far as he sends his Spirit to accomplish it. How, then, is the inhabitation of the Spirit, which is identical with that of Christ, in the Church brought about? The answer to this question involves results decisive of the present investigation.

If the Church were an unattained ideal, according to the Protestant acceptation, the promise of Christ to be with his followers even unto the end of the world would admit of no more profound interpretation than that, after his personal departure, the Lord would continue to occupy the minds of his disciples, thus giving their thoughts a right direction through all time. The presence of Christ in the visible Church would no longer be vouchsafed by a substantial pledge, making the repletion of the Church with Christ, which is the ideal of that institution, a historical reality even at the present day, in so far as the pledge is actually present. If, on the other hand, the latter view is the only scriptural one, then the true Church is not to be handed over exclusively to the future and to the realm of ideas. She is herself within the sphere of reality, she belongs to the living present, if the inmost principle of her being is even now actually at work, as a gift coeval with her establishment, not the mere object of search and speculation.

The idea of Catholicism presupposes one thing more. Such a principle dwelling in the Church as a reality must necessarily exercise its functions in a single individual image only. Both of these positions are the necessary results of the teachings of Holy Writ.

The Scriptures describe the Holy Ghost, by whom the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts, as something conferred upon us, per spiritum sanctum qui datus est nobis. In the capacity of abiding in our souls as something bestowed upon us, as donum, the fathers distinguish a personal attribute of the Holy Ghost, having its foundation in the peculiar manner of its eternal emanation from the Father and Son. This emanation is wrought as a common infusion of being from Father and Son, as an intro-divine overflowing of love. [Footnote 154] Together {744} with the Holy Ghost that is given unto us, that is to say, by means of the love shed abroad in our hearts through him, the two other persons of the Trinity likewise come and take up their abode within our souls. The unity of the three divine persons is not only the antetype of the unity of the Church, but is at the same time its fundamental principle. In his high sacerdotal invocation the Lord prays that all those who believe through the word may be one, even as the Father is in him and he in the Father; and that we may be one in the Father and the Son, ut et ipsi eis nolis unum sint. The unity of the Father and the Son, who take up their abode within us simultaneously with the Holy Ghost, is the foundation of our own ecclesiastical unity. There is the fundamental, the ultimate principle of Catholicism. In it, through the Holy Ghost, we have a fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.

[Footnote 154: St. Augustinus, de Trinit., lib. v., cap. 14: Exiit enim non quomodo natus, sed quomodo datus; et ideo non dicitur filius. Cap. 15: Quia sic procedebat ut esset donabile, jam donum erat et antequam esset cui daretur. Cap. 11: Spiritus sanctus ineffabilis est quaedam Patris Filiique communio. . . . hoc ipse proprie dicitur, quod illi communiter: quia et Pater spiritus et Filius spiritus et Pater sanctus et Filius sanctus. Ut ergo ex nomine, quod utrique convenit, utriusque communio significetur, vocatur donum amborum Spiritus sanctus.]

The other functions ascribed to the Spirit by Holy Writ are also of such a nature as to constrain us to assume that the essence of the true Church is a reality even at this day. By the Holy Ghost we receive even now an earnest of the inheritance in store for us. Its testimony assures us that we are the children of God. We have become such even now, and through him. We are born of the Spirit. The renewal accomplished by him is a bath of regeneration, the putting on of a new man. In the hearts of believers he is a well of water springing up into everlasting life. In this sense our justification may be regarded as a glorification in the germ. Christ has anointed the Church with a chrism which abides and exerts itself in her as a permanent teacher.

It is an entire misapprehension of the creative power of Christianity to ascribe to the Spirit of Christ which governs the Church no more profitable efficacy than the barren, resultless chase of an ideal which constantly eludes realization. The very idea that a law of steady development is to be traced in Christianity itself, this very favorite view of all the advocates of an ideal Church, ought to have led to a more profound appreciation of the essence and history of the Church. If the Church is to undergo a development, the realization of her ideal should not be postponed to the end of time. What is its course in history? This point is decisive of our position respecting the ideal Church.

The doctrine relies upon Matt, xviii. 20. Here the Catholic acceptation of a realization of the essence of the Church, historically manifested, would appear to be directly excluded. The passage adduced makes Christ abide among us, and accordingly makes the true Church come into being simply in consequence of the casual assemblage of two or three, so that it takes place in his name—a condition the performance or breach of which is a matter by no means patent to the senses. But these words are to be read in connection with what precedes them. Verses 17 and 18 allude to the authority of' the Church as historically manifest. The resolutions of that authority are ratified in heaven, and are valid before God. For—such is the logical thread of the discourse of Jesus—what the Church, as historically manifested, ordains, is at the same time ordained by the Holy Ghost dwelling within her. That such is actually the case, the Lord then proceeds to show by the concluding illustration. The agreement of two is alone sufficient to secure a fulfilment of the prayer: for where two or three are assembled together in the name of Christ, there is he in the midst of them: how much more amply then is the presence and the countenance of Christ assured to the entire Church, and to the organ intrusted with the execution of her {745} power! [Footnote 55] True, Christ is present even where only two or three are assembled in his name; but the result of his presence corresponds to the extent of the assembly. There Christ simply effects the fulfilment of the common prayer. That the arbitrary concourse of a few individuals in the name of Christ is the realization of the essence of the Church, nowhere in the whole passage is there a word to confirm such an interpretation.

[Footnote 155: This is the interpretation of this passage by the council of Chalcedon, in its missive to Pope Leo the Great. Compare Ballerini, op. S. Leonis t. i., p. 1087.]

The advocates of the ideal Church also cite Eph. v. 27. [Footnote 156] There the Church is called holy and without blemish, not having spot or wrinkle; a description supposed to be applicable exclusively to the Church that is to be, and by no means to the Church as it is. The remark is an idle one, and does not touch the real question. In our view it is the work of the present to lay the foundation for the future glory of the Church. This position is fully borne out by the words of Scripture. For in verse 26 the apostle points out the sanctification of the Church as the immediate object of the sacrifice of Christ, and at the same time indicates the means by which the Church is to be sanctified. This is done by the washing of water, which owes its purifying efficacy to the simultaneous utterance of the word. The presentation of the Church in unblemished holiness and glory, the object of the sacrificial death of Christ, is therefore gradually effected in the present world in proportion as the purification by the sacrament, under the continued influence of Christ, exerts its efficacy in he Church.

[Footnote 156: Hase, Handbuch der prot. Polemik (Manual of Protestant Polemics), p. 42. ]

If the apostle were here speaking simply of a remote future holiness of the Church, his whole course of reasoning would lose its point. The love of Christ is here presented to husbands and wives as a model for their own connubial relations. As the self-sacrifice of Christ for the Church has for its object the sanctification of the latter, so the mutual self-devotion of husbands and wives is to invest their lives with a higher grace. It is not the mere act of the self-sacrifice of Christ which is to be emulated in marriage. No admonition would be needed for such a purpose. Marriage is necessarily a type of this relation. The discourse of the apostle tends, on the contrary, to recommend the motive of the sacrifice of Christ, and its influence upon the sanctification of the Church, to husbands and wives for imitation. How feeble, how little calculated to fortify the admonition of the apostle, would be their reference to the relation of Christ to the Church, if the sanctification of the Church by Christ, thus held up to husbands and wives for emulation, were something totally unreal, a mere creature of reflection! If the purpose of the sacrifice of Christ, the sanctification of the Church, were still unattained, how could husbands and wives be expected to make their intercourse bear those moral fruits by which it is to approve itself a type of the relation of Christ to the Church?

The holiness of the Church, then, has its origin in the sacraments. But that which makes the Church holy appertains to her essential character. It follows that this character also is evolved by means of the sacraments. This proves, finally, that this evolution of the character of the true Church is only possible in a single, individual historical manifestation, that is to say, only within, or at least by the agency [Footnote 157] of, that visible body politic which is in possession of the sacraments.

[Footnote 157: The means of grace administered by the Church sometimes exert their influence beyond the pale, i.e., outside of, her historical image. This is seen in the validity of the baptism of heretics. ]

Protestantism is untrue to its own principle in representing the administration of the sacraments according to their institution as an index of the true Church. The whole force of this position lies in the presumption of a {746} distinct historical organization as the necessary exponent of the inward essence of the true Church. A contrary doctrine is in danger of bestowing the name of the true Church on a society which may possibly be composed exclusively of hypocrites. The inference is obvious. If the essence of the true Church is only to be found in the domain of the mind, or if it even remains a mere ideal, where is the guarantee that the mantle of the sacramental organization covers that silent, invisible congregation of spirits in which alone the Protestant looks for the essence of the true Church? The reformer's idea of the Church is here entangled in a contradiction in terms. On the principle of justification by faith alone, the character of the true Church must be wholly expressed in something incorporeal. And yet the true Church is to be recognized by the use of the sacraments according to their institution. Where is the connecting link between the external and the internal Church? The congruence of the Spirit and the body of the Church, if it occurs, is purely accidental. The visible Church, taken by itself, is a mere external thing, possibly void of all substantial essence. The doctrine of sola fides is incapable of a profound appreciation of the visible Church. This, taken in connection with the old Protestant theory that the phase of the Church manifested in preaching and in the sacraments is of the essence of the Church, makes it clear that the attempt of the reformers to spiritualize Christianity leads on the contrary to a materialization of the idea of the Church.

The modern Protestant theology was far from being deterred by its reverence for the reformers from laying bare this unsound portion of their system. They attempted to make up for it by the well known theory of the ideal Church, which begins by renouncing, in entire consistency with the Protestant principle of justification by faith alone, every outward manifestation of the essence of the Church.

The manifold forms in which Christianity becomes palpable as a power in history are here treated as something purely accidental, easily capable of severance from the essence of the true Church. How does this explanation comport with the doctrine of Scripture just expounded?

The Church of Christ, says Holy Writ, receives her unseen bridal ornaments by means of the palpable sacraments. In consequence of their efficacy she conceals the germs of her future glory under the guise of her temporal image. The most profound and super-sensual characteristic of the Church is, therefore, closely though mysteriously allied with the palpable exterior. It is not our present task to show how this alliance is formed. We simply inquire into the foundation of this necessary combination of the spirit and the form of the Church. This foundation we claim to discover in the sublimity of the principle heretofore recognized by us as the marrow, the heart of the Church.

If that which constitutes the heart of the Church is supernatural, and beyond the reach of the natural powers of the human mind, its impartment and preservation necessarily presuppose a peculiar influence of God upon man, different from the creative power. Under these circumstances, the precise method of the divine influence pervading the Church is only to be learned with certainty from revelation. And here we find the most explicit teachings on this subject. According to the testimony of Scripture, the Lord promotes the growth of the Church by means palpable to the senses. This suggests inquiry into the laws under which these means of grace find their application. Those laws are derived from the object of their institution. It consists in the adhibition of instrumentalities in the production of a divine effect. Consequently the means employed, or the sacraments, can manifest their efficacy only under certain conditions divinely ordained.

The correct understanding of the {747} mutual relations subsisting between the spirit and the body of the Church is further assisted by reference to another idea also derived from the Church. The regular growth of the Church is made intelligible to us as a self-edification in love. The means required for the attainment of this purpose have been given into the hands of the Church herself. For this end Peter received the keys of the kingdom of heaven. He is not only the thread of the historical development of the Church, but the interior organization also necessarily presupposes a union with Peter. The organs of this organization are the sacraments. But they manifest their saving efficacy on those only who have not knowingly interrupted the chain of union between themselves and Peter, and their use is totally void of effect if the party by whom they are administered is not actuated by the desire of doing that which is done in sacramental ceremonies by the Church, united with Peter (intentio faciendi quod facit ecclesia.)

The inmost principle, the heart of the Church, is inseparably connected with these visible actions, which are efficaciously administered only according to the intention and in the name of the visible Church, and in virtue of their efficacy the latter approves herself as holy. Thus the present inquiry leads to the same result already reached by other investigations. The spirit and the body of Catholicism are not to be separated. The connecting link which binds them together is Peter, the bearer of the keys of the kingdom of heaven, who still lives in his successors. But the fountain-head of this necessary relationship is in the vital principle of the Church, in her supernatural principle.

The idea of a supernatural principle, and that of the papacy, together constitute the principle of Catholicism. In the former we behold its fundamental essence, in the latter the cement of its historical unity, as well as the connecting link between the interior and the exterior catholicity of the Church.

From The Month.

SONNET.

UNSPIRITUAL CIVILIZATION.

  We have been piping, Lord; we have been singing;
  Five hundred years have passed o'er lawn and lea,
  Marked by the blowing bud and falling tree,
  While all the ways with melody were ringing:
  In tented lists, high-stationed and flower-flinging,
  Beauty looked down on conquering chivalry;
  Science made wise the nations; laws made free;
  Art, like an angel ever onward winging,
  Brightened the world. But, O great Lord and Father!
  Have these, thy bounties, drawn to thee man's race,
  That stood so far aloof? Have they not rather
  His soul subjected? with a blind embrace
  Gulfed it in sense? Prime blessings changed to curse
  'Twixt God and man can set God's universe.

AUBREY DE VERE.

{748}

From The Month

CONSTANCE SHERWOOD.

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

BY LADY GEORGIANA FULLERTON.

CHAPTER XI.

During the two years which followed the Duke of Norfolk's death I did only see my Lady Surrey once, which was when she came to Arundel House, on a visit to her lord's grandfather; and her letters for a while were both scanty and brief. She made no mention of religion, and but little of her husband; and chiefly touched on such themes as Lady Margaret's nuptials with Mr. Sackville (Lord Dorset's heir) and Mistress Milicent's with Sir Hammond l'Estrange. She had great contentment, she wrote, to see them both so well married according to their degree; but that for herself she did very much miss her good sister's company and her gentlewoman's affectionate services, who would now reside all the year at her husband's seat in Norfolk; but she looked when my lord and herself should be at Kenninghall, when he left the university, that they might yet, being neighbors, spend some happy days together, if it so pleased God. Once she wrote in exceeding great joy, so that she said she hardly knew how to contain herself, for that my lord was coming in a few days to spend the long vacation at Lord Sussex's house at Bermondsey. But when she wrote again, methought—albeit her letter was cheerful, and she did jest in it somewhat more than was her wont—that there was a silence touching her husband, and her own contentment in his society, which betokened a reserve such as I had not noticed in her before. About that time it was bruited in London that my Lord Surrey had received no small detriment by the bad example he had at Cambridge, and the liberty permitted him.

And now, forsaking for a while the theme of that noble pair, whose mishaps and felicities have ever saddened and rejoiced mine heart almost equally with mine own good or evil fortune, I here purpose to set down such occurrences as should be worthy of note in the more obscure sphere in which my lot was cast.

When I was about sixteen, my cousin Kate was married to Mr. Lacy; first in a secret manner, in the night, by Mr. Plasden, a priest, in her father's library, and the next day at the parish church at Holborn. Methinks a fairer bride never rode to church than our Kate. Her mother went with her, which was the first time she had been out of doors for a long space of time, for she feared to catch cold if the wind did blow from the north or the east; and if from the south she feared it should bring noxious vapors from the river; and the west, infection from the city, and so stayed at home for greater safety. But on Kate's wedding day we did all protest the wind blew not at all, so that from no quarter of the sky should mischief arise; and in a closed litter, which she reckoned to be safer than a coach, she consented to go to church.

"Marry, good wife," cried Mr. Congleton, when she had been magnifying all the dangers she mostly feared, "thou dost forget the greatest of all in these days, which doth hold us all by the neck, as it were. For hearing mass, as we did in this room last night, we do all run the risk of being hanged, which should be a greater peril methinks than a breath of foul air."

{749}

She, being in a merry mood, replied: "Twittle twattle, Mr. Congleton; the one may be avoided, the other not. 'Tis no reason I should get a cold to-day because I be like to be hanged to-morrow."

"I' faith," cried Polly, "my mother hath well parried your thrust, sir; and methinks the holy Bishop of Rochester was of the same mind with her."

"How so, Polly?" quoth her father; and she, "There happened a false rumor to rise suddenly among the people when he was in the prison, so I have heard Mr. Roper relate, that he should be brought to execution on a certain day; wherefore his cook, that was wont to dress his dinner and carry it daily unto him, hearing of his execution, dressed him no dinner at all that day. Wherefore, at the cook's next repair unto him, he demanded the cause why he brought him not his dinner. 'Sir,' said the cook, 'it was commonly talked all over the town that you should have died to-day, and therefore I thought it but vain to dress anything for you.' 'Well,' quoth the bishop merrily, 'for all that report, thou seest me yet alive; and therefore, whatsoever news thou shalt hear of me hereafter, prithee let me no more lack my dinner, but make it ready; and if thou see me dead when thou comest, then eat it thyself. But I promise thee, if I be alive, by God's grace, to eat never a bit the less.'"

"And on the day he was verily executed," said Mistress Ward, "when the lieutenant came to fetch him, he said to his man, 'Reach me my furred tippet, to put about my neck.' 'O my lord!' said the lieutenant, 'what need you be so careful of your health for this little time, being not much above in hour?' 'I think no otherwise,' said this blessed father; 'but yet, in he mean time, I will keep myself as well as I can; for I tell you truth, though I have, I thank our Lord, a very good desire and a willing mind to die at this present, and so I trust of his infinite mercy and goodness he will continue it, yet I will not willingly hinder my health one minute of an hour, but still prolong the same as long as I can by such reasonable ways as Almighty God hath provided for me.'" Upon which my good aunt fastened her veil about her head, and said the holy bishop was the most wise saint and reasonablest martyr she had yet heard of.

Kate was dressed in a kirtle of white silk, her head attired with an habiliment of gold, and her hair, brighter itself than gold, woven about her face in cunningly wrought tresses. She was led to church between two gentlemen—Mr. Tresham and Mr. Hogdson—friends of the bridegroom, who had bride-laces and rosemary tied about their silken sleeves. There was a fair cup of silver gilt carried before her, wherein was a goodly branch of rosemary, gilded very fair, and hung about with silken ribbons of all colors. Musicians came next; then a group of maidens bearing garlands finely gilded; and thus we passed on to the church. The common people at the door cheered the bride, whose fair face was a passport to their favor; but as Muriel crept along, leaning on my arm, I caught sound of murmured blessings.

"Sweet saint," quoth an aged man, leaning on his staff, near the porch, "I ween thine espousals be not of earth." A woman, with a child in her arms, whispered to her as she past, "He thou knowest of is dead, and died praying for thee." A man, whose eyes had watched her painfully ascending the steps, called her an angel; whereupon a beggar with a crutch cried out, "Marry, a lame angel!" A sweet smile was on her face as she turned toward him; and drawing a piece of silver from her pocket, she bestowed it on him, with some such words as these—that she prayed they might both be so happy, albeit lame, as to hobble to heaven, and get there in good time, if it should please God. Then he fell to blessing her so loud, that she hurried me into the church, not content to be thanked in so public a manner.

{750}

After the ceremony, we returned in the same order to Ely Place. The banquet which followed, and the sports succeeding it, were conducted in a private and somewhat quiet fashion, and not many guests invited, by reason of the times, and Mr. Congleton misliking to draw notice to his house, which had hitherto been but little molested, partly for that Sir Francis Walsingham had a friendship for him, and also for his sister, Lady Egerton of Ridley, which procured for them greater favor, in the way of toleration, than is extended to others; and likewise the Portuguese ambassador was his very good friend, and his chapel open to us at all times; so that priests did not need to come to his house for the performance of any religious actions, except that one of the marriage, which had taken place the night before in his library. Howsoever, he was very well known to be a recusant, for that neither himself, nor any belonging to him, attended Protestant worship; and Sir Francis sometimes told him that the clemency with which he was treated was shown toward him with the hope that, by mild courses, he might be soon brought to some better conformity.

Mr. Lacy's house was in Gray's Inn Lane, a few doors from Mr. Swithin Wells's; and through this proximity an intimate acquaintanceship did arise between that worthy gentleman and his wife and Kate's friends. He was very good-natured, pleasant in conversation, courteous, and generous; and Mrs. Wells a most virtuous gentlewoman. Although he (Mr. Swithin) much delighted in hawking, hunting, and other suchlike diversions, yet he so soberly governed his affections therein, as to be content to deprive himself of a good part of those pleasures, and retire to a more profitable employment of training up young gentlemen in virtue and learning; and with such success that his house has been, as it were, a fruitful seminary to many worthy members of the Catholic Church. Among the young gentlemen who resided with him at that time was Mr. Hubert Rookwood, the youngest of the two sons of Mr. Rookwood, of Euston, whom I had seen at the inn at Bedford, when I was journeying to London. We did speedily enter into a somewhat close acquaintanceship, founded on a similarity of tastes and agreeable interchange of civilities, touching the lending of books and likewise pieces of music, which I did make fair copies of for him, and which we sometimes practiced in the evening; for he had a pleasant voice and an aptness to catch the trick of a song, albeit unlearned in the art, wherein he styled me proficient; and I, nothing loth to impart my knowledge, became his instructor, and did teach him both to sing and play the lute. He was not much taller than when I had seen him before; but his figure was changed, and his visage had grown pale, and his hair thick and flowing, especially toward the back of the head, discovering in front a high and thoughtful forehead. There was a great deal of good young company at that time in Mr. Wells's house; for some Catholics tabled there beside those that were his pupils, and others resorted to it by reason of the pleasant entertainment they found in the society of ingenuous persons, well qualified, and of their own religion. I had most days opportunities of conversing with Hubert, though we were never alone; and, by reason of the friendship which had existed between his father and mine, I allowed him a kindness I did not commonly afford to others.

Mr. Lacy had had his training in that house, and, albeit his natural parts did not title him to the praise of an eminent scholar, he had thence derived a great esteem for learning, a taste for books, of the which he did possess a great store (many hundred volumes), and a discreet manner of talking, though something tinctured with affectation, inasmuch as he should seem to be rather enamored of the words he uttered, than careful of the {751} substance. Hubert was wont to say that his speech was like to the drawing of a leaden sword out of a gilded sheath. He was a very virtuous young man; and his wife had never but one complaint to set forth, which was that his books took up so much of his time that she was almost as jealous of them as if they had been her rivals. She would have it he did kill himself with study; and, in a particular manner, with the writing of the life of one Thomas à Kempis, which was a work he had had a long time on hand. One day she comes into his library, and salutes him thus: "Mr. Lacy, I would I were a book; and then methinks you would a little more respect me." Polly, who was by, cried out, "Madam, you must then be an almanac, that he might change every year;" whereat she was not a little displeased. And another time, when her husband was sick, she said, if Mr. Lacy died, she would burn Thomas a Kempis for the killing of her husband. I, hearing this, answered that to do so were a great pity; to whom she replied, "Why, who was Thomas a Kempis?" to which I answered, "One of the saintliest men of the age wherein he lived." Wherewith she was so satisfied, that she said, then she would not do it for all the world.

Methinks I read more in that one year than in all the rest of my life beside. Mine aunt was more sick than usual, and Mistress Ward so taken up with the nursing of her, that she did not often leave her room. Polly was married in the winter to Sir Ralph Ingoldby, and went to reside for some months in the country. Muriel prevailed on her father to visit the prison with her, in Mistress Ward's stead, so that sometimes they were abroad the whole of the day; by reason of which, I was oftener in Gray's Inn Lane than at home, sometimes at Kate's house, and sometimes at Mistress Wells's mansion, where I became infected with a zeal for learning, which Hubert's example and conversation did greatly invite me to. He had the most winning tongue, and the aptest spirit in the world to divine the natural inclinations of those he consorted with. The books he advised me to read were mostly such as Mistress Ward, to whom I did faithfully recite their titles, accounted to be not otherwise than good and profitable, having learned so much from good men she consulted thereon, for she was herself no scholar; but they bred in me a great thirst for knowledge, a craving to converse with those who had more learning than myself, and withal so keen a relish for Hubert's society, that I had no contentment so welcome as to listen to his discourse, which was seasoned with a rare kind of eloquence and a discursive fancy, to which, also, the perfection of his carriage, his pronunciation of speech, and the deportment of his body lent no mean lustre. Naught arrogant or affected disfigured his conversation, in which did lie so efficacious a power of persuasion, and at times, when the occasion called for it, so great a vehemency of passion, as enforced admiration of his great parts, if not approval of his arguments. I made him at that time judge of the new thoughts which books, like so many keys opening secret chambers in the mind, did unlock in mine; and I mind me how eagerly I looked for his answers—how I hung on his lips when he was speaking, not from any singular affection toward his person, but by reason of the extraordinary fascination of his speech, and the interest of the themes we discoursed upon; one time touching on the histories of great men of past ages, at another on the changes wrought in our own by the new art of printing books, which had produced such great changes in the world, and yet greater to be expected. And as he was well skilled in the Italian as well as the French language, I came by his means to be acquainted with many great writers of those nations. He translated for me sundry passages from the divine play of Signor Dante Alighieri, in which {752} hell and purgatory and heaven are depicted, as it were by an eye-witness, with so much pregnancy of meaning and force of genius, that it should almost appear as if some special revelation had been vouchsafed to the poet beyond his natural thoughts, to disclose to him the secrets of other spheres. He also made me read a portion of that most fine and sweet poem on the delivery of the holy city Jerusalem, composed by Signor Torquato Tasso, a gentleman who resided at that time at the court of the Duke of Ferrara, and which one Mr. Fairfax has since done into English verse. The first four cantos thereof were given to Mr. Wells by a young gentleman, who had for a while studied at the University of Padua. This fair poem, and mostly the second book thereof, hath remained imprinted in my memory with a singular fixity, by reason that it proved the occasion of my discerning for the first time a special inclination on Hubert's side toward myself, who thought nothing of love, but was only glad to have acquired a friend endowed with so much wit and superior knowledge, and willing to impart it. This book, I say, did contain a narration which bred in me so great a resentment of the author's merits, and so quick a sympathy with the feigned subjects of his muse, that never before or since methinks has a fiction so moved me as the story of Olindo and Sophronisba.

Methinks this was partly ascribable to a certain likeness between the scenes described by the poet and some which take place at this time in our country. In the maiden of high and noble thoughts, fair, but heedless of her beauty, who stood in the presence of the soldan, once a Christian, then a renegade, taking on herself the sole guilt,—O virtuous guilt! O worthy crime!—of which all the Christians were accused, to wit, of rescuing sacred Mary's image from the hands of the infidels who did curse and blaspheme it, and, when all were to die for the act of one unknown, offered herself a ransom for all, and with a shamefaced courage, such as became a maid, and a bold modesty befitting a saint—a bosom moved indeed, but not dismayed, a fair but not pallid cheek—was content to perish for that the rest should live;—in her, I say, I saw a likeness in spirit to those who suffer nowadays for a like faith with hers, not at the hands of infidels, but of such whose parents did for the most part hold that same belief which they do now make out to be treason.

Hubert, observing me to be thus moved, smiled, and asked if, in the like case, I should have willed to die as Sophronisba.

"Yes," I answered, "if God did give me grace;" and then, as I uttered the words, I thought it should not be lawful to tell a lie, not for to save all the lives in the world; which doubt I imparted to him, who laughed and said he was of the poet's mind, who doth exclaim, touching this lie, "O noble deceit! worthier than truth itself!" and that he thought a soul should not suffer long in purgatory for such a sin. "Maybe not," I answered; "yet, I ween, there should be more faith in a sole commitment to God of the events than in doing the least evil so that good should come of it."

He said, "I marvel, Mistress Constance, what should be your thoughts thereon if the life of a priest was in your hands, and you able to save him by a lie."

"Verily," I answered, "I know not, Master Rookwood; but I have so much trust in Almighty God that he would, in such a case, put words into my mouth which should be true, and yet mislead evil-purposed men, or that he shall keep me from such fearful straits, or forgive me if, in the stress of a great peril, I unwittingly should err."

"And I pray you," Hubert then said, as if not greatly caring to pursue the theme, "what be your thought concerning the unhappy youth Olindo, who did so dote on this maiden that, fearful of offending there where above {753} all he desired to please, had, greatly as he loved, little hoped, nothing asked, and not so much as revealed his passion until a common fate bound both to an equal death?"

"I thought not at all on him," I answered; "but only on Sophronisba."

At which he sighed and read further: "That all wept for her who, albeit doomed to a cruel death, wept not for herself, but in this wise secretly reproved the fond youth's weeping: 'Friend,' quoth she, 'other thoughts, other tears, other sighs, do beseem this hour. Think of thy sins, and God's great recompense for the good. Suffer for his sole sake, and torment shall be sweet. See how fair the heavens do show, the sun how bright, as it were to cheer and lure us onward!'"

"Ah!" I exclaimed, "shame on him who did need to be so exhorted, who should have been the most valiant, being a man!" To the which he quickly replied:

"He willed to die of his own free will rather than to live without her whom he jewelled more than life: but in the matter of grieving love doth make cowards of those who should else have been brave."

"Me thinks, rather," I answered, "that in noble hearts love's effects should be noble."

"Bethink you, Mistress Constance," he then asked, "that Sophronisba did act commendably, insomuch that when an unlooked-for deliverance came, she refused not to be united in life to him that had willed to be united to her in death."

"You may think me ungrateful, sir," answered; "but other merits methinks than fondness for herself should have won so great a heart."

"You be hard to content, Mistress Constance," he answered somewhat resentfully. "To satisfy you, I perceive one should have a hard as well as a great heart."

"Nay," I cried, "I praise not hardness, but love not softness either. You that be so learned, I pray you find the word which doth express what pleaseth me in a man."

"I know not the word," he answered; "I would I knew the substance of your liking, that I might furnish myself with it."

Whereupon our discourse ended that day; but it ministered food to my thoughts, and I fear me also to a vain content that one so gifted with learning and great promise of future greatness should evince something of regard beyond a mutual friendship for one as ignorant and young as I then was.

Some months after Kate's marriage, matters became very troublesome, by reason of the killing of a great store, as was reported, of French Huguenots in Paris on St. Bartholomew's day, and afterward in many cities of France, which did consternate the English Catholics for more reasons than one, and awoke so much rage in the breasts of Protestants, that the French ambassador told Lady Tregony, a friend, of Mistress Wells, that he did scarce venture to show his face; and none, save only the queen herself, who is always his very good friend, would speak to him. I was one evening at the house of Lady Ingoldby, Polly's mother-in-law, some time after this dismal news had been bruited, and the company there assembled did for the most part discourse on these events, not only as deploring what had taken place, and condemning the authors thereof,—which, indeed, was what all good persons must needs have done,—but took occasion thence to use such vile terms and opprobrious language touching Catholic religion, and the cruelty and wickedness of such as did profess it, without so much as a thought of the miseries inflicted on them in England, that—albeit I had been schooled in the hard lesson of silence—so strong a passion overcame me then, that I had well nigh, as the Psalmist saith, spoken with my tongue, yea, young as I was, uttered words rising hot from my heart, in the midst of that adverse company, which I did know, them to be, if one had not at {754} that moment lifted up his voice, whose presence I had already noted, though not acquainted with his name; a man of reverent and exceedingly benevolent aspect; aged, but with an eye so bright, and silvery hair crowning a noble forehead, that so much excellence and dignity is seldom to be observed in any one as was apparent in this gentleman.

"Good friends," he said, and at the sound of his voice the speakers hushed their eager discoursing, "God defend I should in any way differ with you touching the massacres in France; for verily it has been a lamentable and horrible thing that so many persons should be killed, and religion to be the pretence for it; but to hear some speak of it, one should think none did suffer in this country for their faith, and bloody laws did not exist, whereby Papists are put to death in a legal, cold-blooded fashion, more terrible, if possible, than the sudden bursts of wild passions and civil strife, which revenge for late cruelties committed by the Huguenots, wherein many thousand Catholics had perished, the destruction of churches, havoc of fierce soldiery, and apprehension of the like attempts in Paris, had stirred up to fury; so that when the word went forth to fall on the leaders of the party, the savage work once begun, even as a fire in a city built of wood, raged as a madness for one while, and men in a panic struck at foes, whose gripe they did think to feel about their throats."

Here the speaker paused an instant. This so bold opening of his speech did seem to take all present by surprise, and almost robbed me of my breath; for it is well known that nowadays a word, yea a piece of a word, or a nod of the head, whereby any suspicion may arise of a favorable disposition toward Catholics, is often-times a sufficient cause for a man to be accused and cast into prison; and I waited his next words (which every one, peradventure from curiosity, did likewise seem inclined to hear) with downcast eyes, which dared not to glance at any one's face, and cheeks which burned like hot coals.

"It is well known," quoth he, "that the sufferings which be endured by recusants at this time in our country are such, that many should prefer to die at once than to be subjected to so constant a fear and terror as doth beset them. I speak not now of the truth or the falsity of their religion, which, if it be ever so damnable and wicked, is no new invention of their own, but what all Christian people did agree in, one hundred years ago; so that the aged do but abide by what they were taught by undoubted authority in their youth, and the young have received from their parents as true. But I do solely aver that Papists are subjected to a thousand vexations, both of bonds, imprisonments, and torments worse than death, yea and oftentimes to death itself; and that so dreadful, that to be slain by the sword, or drowned, yea even burned at the stake, is not so terrible; for they do hang a man and then cut him down yet alive, and butcher him in such ways—plucking out his heart and tearing his limbs asunder—that nothing more horrible can be thought of."

"They be traitors who are so used," cried one gentleman, somewhat recovering from the surprise which these bold words had caused.

"If to be of a different religion from the sovereign of the country be a proof of treason," continued the venerable speaker, "then were the Huguenots, which have perished in France, a whole mass and nest of traitors."

A gentleman seated behind me, who had a trick of sleeping in his chair, woke up and cried out, "Not half a one, sirs; not so much as half a one is allowed," meaning the mass, which he did suppose to have been spoken of.

"And if so, deserved all to die,' continued the speaker.

"Ay, and so they do, sir," quoth the sleeper. "I pray you let them all be hanged." Upon which every one {755} laughed, and the aged gentleman also; and then he said,

"Good my friends, I ween 'tis a rash thing to speak in favor of recusants nowadays, and what few could dare to do but such as cannot be suspected of disloyalty to the queen and the country, and who, having drunk of the cup of affliction in their youth, even to the dregs, and held life for a long time as a burden which hath need to be borne day by day, until the wished for hour of release doth come—and the sooner, the more welcome—have no enemies to fear, and no object to attain. And if so be that you will bear with me for a few moments, yea, if ye procure me to be hanged to-morrow" (this he said with a pleasant smile; and, "Marry, fear not, Mr. Roper," and "I' faith, speak on, sir," was bruited round him by his astonished auditors), "I will recite to you some small part of the miseries which have been endured of late years by such as cannot be charged with the least thought of treason, or so much as the least offence against the laws, except in what touches the secret practice of their religion. Women have, to my certain knowledge, been hung up by the hands in prisons (which do overflow with recusants, so that at this time there remaineth no room for common malefactors), and cruelly scourged, for that they would not confess by which priest they had been reconciled or absolved, or where they had heard mass. Priests are often tortured to force them to declare what they hear in confession, who harbor priests and Papists, where such and such recusants are to be found, and the like questions; and in so strenuous a manner, that needles have been thrust under their nails, and one man, not long since, died of his racking. O sirs and gentle ladies, I have seen with mine own eyes a youth, the son of one of my friends—young Mark Typper, born of honest and rich parents, skilful in human learning, having left his study for a time, and going home to see his friends—whipped through the streets of London, and burnt in the ear, because, forsooth, a forward judge, to whom he had been accused as a Papist, and finding no proof thereof, condemned him as a vagabond. And what think you, good people, of the death of Sir Robert Tyrwit's son, who was accused for hearing of a mass at the marriage of his sister, and albeit at the time of his arrest in a grievous fever, was pulled out of the house and thrust into prison, even as he then was, feeble, faint, and grievously sick? His afflicted parents entreat, make intercession, and use all the means they can to move the justices to have consideration of the sick; not to heap sorrow upon sorrow, nor affliction on the afflicted; not to take away the life of so comely a young gentleman, whom the physicians come and affirm will certainly die if he should be removed. All this is nothing regarded. They lay hold on the sick man, pull him away, shut him up in prison, and within two days next after he dies. They bury him, and make no scruple or regard at all. O sirs, bethink you what these parents do feel when they hear Englishmen speak of the murders of Protestants in France as an unheard of crime. If, in these days, one in a family of recusants doth covet the inheritance of an elder brother—yea, of a father—he hath but to conform to the now established religion (I leave you to think with how much of piety and conscience), and denounce his parent as a Papist, and straightway he doth procure him to be despoiled, and his lands given up to him. Thus the seeds of strife and bitter enmity have been sown broadcast through the land, the bands of love in families destroyed, the foundations of honor and beneficence blown up, the veins and sinews of the common society of men cut asunder, and a fiendly force of violence and a deadly poison of suspicion used against such as are accused of no other crime than their religion, which they yet adhere to; albeit their fortunes be ruined by fines and their lives in {756} constant jeopardy from strenuous laws made yet more urgent by private malice. My friends, I would that not one hair of the head of so much as one Huguenot had been touched in France; that not one Protestant had perished in the flames in the late queen's reign, or in that of her present majesty; and also that the persecution now framed in this country against Papists, and so handled as to blind men's eyes and work in them a strange hypocrisy, yea and in some an innocent belief that freedom of men's souls be the offspring of Protestant religion, should pass away from this land. I care not how soon (as mine honored father-in-law, and in God too, I verily might add, was wont to say),—I care not how soon I be sewn up in a bag and cast into the Thames, if so be I might first see religious differences at an end, and men of one mind touching God's truth."

Here this noble and courageous speaker ceased, and various murmurs rose among the company. One lady remarked to her neighbor: "A marvellous preacher that of seditious doctrines, methinks."

And one gentleman said that if such talk were suffered to pass unpunished in her majesty's subjects, he should look to see massing and Popery to rear again their heads in the land.

And many loudly affirmed none could be Papists, or wish them well, and be friends to the queen's government, and so it did stand to reason that Papists were traitors.

And another said that, for his part, he should desire to see them less mercifully dealt with; and that the great clemency shown to such as did refuse to come to church, by only laying fines on them, and not dealing so roundly as should compel them to obedience, did but maintain them in their obstinacy; and he himself would as lief shoot down a seminary priest as a wolf, or any other evil beast.

I noticed this last speaker to be one of those who had spoken with most abhorrence of the massacres in France.

One lady called out in a loud voice that Papists, and such as take their part, among which she did lament to see Mr. Roper, should be ashamed so much as to speak of persecution; and began to relate the cruelties practised upon Protestants twenty years back, and the burning at Oxford of those excellent godly men, the bishops of London and Worcester.

Mr. Roper listened to her with an attentive countenance, and then said:

"I' faith, madam, I cannot choose but think Dr. Latimer, if it be he you speak of, did somewhat approve of such a method of dealing with persons obstinate touching religion, when others than himself and those of his own way of thinking were the subjects of it, if we judge by a letter he wrote in 1538 to his singular good friend the Lord Privy Seal Cromwell, at the time he was appointed to preach at the burning at Smithfield of Friar Forest of Greenwich, a learned divine I often did converse with in my young years."

"What wrote the good bishop?" two or three persons asked; and the lady who had spoken before said she should warrant it to be something pious, for a more virtuous Protestant never did live than this holy martyr.

Whereupon Mr. Roper: "This holy bishop did open his discourse right merrily, for in a pleasant manner he thus begins his letter: 'And, sir, if it be your pleasure, as it is, that I shall play the fool in my customable manner when Forest shall suffer, I would wish my stage stood near unto Forest; for I would endeavor myself so to content the people that therewith I might also convert Forest, God so helping.' And further on he doth greatly lament that the White Friars of Doncaster had access to the prisoner, and through the fault of the sheriff or jailers, or both, he should be allowed to hear mass and receive the sacrament, by which he is rather comforted in his way than discouraged. And such is his foolishness, this good {757} doth humbly say, that if Forest would abjure his religion, he should yet (for all his past obstinacy) wish him pardoned. O sirs, think you that when at Oxford this aged man, seventeen years after, did see the flames gather round himself, that he did not call to mind what time he preached, playing the fool, as he saith, before a man in like agonies, and never urged so much as one word against his sentence?"

"Marry, if he did not," said one, whom I take to have been Sir Christopher Wray, who had been a silent listener until then, "if his conscience pricked him not thereon, it must needs have been by the same rule as the lawyer used to the countryman, who did put to him this question: 'Sir, if my cow should stray into your field and feed there one whole day, what should be the law touching compensation therefor?' 'Marry, friend, assuredly to pay the damage to the full, which thou art bounden at once to do.' 'Ay,' quoth the countryman; 'but 'tis your cow hath strayed into my field.' Upon which, 'Go to, go to,' cries the lawyer; 'for I warrant thee that doth altogether alter the law.'"

Some smiled, and others murmured at this story; and meanwhile one of the company, who from his dress I perceived to be a minister, and moreover to hold some dignity in the Protestant Church, rose from his place, and crossing the room, came up to Mr. Roper (for that bold speaker was no other than Sir Thomas More's son-in—law, whose great charity and goodness I had often heard of), and, shaking hands with him, said: "I be of the same mind with you, friend Roper, in every word you have uttered tonight. And I pray to God my soul may be with yours after this life, and our end in heaven, albeit I should not sail there in the same boat with thou."

"Good Mr. Dean," quoth Mr. Roper, "I do say amen to your prayer." and then he added somewhat in a low voice, and methinks it was that there is but one ship chartered for safety in such a voyage.

At the which the other shook his head and waved his hand, and then calling to him a youth not more than twelve or thirteen years old, his son, he did present him to Mr. Roper. I had observed this young gentleman to listen, with an eagerness betokening more keenness for information than is usually to be found in youths of his years, to the discourses held that evening. His father told Mr. Roper that this his son's parts and quick apprehension in learning did lead him to hope he should be one day, if it pleased God, an ornament to the church. Mr. Roper smiled as he saluted the youth, and said a few words to him, which he answered very readily. I never saw again that father or that son. The one was Dr. Mathews, whom the queen made Bishop of Durham; and the other, Toby Mathews, his son, who was reconciled some years ago, and, as I have heard from some, is now a Jesuit.

The venerable aspect of the good Mr. Roper so engaged my thoughts, that I asked Lady Tregony, by whose side I was sitting, if she was acquainted with him, and if his virtue was as great as his appearance was noble. She smiled, and answered that his appearance, albeit honorable and comely, was not one half so honorable as his life had been, or so comely as his mind. That he had been the husband of Sir Thomas More's never-to-be-forgotten daughter, Margaret, whose memory he so reverently did cherish that he had never so much as thought of a second marriage; and of late years, since he had resigned the office of sub-notary in the Queen's Bench to his son, he did give his whole substance and his time to the service of the poor, and especially to prisoners, by reason of which he was called the staff of the sorrowful, and sure refuge of the afflicted. Now, then, I looked on the face of this good aged man with a deeper reverence than heretofore. Now I longed to be favored with so {758} much of his notice as one passing word. Now I watched for an opportunity to compass my desire, and I thank God not without effect; for I do count it as a chief blessing to have been honored, during the remaining years of this virtuous gentleman's life, with so much of his condescending goodness, that if the word friendship may be used in regard to such affectionate feelings as can exist between one verging on four-score years of age and of such exalted merit, and a foolish creature yet in her teens, whom he honored with his notice, it should be so in this instance; wherein on the one side a singular reverence and humble great affection did arise almost on first acquaintance, and on the other so much benignity and goodness shown in the pains taken to cultivate such good dispositions as had been implanted in this young person's heart by careful parents, and to guard her mind against the evils of the times, that nothing could be greater.

Mr. Roper chancing to come near us, Lady Tregony said somewhat, which caused him to address me in this wise:

"And are there, then, maidens in these days not averse to the sight of gray hairs, and who mislike not to converse with aged men?"

This was said with so kindly a smile that timidity vanished, and confidence took its place.

"Oh, sir," I cried, "when I was not so much as five years old, my good father showed me a picture of Sir Thomas More, and told me he was a man of such angelic wit as England never had the like before, nor is ever like to have again, and of a most famous and holy memory; and methinks, sir, that you, being his son-in-law, who knew his doings and his mind so well, and lived so long in his house, must needs in many things resemble him."

"As to his doings and his mind," Mr. Roper replied, "no man living knoweth them so well, and if my mean wit, memory, and knowledge could serve me now, could declare so much thereof. But touching resemblance, alas! there was but one in all the world that represented the likeness of his virtues and perfections; one whom he loved in a particular manner, and who was worthiest of that love more than any creature God has made."

Here the good man's voice faltered a little, and he made a stop in his discourse; but in a little while said that he had thought it behoved him to set down in writing such matters concerning Sir Thomas's life as he could then call to remembrance, and that he would lend me the manuscript to read, which I did esteem an exceeding great favor, and one I could not sufficiently thank him for. Then he spoke somewhat of the times, which were waxing every day more troublesome, and told me he often called to mind a conversation he once had with Sir Thomas, walking along the side of the Thames at Chelsea, which he related in these words:

"'Now would to God, my son Roper,' quoth Sir Thomas, 'I were put in a sack, and presently cast into the Thames, upon condition that three things were well established throughout Christendom.' 'And what mighty things are those, sir?' I asked. Whereupon he: 'Wouldst thou know, son Roper, what they be?' 'Yea, marry, sir, with a good will, if it please you,' quoth I. 'I' faith, son, they be these,' he said: 'The first is that, whereas the most part of Christian princes are at mortal wars, they were all at peace; the second that, whereas the church of Christ is at present sorely afflicted with so many heresies, it were settled in perfect uniformity of religion; the third that, where the matter of the king's marriage is now come in question, it were, to the glory of God and the quietness of all parties, brought to a good conclusion.' 'Ay, sir,' quoth I, 'those were indeed three things greatly to be desired; but'—I continued with a certain joy—'where shall one see a happier state than in this realm, that has so Catholic a prince that no heretic {759} durst show his face; so virtuous and learned a clergy; so grave and sound a nobility; and so loving, obedient subjects, all in one faith agreeing together?' 'Truth it is indeed, son Roper,' quoth he; and in all degrees and estates of the same went far beyond me in commendation thereof. 'And yet, son Roper, I pray God,' said he, 'that some of us, as high as we seem to sit on the mountains, treading heretics under our feet like ants, live not the day that we would gladly be at league and composition with them, to let them have their churches quietly to themselves, so that they would be contented to let us have ours quietly to ourselves.' After I had told him many considerations why he had no cause to say so: 'Well,' said he, 'I pray God, son Roper, some of us will live not to see that day.' To whom I replied: 'By my troth, sir, it is very desperately spoken.' These vile terms, I cry God mercy, did I give him, who, perceiving me to be in a passion, said merrily unto me, 'It shall not be so; it shall not be so.' In sixteen years and more, being in the house conversing with him, I could not perceive him to be so much as once out of temper."

This was the first of many conversations I held, during the years I lived in Holborn, with this worthy gentleman, who was not more pleased to relate, than I to hear, sundry anecdotes concerning Sir Thomas More, his house, and his family.

Before he left me that day, I did make bold to ask him if he feared not ill consequences from the courageous words he had used in a mixed, yea rather, with few exceptions, wholly adverse, company.

"Not much," he answered. "Mine age; the knowledge that there are those who would not willingly see me roughly handled, and have power to prevent it; and withal no great concern, if it should be so, to have my liberty constrained, yea, my life shortened by a few years, or rather days,—doth move me to a greater freedom of speech than may generally be used, and a notable indifference to the results of such freedom."

Having whispered the like fears I had expressed to him to Lady Tregony, she did assure me his confidence was well based, and that he had connexions which would by no means suffer him to be thrown into prison, which should be the fate of any one else in that room who had spoken but one half, yea one tenth part, as boldly as he had ventured on.

CHAPTER XII.

It was some time before I could restore myself to my countenance, after so much moving discourse, so as to join with spirit in the sports and the dancing which did ensue among the young people that evening. But sober thoughts and painful themes after a while gave place to merriment; and the sound of music, gay tattle, and cheerful steps lured me to such enjoyment as youth is wont to take in these kinds of pastimes. It was too much my wont to pursue with eagerness the present humor, and drink deeply of innocent pleasure wherein no harm should exist if enjoyed with moderation. But like in a horse on whose neck the bridle is cast, what began in a gentle ambling ends in wild gallopping; so lawful merriment, if unrestrained, often ends in what is unbeseeming, and in some sort blameable. So this time, when dancing tired, a ring was formed for conversation, and the choice of the night's pastime yielded to my discretion; alack, rather to my imprudence and folly, methinks I might style it. I chose that arguments should be held by two persons of the company, turn by turn, and that a judge should be named to allot a reward to the worthiest, and a penance to the worst. This liked them all exceedingly, and by one consent they appointed me to be judge, and to summon such as should dispute. {760} There were there two young gentlemen which haunted our house, and Lady Ingoldby's also. One was Martin Tregony, Lady Tregony's nephew, an ill-favored young man, with manners worse than his face, and so apish and foppish in his dress and behavior, that no young woman could abide him, much less would receive his addresses, or if she did entertain him in conversation, it was to make sport of his so great conceit. He had an ill-natured kind of wit, more sharp than keen, more biting than sarcastic. He studied the art of giving pain, and oftentimes did cause shamefaced merit to blush. The other was Mr. Thomas Sherwood, who, albeit not very near in blood to my father, was, howsoever, of the same family as ourselves. He had been to the English College in Douay, and had brought me tidings a short time back of my father and Edmund Genings' safe arrival thither, and afterward came often to see us, and much frequented Lady Tregony's house. He had exceedingly good parts, but was somewhat diffident and bashful. Martin Tregony was wont to make him a mark, as it were, of his ill-natured wit, and did fancy himself to be greatly his superior in sharpness, partly because Mr. Sherwood's disposition was retiring, and partly that he had too much goodness and sense to bandy words with so ill-mannered a young man. I pray you who read this, could aught be more indiscreet than, in a thoughtless manner, to have summoned these two to dispute? which nevertheless I did, thinking some sport should arise out of it, to see Master Martin foisted in argument by one he despised, and also from his extravagant gestures and affected countenances. So I said:

"Master Tregony, your task shall be to dispute with Master Sherwood; and this the theme of your argument, 'The Art of Tormenting.' He who shall describe the nicest instances of such skill, when exercised by a master toward his servant, a parent to his child, a husband to his wife, a wife to her husband, a lover to his mistress, or a friend to his friend, shall be proclaimed victorious; and his adversary submit to such penance as the court shall inflict."

Master Sherwood shook his head for to decline to enter these lists; but all the young gentlemen and ladies cried, he should not be suffered to show contempt of the court, and forced him to stand up.

Master Martin was nothing loth, and in his ill-favored countenance there appeared a made smile, which did indicate an assurance of victory; so he began:

"The more wit a man hath, the better able he shall be at times to torment another; so I do premise, and at the outset of this argument declare, that to blame a man for the exercise of a talent he doth possess is downright impiety, and that to wound another by the pungency of home-thrusts in conversation is as just a liberty in an ingenious man, as the use of his sword in a battle is to a soldier."

Mr. Sherwood upon this replied, that he did allow a public disputation, appointed by meet judges, to come under the name of a fair battle; but even in a battle (he said) generous combatants aim not so much at wounding their adversaries, as to the disarming of them; and that he who in private conversation doth make a weapon of his tongue is like unto the man who provokes another to a single combat, which for Christians is not lawful, and pierces him easily who has less skill in wielding the sword than himself.

"Marry, sir," quoth Master Martin, "if you dobring piety into your discourse, methinks the rules of just debate be not observed; for it is an unfair thing for to overrule a man with arguments he doth not dare to reply to under pain of spiritual censures."

"I cry you mercy, Master Martin," quoth the other; "you did bring in impiety, and so methought piety should not be excluded." At the which we all applauded, and Martin began to perceive his adversary to be less {761} contemptible than he had supposed.

"Now to the point," I cried; "for exordiums be tedious. I pray you, gentlemen, begin, and point out some notable fashion wherewith a master might torment his servant."

Upon which quoth Martin: "If a man hath a sick servant, and doth note his fancy to be set on some indulgence not of strict necessity, and should therefore deny it to him, methinks that should be a rare opportunity to exercise his talent."

"Nay," cried Master Sherwood, "a nicer one, and ever at hand afterward, should be to show kindness once to a dependent when sick, and to use him ten times the worse for it when he is well, upbraiding him for such past favors, as if one should say: 'Alack, be as kind as you will, see what return you do meet with!'"

This last piece of ingenuity was allowed by the court to surpass the first. "Now," I cried, "what should be the greatest torment a parent could inflict on a child?"

Martin answered: "If it should be fond of public diversion, to confine it in-doors. If retirement suits its temper, to compel it abroad. If it should delight in the theatre, to take it to see a good play, and at the moment when the plot shall wax most moving, to say it must be tired, and procure to send it home. Or, in more weighty matters,—a daughter's marriage, for instance,—to detect if the wench hath set her heart on one lover, and if so, to keep from her the knowledge of this gentleman's addresses; and when she hath accepted another, to let her know the first had sued for her hand, and been dismissed."

Here all the young gentlewomen did exclaim that Master Sherwood could by no means think of a more skilful torment than this should prove. He thought for an instant, and then said:

"It should be a finer and more delicate torment to stir up in a young gentlewoman's mind suspicions of one she loved, and so work on her natural passions of jealousy and pride, that she should herself, in a hasty mood, discard her lover; and ever after, when the act was not recallable, remind her she herself had wrought her own unhappiness, and wounded one she loved."

"Yea, that should be worse than the first torment," all but one young lady cried out; who, for her part, could better endure, she said, to have injured herself than to be deceived, as in the first case.

"Then do come husbands," quoth Mr. Martin; "and I vow," he cried, "I know not how to credit there be such vile wretches in the world as should wish to torment their wives; but if such there be, methinks the surest method they may practise is, to loving wives to show indifferency; to such as be jealous, secrecy; to such as be pious, profaneness; and the like in all the points whereon their affections are set."

"Alack!" cried Mistress Frances Bellamy, "what a study the man hath made of this fine art! Gentlewomen should needs beware of such a one for a husband. What doth Master Sherwood say?"

Whereupon he: "Methinks the greatest torment a husband might inflict on a worthy wife should be to dishonor her love by his baseness; or if he had injured her, to doubt her proneness to forgive."

"And wives," quoth Mistress Southwell,—"what of their skill therein, gentlemen?"

"It be such," cried Martin, "as should exceed men's ability thereof to speak. The greatest instance of talent of this sort I have witnessed is in a young married lady, whose husband is very willing to stay in his house or go abroad, or reside in town, or at his seat in the country, as should most please her, so she would let him know her wishes. But she is so artful in concealing them, that the poor man can never learn so much as should cause him to guess what they may be; but with a meek voice she doth reply to his asking, 'An it please you, sir, let it {762} be as you choose, for you very well know I never do oppose your will.' Then if he resolve to leave town, she maketh not much ado till they have rode twenty or thirty miles out of London. Then she doth begin to sigh and weep, for that she should be a most ill-used creature, and her heart almost broken for to leave her friends, and be shut up for six months in a swamp, for such she doth term his estate; and if she should not have left London that same day, she should have been at the Lord Mayor's banquet, and seen the French princes, which, above all things, she had desired. But some husbands be so hard-hearted, if they can hunt and hawk, 'tis little count they make of their wives' pleasures. Then when she hath almost provoked the good man to swear, she hangeth down her head and saith, 'Content you, sir—content you; 'tis your good fortune to have an obedient wife.' And so mopes all the time of the journey."

Whilst Martin was speaking, I noted a young gentlewoman who did deeply blush whilst he spoke, and tears came into her eyes. I heard afterward she had been lately married, and that he counterfeited her voice in so precise a manner, so that all such as knew her must needs believe her to be the wife he spoke of; and that there was so much of truth in the picture he had drawn, as to make it seem a likeness, albeit most unjust toward one who, though apt to boast of her obedience, and to utter sundry trifling complaints, was a fond wife and toward lady to her dear husband; and that this malice in Mr. Tregony, over and above his wonted spite, was due to her rejection of his hand some short time before her marriage. Master Sherwood, seeing the ungracious gentleman's ill-nature and the lady's confusion, stood up the more speedily to reply, and so cut him short. "I will relate," he said, "a yet more ingenious practice of tormenting, which should seem the highest proof of skill in a wife, albeit also practised by husbands, only not so aptly, or peradventure so often. And this is when one hath offered to another a notable insult or affront, so to turn the tables, even as a conjuror the cards he doth handle, that straightway the offended party shall seem to be the offender, and be obliged to sue forgiveness for that wherein he himself is hurt. I pray you, gentlemen and ladies, can anything more ingenious than this practice be thought on?"

All did admit it to be a rare example of ability in tormenting; but some objected it was not solely exercised by wives and husbands, but that friends, lovers, and all sorts of persons might use it. Then one gentleman called for some special instance of the art in lovers. But another said it was a natural instinct, and not an art, in such to torment one another, and likewise their own selves, and proposed the behavior of friends in that respect as a more new and admirable theme.

"Ah," quoth Master Martin, with an affected wave of his hand, "first show me an instance of a true friendship betwixt ladies, or a sincere affection betwixt gentlemen; and then it will be time for to describe the arts whereby they do plague and torment each other."

Mr. Sherwood answered, "A French gentleman said, a short time since, that it should be a piece of commendable prudence to live with your friend as looking that he should one day be your enemy. Now we be warranted, by Master Tregony's speech, to conclude his friendships to be enmities in fair disguise; and the practices wherewith friends torment each other no doubt should apply to this case also; and so his exceptions need in no wise alter the theme of our argument. I pray you, sir, begin, and name some notable instance in which, without any apparent breach of friendship, the appearance of which is in both instances supposed, one may best wound his friend, or, as Mr. Tregony hath it, the disguised object of his hatred."

I noticed that Master Martin glanced {763} maliciously at his adversary, and then answered, "The highest exercise of such ability should be, methinks, to get possession of a secret which your friend, or disguised enemy, has been at great pains to conceal, and to let him know, by such means as shall hold him in perpetual fear, but never in full assurance of the same, that you have it in your power to accuse him at any time of that which should procure him to be thrown into prison, or maybe hanged on a gibbet."

A paleness spread over Master Sherwood's face, not caused, I ween, by fear so much as by anger at the meanness of one who, from envy and spite, even in the freedom of social hours, should hint at secrets so weighty as would touch the liberty, yea, the life, of one he called his friend; and standing up, he answered, whilst I, now too late discerning mine own folly in the proposing of a dangerous pastime, trembled in every limb.

"I know," quoth he,—"I know a yet more ingenious instance of the skill of a malicious heart. To hang a sword over a friend's head, and cause him to apprehend its fall, must needs be a well-practised device; but if it be done in so skilful a manner that the weapon shall threaten not himself alone, but make him, as it were, the instrument of ruin to others dearer to him than his own life,—if, by the appearance of friendship, the reality of which such a heart knoweth not, he hath been to such confidence as shall be the means of sorrow to those who have befriended him in another manner than this false friend, this true foe,—the triumph is then complete. Malice and hatred can devise naught beyond it."

Martin's eyes glared so fearfully, and his voice sounded so hoarse, as he hesitated in answering, that, in a sort of desperation, I stood up, and cried, "Long enough have these two gentlemen had the talk to themselves. Verily, methinks there be no conqueror, but a drawn game in this instance."

But a murmur rose among the company that Master Sherwood was victorious, and Master Tregony should do penance.

"What shall it be?" was asked; and all with one voice did opine Master Sherwood should name it, for he was as much beloved as Master Tregony was misliked. He (Sherwood), albeit somewhat inwardly moved, I ween, had restrained his indignation, and cried out merrily, "Marry, so will I! Look me in the face, Martin, and give me thy hand. This shall be thy penance."

The other did so; but a fiendly look of resentment was in his eyes; and methinks Thomas Sherwood must needs have remembered the grasp of his hand to forgive it, I doubt not, even at the foot of the scaffold.

From that day Martin Tregony conceived an implacable hatred for Master Sherwood, whom he had feigned a great friendship for on his first arrival in London, because he hoped, by his means and influence with his aunt, to procure her to pay his debts. But after he had thrown off the mask, he only waited for an opportunity to denounce him, being privy to his having brought a priest to Lady Tregony's house, who had also said mass in her chapel. So one day meeting him in the streets, he cried out, "Stop the traitor! stop the traitor!" and so causing him to be apprehended, had him before the next justice of the peace; where, when they were come, he could allege nothing against him, but that he suspected him to be a Papist. Upon which he was examined concerning his religion, and, refusing to admit the queen's church-headship, he was cast into a dungeon in the Tower. His lodgings were plundered, and £25, which he had amassed, as I knew, who had assisted him to procure it, for the use of his aged and sick father, who had been lately cast into prison in Lancaster, was carried off with the rest. He was cruelly racked, we heard, for that he would not reveal where he had heard mass; and kept {764} in a dark filthy hole, where he endured very much from hunger, stench, and cold. No one being allowed to visit him—for the Tower was not like some other prisons where Mistress Ward and others could sometimes penetrate—or afford him any comfort, Mr. Roper had, by means of another prisoner, conveyed to his keeper some money for his use; but the keeper returned it the next day, because the lieutenant of the Tower would not suffer him to have the benefit of it. All he could be prevailed upon to do was to lay out one poor sixpence for a little fresh straw for him to lie on. About six months after, he was brought to trial, and condemned to die, for denying the queen's supremacy, and was executed at Tyburn, according to sentence, being cut down whilst he was yet alive, dismembered, bowelled, and quartered.

Poor Lady Tregony's heart did almost break at this his end and her kinsman's part in it; and during those six months—for she would not leave London whilst Thomas Sherwood was yet alive—I did constantly visit her, almost every day, and betwixt us there did exist a sort of fellowship in our sorrow for this worthy young man's sufferings; for that she did reproach herself for lack of prudence in not sufficient distrust of her own nephew, whom now she refused to see, at least, she said, until he had repented of his sin, which he, glorying in, had told her, the only time they had met, he should serve her in the same manner, and if he could ever find out she heard mass, should get her a lodging in the Tower, and for himself her estate in Norfolk, whither she was then purposing to retire, and did do so after Master Sherwood's execution. For mine own part, as once before my father's apprehended danger had diverted my mind from childish folly, so did the tragical result of an entertainment, wherein I had been carried away by thoughtless mirth, somewhat sicken me of company and sports. I went abroad not much the next year; only was often at Mr. Wells's house, and in Hubert's society, which had become so habitual to me that I was almost persuaded the pleasure I took therein proceeded from a mutual inclination, and I could observe with what jealousy he watched any whom I did seem to speak with or allow of any civility at their hands. Even Master Sherwood he would jalouse, if he found me weeping over his fate; and said he was happier in prison, for whom such tears did flow, than he at liberty, for whom I showed no like regard. "Oh," I would answer, "he is happy because, Master Rookwood, his sufferings are for his God and his conscience' sake, and not such as arise from a poor human love. Envy him his faith, his patience, his hope, which make him cry out, as I know he doth, 'O my Lord Jesu! I am not worthy that I should suffer these things for thee;' and not the compassionate tears of a paltry wench that in some sort was the means to plunge him in these straits."

In the spring of the year which did follow, I heard from my father, who had been ordained at the English College at Rheims, and was on the watch, he advertised me, for an opportunity to return to England, for to exercise the sacred ministry amongst his poor Catholic brethren. But at which port he should land, or whither direct his steps, if he effected a safe landing, he dared not for to commit to paper. He said Edmund Genings had fallen into a most dangerous consumption, partly by the extraordinary pains he took in his studies, and partly in his spiritual exercises, insomuch that the physicians had almost despaired of his recovery, and that the president had in consequence resolved to send him into England, to try change of air. That he had left Rheims with great regret, and went on his journey, as far as Havre de Grace, and, after a fortnight's stay in that place, having prayed to God very heartily for the recovery of his health, so that he might return, and, without further {765} delay, continue his studies for the priesthood, he felt himself very much better, almost as well as ever he was in his life; upon which he returned to his college, and took up again, with exceeding great fervor, his former manner of life; "and," my father added, "his common expression, as often as talk is ministered of England and martyrdom there, is this: 'Vivamus in spe! Vivamus in spe!'"

This letter did throw me into an exceeding great apprehension that my father might fall into the hands of the queen's officers at any time he should land, and the first news I should hear of him to be that he was cast into prison. And as I knew no Catholic priest could dwell in England with out he did assume a feigned name, and mostly so one of his station, and at one time well noted as a gentleman and a recusant, I now never heard of any priest arrested in any part of England but I feared it should be him.

Hubert Rookwood was now more than ever at Mr. Lacy's house, and in his library, for they did both affection the same pursuits, albeit with very different abilities; and I was used to transcribe for them divers passages from manuscripts and books, taking greater pleasure, so to spend time, than to embroider in Kate's room, the compass of whose thoughts became each day more narrow, and her manner of talk more tasteless. Hubert seemed not well pleased when I told him my father had been ordained abroad. I gathered this from a troubled look in his eyes, and an increasing paleness, which betokened, to my now observant eyes, emotions which he gave not vent to in words at all, or leastways in any that should express strong resentment. His silence always frighted me more than anger in others. He had acquired a great influence over me, and, albeit I was often ill at ease in his company, I ill brooked his absence. He was a zealous Catholic, and did adduce arguments and proofs in behalf of his religion with rare ability. Some of his writings which I copied at that time had a cogency and clearness in their reasons and style, which in my poor judgment betokened a singular sharp understanding and ingenuity of learning; but in his conversation, and writings also, was lacking the fervency of spirit, the warmth of devout aims, the indifferency to worldly regards, which should belong to a truly Christian soul, or else the nobleness and freedom of speech which some do possess from natural temper. But his attainments were far superior to those of the young men I used to see at Mr. Wells's, and such as gave him an extraordinary reputation amongst the persons I was wont to associate with, which contributed not a little to the value I did set on his preference, of which no proofs were wanting, save an open paying of his addresses to me, which by reason of his young age and mine, and the poorness of his prospects, being but a younger son of a country gentleman, was easy of account. He had a great desire for wealth and for all kind of greatness, and used to speak of learning as a road to it.

In the spring of that year, my Lord Surrey left Cambridge, and came to live at Howard House with his lady. They were then both in their eighteenth years, and a more comely pair could not be seen. The years that had passed since she had left London had greatly matured her beauty. She was taller of stature than the common sort, and very fair and graceful. The earl was likewise tall, very straight, long-visaged, but of a pleasant and noble countenance. I could not choose but admire her perfect carriage, toward her lord, her relatives, and her servants; the good order she established in her house; the care she took of her sister's education, who in two years was to be married to Lord William Howard; and her great charity to the poor, which she then began to visit herself, and to relieve in all sorts of ways, and was wont to say the angels of that old house where God had been served by so many prayers and alms must needs assist her in her care for {766} those in trouble. My lord appeared exceedingly fond of her then. One day when I was visiting her ladyship, he asked me if I had read the life of that sweet holy Queen Elizabeth of Hungary; and as I said I had not met with it, he gifted me with a copy fairly printed and well ornamented, which Mr. Martin had left behind him when he went beyond seas, and said:

"Mistress Sherwood, see if in this book you find not the likeness of a lady which you mislike not any more than I do. Beshrew me, but I fear I may find some day strange guests in mine house if she do copy the pattern herein set down; and so I will e'en send the book out of the house, for my lady is too good for me already, and I be no fitting husband for a saint, which a very little more of virtue should make her."

And so he laughing, and she prettily checking his wanton speech, and such sweet loving looks and playful words passing between them as gladdened my heart to see.

Some time after, I found one day my Lady Surrey looking somewhat grave and thoughtful. She greeted me with an affectionate kiss, and said,

"Ah, sweet Constance, I be glad thou art come; for methinks we shall soon leave London."

"So soon?" I answered.

"Not too soon, dear Constance," she said somewhat sadly.

I did look wistfully in her sweet face. Methought there was trouble in it, and doubt if she should further speak or not; for she rested her head on her hand, and her dark eyes did fix themselves wistfully on mine, as if asking somewhat of me, but what I knew not. "Constance," she said at last, "I have no mother, no sister of mine own age, no brother, no ghostly father, to speak my mind to. Methinks it should not be wrong to unbosom my cares to thee, who, albeit young, hast a thoughtful spirit, and, as I have often observed, an aptness to give good counsel. And then thou art of that way of thinking wherein I was brought up, and though in outward show we now do differ, I am not greatly changed therein, as thou well knowest."

"Alack!" I cried, "too well I do know it, dear lady; and, albeit my tongue is silent thereon, my heart doth grieve to see you comfortless of that which is the sole source of true comfort."

"Tis not that troubles me," she answered, a little impatiently. "Thou art unreasonable, Constance. My duty to my lord shapes my outward behavior; but I have weighty cares, nevertheless. Dost thou mind that passage in the late duke our father's letter to his son and me?—that we should live in a lower degree, and out of London and from the court. Methinks a prophetic spirit did move him thus to write. My lord has a great heart and a generous temper, and loves to spend money in all sorts of ways, profitable and unprofitable, as I too well observe since we have been in London. And the queen sent him a store of messages by my Lord Essex, and others of his friends, that she was surprised not to see him at court; and that it was her highness's pleasure he should wait upon her, and she shall show him so much favor as he deserves, and such like inducements."

"And hath my lord been to court?" I asked.

"Yea, he hath been," she answered, sighing deeply. "He hath been forced to kiss the hand which signed his father's death-warrant. Constance, it is this which doth so pain me, that her majesty should think he hath in his heart no resentment of that mishap. She said to my Lady Berkeley some days since, when she sued for some favor at her hands, 'No, no, my Lady Berkeley; you love us not, and never will. You cannot forgive us your brother's death.' Why should her grace think a son hath less resentment of a father's loss than a sister?"

Willing to minister comfort to her touching that on which I did, nevertheless, but too much consent to her thinking, I said, "In my lord's case, he must have needs appeared to mislike {767} the queen and her government if he stayed away from court, and his duty to his sovereign compelleth him to render her so much homage as is due to her majesty."

"Yea," cried my lady, "I be of the same mind with thee, that if my lord do live in London he is in a manner forced to swim with the tide, and God only knoweth into what a flood of troubles he may thus be led. But I have prevailed on him to go to Kenninghall, and there to enjoy that retired life his father passionately wished him to be contented with. So I do look, if it please God, to happy days when we leave this great city, where so many and great dangers beset us."

"Have you been to court likewise, dear lady?" I asked; and she answered,

"No; her majesty doth deny me that privilege which the wife of a nobleman should enjoy without so much as the asking for it. My Lord Arundel and my Lord Sussex are mad thereon, and swear 'tis the gipsy's doing, as they do always title Lord Leicester, and a sign of his hatred to my lord. But I be not of their mind; for methinks he doth but aid my lord to win the queen's favor by the slights which are put on his wife, which, if he doth take patiently, must needs secure for him such favor as my Lord Leicester should wish, if report speaks truly, none should enjoy but himself."

"But surely," I cried, "my lord's spirit is too noble to stomach so mean a treatment of his lady?"

A burning blush spread over the countess's face, and she answered,

"Constance, nobility of soul is shaped into action by divers motives and influences. And, I pray thee, since his father's death and the loss of his first tutor, who hath my lord had to fashion the aims of his eager spirit to a worthy ambition, and teach him virtuous contentment with a meaner rank and lower fortunes than his birth do entitle him to? He chafes to be degraded, and would fain rise to the heights his ancestors occupied; and, alas! the ladder which those who beset him—for that they would climb after him—do ever set before his eyes is the queen's majesty's favor. 'Tis the breath of their nostrils, the perpetual theme of their discourse. Mine ears sometimes ache with the sound of their oft-repeated words."

Then she broke off her speech for an instant, but soon asked me if to consult fortune-tellers was not a sin.

"Yea," I answered, "the Church doth hold it to be unlawful."

"Ah!" she replied, "I would to God my lord had never resorted to a person of that sort, which hath filled his mind with an apprehension which will work us great evil, if I do mistake not."

"Alas!" I said, "hath my lord been so deluded?"

"Thou hast heard, I ween," my lady continued, "of one Dr. Dee, whom the queen doth greatly favor, and often charge him to cast her horoscope. Some time ago my lord was riding with her majesty and the most part of her court near unto this learned gentleman's house at Mortlake, which her highness, taking notice of, she must needs propose to visit him with all her retinue, in order, she said, to examine his library and hold conference with him. But learning that his wife had been buried only four hours, her majesty would not enter, but desired my Lord Leicester to take her down from her horse at the church-wall at Mortlake and to fetch the doctor unto her, who did bring out for her grace's inspection his magic-glass, of which she and all those with her did see some of the properties. Several of the noblemen thereunto present were greatly contented and delighted with this cunning witchery, and did agree to visit again, in a private manner, this learned man, for to have their nativities calculated; and my lord, I grieve to say, went with them. And this cheat or wizard, for methinks one or other of those names must needs belong to him, predicted to my lord that he should be in great danger to be overthrown by a woman. And, I {768} ween, good Constance, there was a craft in this most deep and deceptive, for doth it not tend, whichever way it be understood, to draw and urge onward my lord to a careful seeking to avoid this danger by a diligent serving and waiting on her majesty, if she be the woman like to undo him, or else to move him to the thought that his marriage—as I doubt not many endeavor to insinuate into his mind—should be an obstacle to her favor such as must needs mar his fortunes? Not that my lord hath breathed so much as one such painful word in my hearing, or abated in his kind behavior; but there are others who be not slow to hint so much to myself; and, I pray you, shall they not then deal with him in the same manner, albeit he is too noble and gentle to let me hear of it? But since that day he is often thoughtful when we are alone, and his mind ever running on means to propitiate her majesty, and doth send her many presents, the value of which should rather mark them as gifts from one royal person to another than from a subject to his prince. O Constance, I would Kenninghall were a thousand miles from London, and a wild sea to run between it and the court, such as could with difficulty be crossed; but 'tis vain wishing; and I thank God my lord should be willing to remove there, and so we shall be in quiet."

"God send it!" I answered; "and that you, my sweet lady, may find there all manner of contentment." Then I asked her ladyship if she had tidings of my Lady l'Estrange.

"Yea," she answered; "excellent good tidings, for that she was a contented wife to a loving husband. Sir Hammond," she said, "hath a most imperious temper, and, as I hear, doth not brook the least contradiction; so that a woman less mild and affectionate than Milicent should not, I ween, live at peace with him. But her sweet temper doth move her to such strict condescension to his humors, that she doth style herself most fortunate in marriage and a singular happy wife. Dost mind Master Chaucer's tale of the patient Grizzel, which Phil read to me some years back, soon after our first marriage, for to give me a lesson on wifely duty, and which I did then write to thee the story of?"

"Yea, well," I cried; "and that I was so angered at her patience, which methought was foolish, yea, wicked in its excess, that it did throw me into a passion."

My lady laughed and said, indeed she thought so too; but Milicent, in her behavior and the style of her letters, did mind her so much of that singular obedient wife, that she did sometimes call her Grizzel to her face. "She is now gone to reside with her husband," she said, "at a seat of his not very far from Lynn. 'Tis a poor and wild district; and the people, I hear, do resort to her in great numbers for assistance in the way of medicine and surgery, and for much help of various sorts. She is greatly contented that her husband doth in nowise impede her in these charitable duties, but rather the contrary. She is a creature of such natural good impulses and compassionate spirit that must needs show kindness to all who do come in her way."

Then my lady questioned me touching Muriel and Mistress Ward, and Kate and Polly, who were now both married; and I told her Kate had a fair son and Polly a little daughter, like to prove as sharp as her mother if her infant vivacity did not belie her. As to Muriel and her guide and friend, I told her ladyship that few were like to have speech with them, save such as were in so destitute a condition that nothing could exceed it. Now that my two elder cousins had left home, mine uncle's house was become a sort of refuge for the poor, and an hospital for distressed Catholics.

"And thou, Constance," my lady said, "dost thou not think on marriage?"

I smiled and answered I did sometimes; but had not yet met with any one altogether conformable to my liking.

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"Not Mr. Hubert Rookwood?" she said smiling; "I have been told he haunts Mrs. Lacy's house, and would fain be admitted as Mistress Sherwood's suitor."

"I will not deny," I answered, "but that he doth testify a vast regard for me, or that he is a gentleman of such great parts and exceedingly winning speech that a gentlewoman should be flattered to be addressed by him; but, dear lady," I continued, opening my heart to her, "albeit I relish greatly his society, mine heart doth not altogether incline to his suit; and Mr. Congleton hath lately warned me to be less free in allowing of his attentions than hath hitherto been my wont; for, he said, his means be so scanty, that it behoveth him not to think of marriage until his fortunes do improve; and that his father would not be competent to make such settlements as should be needful in such a case, or without which he should suffer us to marry. As Hubert had never opened to me himself thereon in so pointed a fashion as to demand an answer from me, I was somewhat surprised at mine uncle's speech; but I found he had often ministered talk of his passion for me—for so he termed it—to Kate and her husband."

"And did it work in thee, sweet one, no regrets," my lady asked, "that the course of this poor gentleman's true love should be marred by his lack of wealth?"

"In truth no, dear lady," I replied; "except that I did notice, with so much of pain as a good heart must needs feel in the sufferings of another, that he was both sad and wroth at the change in my manner. And indeed I had always seen—and methinks this was the reason that my heart inclined not warmly toward his suit—that his affection was of that sort that doth readily breed anger; and that if he had occasion to misdoubt a return from me of such-like regard as he professed, his looks of love sometimes changed into a scowl, or something nearly resembling one. Yet I had a kindness toward him, yea, more than a kindness, an attachment, which methinks should have led me to correspond to his affection so far as to be willing to marry him, if mine uncle had not forbade me to think on it; but since he hath laid his commands upon me on that point, methinks I have experienced a freedom of soul and a greater peace than I had known for some time past."

"'Tis well then as it is," my lady said; and after some further discourse we parted that day.

It had been with me even as I had said to her. My mind had been more at ease since the contending would and would not, the desire to please Hubert and the fear to be false in so doing, had been stayed,—and mostly since he had urged me to entertain him as a friend, albeit defended to receive him as a lover. And that peace lasted until a day—ay, a day which began like other days with no perceptible presentiment of joy or sorrow, the sun shining as brightly, and no more, at its rise than on any other morning in June; and the thunder-clouds toward noon overshadowing its glory not more darkly than a storm is wont to do the clear sky it doth invade; nor yet evening smiling again more brightly and peacefully than is usually seen when nature's commotion is hushed, and the brilliant orb of day doth sink to rest in a bed of purple glory; and yet that day did herald the greatest joys, presage the greatest anguish, mark the most mighty beginnings of most varied endings that can be thought of in the life of a creature not altogether untried by sorrow, but on the brink of deeper waters than she had yet sounded, on the verge of such passages as to have looked forward to had caused her to tremble with a two-fold resentment of hope and of fear, and to look back to doth constrain her to lay down her pen awhile for to crave strength to recount the same.

[TO BE CONTINUED in Volume II]

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From Chambers's Journal.

TERRENE PHOSPHORESCENCE.

It has been suggested that light, heat, magnetism, and electricity are only the effects of motion among the molecules of matter. Our earth is but an aggregation of atoms, and every substance upon which we lay our hands is in like manner formed of infinitesimal particles, so small as to baffle microscopic investigation. When we consider that animalcula have been discovered so minute that it would take a million of them to form a grain of sand, it is evident that motion as motion among the ultimate particles of matter is beyond man's powers of observation. Physical investigations have led us to believe that these atoms have an action or circulation of their own, and as this action of necessity escapes our eye, it is not irrational, when looking for some evidence of this disturbance, to attribute to it physical forces for which we cannot satisfactorily account, yet which appertain to the earth. Thus has arisen the hypothesis above stated; and intimately connected with those forces (heat, electricity, etc.) is phosphorescence, a power on which the examinations of twenty years have thrown little light, and which still remains of doubtful origin.

The power in minerals, plants, and animals of producing light is apparently a consequence of these objects being under the direct influence, permanently, or for a time, of heat, light, or electricity, as some substances become phosphorescent after insolation, or exposure to the sun's rays; others, from heat: others, by having an electric current passed through them; and lastly, some give forth a phosphoric light of their own, without any appreciable warmth. Whatever may be the cause of this property, it is found to pervade all parts of creation: the atmosphere, the common stones by the wayside, the flowers in cottage gardens, and the humble insects or worms crawling at our feet, can shed around a faint glimmer of light. The earth itself is occasionally, if not always, self-luminous, as are other of the heavenly bodies. Venus, Jupiter, the moon, and comets, are conjectured to have a certain portion of phosphoric light, which is independent of and unborrowed from the sun. The luminosity of the earth is made evident to us on starless, moonless nights. We may not have thought of it, but still it is certain that light surrounds us from some source or other in varying quantities, on such nights as are above described; for our movements are very different, even when walking in the open air on the darkest nights, from what they would be in a cave, or when groping in a room with closed shutters. This phase of phosphorescence, and also that of faint flickering clouds against the horizon, is distinct from meteorological phosphorescence, which branch of the subject includes luminous rain, fog, dust, ignis-fatuus, northern and southern lights. A shower of dust which fell during an eruption of Vesuvius in 1794, had a faint luminosity in the dark, distinctly visible on the sails of vessels on which it had fallen. Many instances are recorded of rain producing sparks as it touched the ground, and Arago collected the authentic accounts of this phenomenon. In June, 1731, an ecclesiastic near Constance described the rain during a thunder-storm as falling like drops of red-hot liquid metal; and it is observable that most of these sparkling showers seem to have occurred during thunder-storms, or when the air was highly charged with electricity.

But complete mystery still surrounds the cause of luminous fogs and mists, {771} which are of rare occurrence. Of these there are few well founded accounts, and the most recent instance of one was, we believe, in 1859, continuing for a succession of nights. It lasted from then 18th to the 26th of November, and, in the absence of any moon, so illuminated the heavens as to render small objects distinctly visible in the sitting room of M. Wartenan of Geneva, whose description of it will be found in the Comptes Rendus of the Academy of Sciences, Paris, for December, 1859. It was not a wet fog, but a sort of dry mist, so impenetrable as to render invisible the banks of the river Leman, but at the same time diffusing sufficient phosphoric light to make small objects clear as on a moonlight night. This was also testified by persons travelling on foot from Geneva to Annemasse, between the hours of 10 and 12 P.M. Another famous instance was in 1783, when a dry fog, lasting for a month, covered the northern parts of America, and Europe from Sweden to Africa. It resembled moonlight through a veil of clouds, and was equally diffused on all sides, making objects visible at a distance of six hundred yards. Being, as it were, a deep mass of phosphoric vapor, reaching to the summit of the highest mountains, no storms of rain or wind seemed to affect it; but in Europe it was thought to emit an unpleasant sulphurous smell.

Another feature of meteorological phosphorescence is that of luminous appearances at sea, quite distinct from the luminosity of the ocean itself as produced by marine animalcula. Mrs. Somerville gives the following interesting description of one of these phosphoric phenomena: "Captain Bonnycastle, coming up the Gulf of St. Lawrence on the 7th of September, 1826, was roused by the mate of the vessel in great alarm from an unusual appearance. It was a starlight night, when suddenly the sky became overcast in the direction of the highland of Cornwallis country, and an instantaneous and intensely vivid light, resembling the aurora, shot out of the hitherto gloomy and dark sea on the lee-bow, which was so brilliant that it lighted every thing distinctly, even to the mast-head. The light spread over the whole sea between the two shores, and the waves, which before had been tranquil, now began to be agitated. Captain Bonnycastle describes the scene as that of a blazing sheet of awful and most brilliant light. A long and vivid line of light, superior in brightness to the parts of the sea not immediately near the vessel, showed the base of the high, frowning, and dark land abreast; the sky became lowering and more intensely obscure. Long tortuous lines of light showed immense numbers of very large fish darting about, as if in consternation. The sprit-sail-yard and mizzen-boom were lighted by the glare, as if gas-lights had been burning directly below them; and until just before daybreak, at four o'clock, the most minute objects were distinctly visible. Day broke very slowly, and the sun rose of a fiery and threatening aspect. Rain followed. Captain Bonnycastle caused a bucket of this fiery water to be drawn up: it was one mass of light when stirred by the hand, and not in sparks, as usual, but in actual coruscations. A portion of the water preserved its luminosity for seven nights. On the third night, scintillations of the sea reappeared; in the evening the sun went down very singularly, exhibiting in its descent a double sun; and when only a few degrees high, its spherical figure changed into that of a long cylinder, which reached the horizon. In the night the sea became nearly as luminous as before; but on the fifth night the appearance entirely ceased. Captain Bonnycastle does not think it proceeded from animalcula, but imagines it might be some compound of phosphorus, suddenly evolved, and disposed over the surface of the sea; perhaps from the exuviae or secretions of fish connected with the oceanic salts, muriate of soda and sulphate of magnesia."

{772}

Quite distinct from luminous mists is another species of phosphoric phenomenon in the shape of luminous bodies of considerable size and brilliancy. We find Arago saying, in 1838, "that great luminous meteors, similar to lightning in their nature, show themselves sometimes at the surface of the globe, even when the sky does not appear stormy." An instance of this is given by a Mr. Edwards, as having been seen by him when crossing Loch Scavig in a boat at night. In this instance, a light swept rapidly over the face of the water, resembling the light in a cabin window, but moving with great rapidity. It passed near the boat, and caused much consternation among the boatmen, who viewed it as something supernatural; but it was soon out of sight, following a curved course. A far more startling occurrence was seen by the ship Montague when "a few minutes before mid-day, and in perfectly serene weather, a large bluish globe of fire rolled up to the ship, the Montague, and exploded, shattering one of the masts. This globe of fire appeared as large as a millstone." This appearance does not seem to have had the swiftness of motion we should expect if it had been a species of globular lightning, but rather resembled a gigantic ignis-fatuus, which sometimes takes a globular form, and although generally attributed to the combustion of phosphuretted hydrogen gas, may and does arise from certain electrical conditions of the atmosphere. A remarkable ignis-fatuus is described by Dr. Shaw in his travels in the Holy Land. He observed it on Mount Ephraim, and it followed him for more than an hour. "Sometimes it appeared globular, at others it spread itself to such a degree as to involve the whole company in a pale inoffensive light; then it contracted itself, and suddenly disappeared, but in less than a minute would appear again; sometimes running swiftly along, it would expand itself over two or three acres of the adjacent mountains."

We will not dwell on other instances of ignis-fatuus, a phenomenon so common as to be known to all. But although this form of gas—phosphuretted hydrogen—has been long known as luminous, it is only since 1859 that gases in general have been discovered to possess phosphoric qualities when exposed to the sun's light. It is a remarkable fact, but one which has been proved, that, with the exception of metals, nearly all terrestrial bodies appear luminous when taken into the dark after insolation or exposure to the sun. They absorb so much light as to give it back again when removed from its influence, and this property is opposed to electricity, for we find that good conductors of that fluid are not liable to insolated phosphorescence. The first discovery of this property was made by Viscenzo Cascariolo, a shoemaker of Bologna, who, loving alchemy, and seeking gold, found in his ramble a heavy stone, from which he hoped and longed to produce the precious metal. Failing in this, he found what till then was unknown, that sulphuret of baryta would "absorb the sun's rays by day, to emit them by night." From him this substance has received the name of Bologna stone; and this first discovery has been followed by others, which prove that phosphoric light may be produced by heat, friction, cleavage, and many other forces beside insolation. Some diamonds shine in the dark after a few minutes' exposure to the sun; others cannot be made phosphorescent by heat if uncut, but when polished, or submitted to two or three electric discharges, easily become luminous. So slight a heat is required to call forth this light-giving property in some substances, that rare kinds of clorophane shine in a dark room from the mere warmth of the hand; and other substances are phosphorized by the slightest friction. Thus Dana says: "Merely the rapid motion of a feather across some specimens of sulphuret of zinc will often elicit light more or less intense from this metal."

Several simple and amusing experiments may be made to show the {773} phosphorescence of minerals. The power of cleavage to produce light is seen when sugar is broken in a mortar. If a sufficient quantity is ground rapidly in the dark, the whole will appear a mass of fire. If phosphuretted hydrogen is evolved by throwing phosphuret of calcium into water, each bubble as if rises will fire spontaneously on combining with the air. But the most elegant production of light is the result of an experiment by Professor Pontus in 1833: "He showed that a vivid spark is produced when water is made to freeze rapidly. A small glass, terminating in a short tube, is filled with water; the whole is covered with a sponge or cotton-wool imbibed with ether, and placed in an air pump. As soon as the experimenter begins to produce a vacuum, the ether evaporates, and the sponge or cotton-wool descends, the temperature of the water rises rapidly. But some instants before congelation takes place, a brilliant spark, perfectly visible in the daytime, is suddenly shot out of the little tube that terminates the glass globe."

Before passing on to the consideration of animal phosphorescence, let us glance at the luminosity of plants. This is found in many phanerogams and cryptogams. In the latter, it is well known, from being found frequently in mines, where the fungus mycelium is seen spreading its web-like growth, and diffusing a tranquil light, sufficiently strong to read by, as some have affirmed. The most beautiful instance of this is found in the mines in Hesse, where the galleries for supplying air are illumined with this soft phosphoric light. No example of phosphorescence among sea-weed has been known, but the delicate little moss Schistostega osmundacea is luminous. Among phanerogams, or ordinary plants, are many examples of phosphorescence. Several kinds of garden nasturtiums, sun-flowers, French and African marigolds, yellow lilies, and poppies, have been seen to emit either sparks or a steady light. By some it is thought that it is produced when the pollen flies off and is scattered over the petals, but it is invariably noticed on warm tranquil evenings, when there is electricity in the atmosphere. It is observed that nearly all the flowers proved to be phosphoric are of a yellow color, but the cause of this has not been ascertained. The leaves of an American plant (OEnothera macrocapa) have been seen, during a severe storm of thunder and lightning, to emit brilliant flashes of light, and this is, we believe, the only plant as yet discovered with phosphoric foliage. M. Martins of Montpellier has noticed that the juice of the Euphorbia phosphorea, when rubbed on paper, appears luminous in the dark, or when heated. But the most remarkable instance is that of the common potato emitting a brilliant light: Mr. Phipson states that a soldier of Strasburg thought that the barracks were, on one occasion, on fire, from the light which was found to proceed from a cellar full of potatoes. It is a question whether they were in a state of decomposition, and if so, it differs slightly from the luminosity of decaying wood, which is usually caused by the presence of phosphoric fungi.

To attempt to enumerate the animals of inferior organism which are phosphoric would be impossible, as almost every known zoophyte is possessed of this light-giving quality; and perhaps no branch of the subject has received so much attention as that which concerns animals, from the fact of the phosphorescence of dead animal matter and insects being phenomena of daily occurrence. On the former, very early observations were made. In 1592, Fabricius d'Acquapendente relates the astonishment of three Roman youths who found the remains of their Easter lamb shining like candles in the dark. Nearly a century later, Robert Boyle described the phosphorescence of a neck of veal "as a very splendid show," and in a paper in the Philosophical Transactions tried to {774} account for it. It is found that flesh will continue luminous about four days.

Among the insect-world there are numerous light-giving members. The common glowworm needs no description, and the lantern flies of the tropics are almost as well known. Tropical regions abound with these fire-flies, seventy kinds of which are found in South America and the southern states of the northern continent. Some of them emit the light from the abdomen, others from the head. The famous Fulgora lanternaria, or lantern-fly of Linnaeus, produces the light from the long transparent horn or proboscis curving upward from the head. The light of one of these is sufficiently bright to read a newspaper by, and two or three of them in a bottle is the common form of lamp. The natives also light their way on a dark night by tying one or two at the end of a stick. The Noctua psi, a little gray night-flying moth, is luminous, as also are some kinds of caterpillars; and the cricket and "daddy long-legs" have the same property attributed to them by some naturalists. The reader cannot fail to have noticed that there is no instance recorded of any larger animal producing phosphoric light. Invisible animalcula and insects are numerous, and of late years the common earthworm, or Lambricus, has been proved beyond doubt to have a phosphoric power; but beyond this, and the crawling centipede (Scolopendra), there is no animal with light-giving power. The gleaming light seen in the eyes of cats, dogs, and wild animals has been called phosphoric; but this is doubtful, and more nearly resembles some phase of reflected light. Humboldt, and later the natural historian, Reuger, speak of a monkey, Nyctipithecus trivirgatus as having eyes so brilliant as to illumine objects some inches off.

But this is the only case of at all probable phosphoric light. Perhaps, in this very instance, it arose from some peculiar physical condition of the animal; in the same way as the scintillation in the eyes of one or two human beings was found connected with extreme delicacy of constitution. The phenomenon of brilliant colors being perceived on a person pressing his eye, or on the injury of the optic nerve, is called by Mr. Phipson subjective phosphorescence, but this is only an undeveloped hypothesis.

Old dames and superstitious northerners speak of Elf-candles as preceding death; and of the fact of human bodies during life exhibiting phosphoric light there is no doubt, but it also depends on the state of the body, and does not signify the sure approach of death. A lady in Italy is described by Bartholin as producing phosphoric radiation when her body was gently rubbed with dry linen, and more than one instance of pale light surrounding sick persons is recorded on good authority. This portion of the science of phosphorescence is involved in the same mystery as the previously described branches; theories are suggested; but no real satisfactory explanation is found for the different kinds of luminosity. We will close this article with an account given by Dr. Kane of an extraordinary case of phosphorescence on the human body which occurred in the polar regions. It was on the night of January 2, 1854, that the party sought shelter from an icy death-dealing wind in an Esquimaux hut. Exhaustion, added to the intense cold, induced sleep, but as the doctor was composing himself for the night, he was aroused by an exclamation that the fire was out. To try and relight it was the instant endeavor of Dr. Kane and his man. The latter failing, the doctor, in despair, sought to do so himself. "It was so intensely dark," says he, "that I had to grope for it (the pistol with which they strove to produce a spark), and in doing so touched his hand. At that instant, the pistol became distinctly visible. A pale bluish light, slightly tremulous, but not broken, covered the metallic parts of it—the barrel, lock, and trigger. The {775} stock, too, was clearly discernible, as if by the reflected light, and to the amazement of both of us, the thumb and two fingers with which Petersen was holding it, the creases, wrinkles, and circuit of the nails clearly defined upon the skin. The phosphorescence was not unlike the ineffectual fire of the glowworm. As I took the pistol, my hand became illuminated also, and so did the powder-rubbed paper when I raised it against the muzzle. The paper did not ignite at the first trial; but the light from it continuing, I was able to charge the pistol without difficulty."

From The Month.

CIVILIZATION IN THE FIFTH CENTURY.

The name of Ozanam was already celebrated in the world of letters, and he had published some portions of his historical course, when he died, in the midst of his unfinished labors. His early death is a fresh proof of the truth of the old adage, Ars longa, vita brevis, and the interest of his short autobiography is intense. He tells us of himself: "In the midst of an age of scepticism God gave me the blessing of having a Christian father and a religious mother; and he gave me for my first instructress a sister full of intelligence, and devout, like the angels whom she has gone to join. But, in the course of time, the rumors of an infidel world reached even to me, and I knew all the horror of those doubts which weigh down the heart during the day, and which return at night upon the pillow moistened with tears. The uncertainty of my eternal destiny left me no repose. I clung with despair to the sacred dogmas, and I thought I felt them give way in my grasp. It was then that I was saved by the teaching of a priest well versed in philosophy. He arranged and cleared up my ideas. I believed from that time with a firm faith, and, penetrated with the sense of so rare a blessing, I vowed to God that I would devote my life to the service of that truth which had given me peace. Twenty years have passed away since that time. Providence has done everything to snatch me from business and to fix me in intellectual labors. The combination of circumstances has led me to study chiefly religion, law, and letters. I have visited the places which could afford me information. The historian Gibbon, as he wandered on the capitol, beheld issuing from the gates of the basilica of Ara Coeli a long procession of Franciscans, who marked with their sandals the pavement trodden by so many triumphs. It was then that, inspired by indignation, he formed the design of avenging antiquity thus outraged by Christian barbarism, and he conceived the plan of a History of the Fall of the Roman Empire. I too have seen the monks of Ara Coeli tread the ancient pavement of Jupiter Capitolinus, and I rejoiced at it, as the victory of love over strength; and I resolved to write the history of progress in those ages where philosophy finds only decadence; the history of civilization in barbarous times, the history of thought escaping the shipwreck of letters, forti tegente brachio" (Pref., pp. 2, 5.)

The professor relates himself, with all the vigor of his intellect, the great and glorious plan of history which was the object of his life, in a letter dated Jan. 25, 1848: "This will be the literary history of barbarous times, the history of letters, and consequently {776} of civilization, from the Latin decadence, and the first beginning of Christian genius, to the end of the thirteenth century. I shall make it the subject of my lectures during ten years, if it is necessary, and if God prolongs my life. The subject would be admirable, for it would consist in making known this long and laborious education which the Church bestowed on modern nations." He then marks the salient points of his picture—the intellectual state of the world at the commencement of Christianity—the monde barbare and its irruption into civilized society, and met by the labors of Boethius, Isidore of Seville, Ven. Bede, and St. Boniface, who carried the torch of learning from one country to another, and handed it down to Charlemagne. Then follow the crusades, and then the three glorious centuries of the middle ages, when St. Anselm, St. Bernard, Peter Lombard, Albert the Great, St. Thomas, and St. Bonaventure achieved for the world of intellect all that the Church and state acquired from Gregory VII., Alexander III., Innocent III. and IV., Frederic II., St. Louis, and Alfonso X. He gives a résumé of the events which influenced modern history, and ends by saying, "My labors would be completed by la Divina Commedia, the greatest monument of a period, of which it may be called an abridgment, and of which it is the glory." "This is proposed to himself by a man who was near dying, a year and a half ago, and who is not yet wholly recovered. But I depend entirely on the goodness of God, in case he is pleased to restore my health and preserve to me the love for these noble studies with which he has inspired me." (Pref., pp. 3-6.)

Such was the object and occupation of his life from the age of eighteen, when he was an obscure student, to the time when he pronounced, as professor, the lectures which contained the labors of twenty years. Happily for himself, he had learnt early the result of labor. When he was twenty years of age, he wrote, "We exist on earth only to accomplish the will of God. This will is fulfilled day by day; and he who dies, leaving his task unfinished, is, in the sight of the divine maker, as far advanced as he who has had time to bring his to completion."

It was at Pisa, April 23, 1853, that M. Ozanam wrote a prayer so solemn, as well as so touching, that his friend, Father Ampère, seems to hesitate whether it ought to be laid before the public. His hesitation was conquered by the desire of making what is so excellent known, and he publishes the soliloquy of the dying man:

"I have said, 'In the midst of my days I shall go down to the gates of death,' etc. (Canticle Ezek.)

"This day is completed my fortieth year: more than half the ordinary span of life. I am, however, dangerously ill. Must I, then, quit all these possessions which thou thyself hast given me, my God? Wilt thou not, O Lord, accept a part of the sacrifice? Which of my ill-regulated affections shall I offer up to thee? Wilt not thou accept the holocaust of my literary self-love, my academical ambition, my prospects for study, in which, perhaps, there is mingled more pride than zeal for truth? If I sold the half of my books and gave the price of them to the poor, and if I restricted myself to fulfilling the duties of my office, and consecrated the rest of my life to visiting the poor and instructing apprentices and soldiers, Lord, would this be a sufficient satisfaction, and wouldst thou leave me the happiness of living to old age with my wife, and completing the education of my child? Perhaps, O my God, this is not thy will. Thou wilt not accept these selfish offerings. Thou rejectest my holocaust and my sacrifices. It is myself whom thou requirest. It is written in the commencement of the book that I must do thy will, and I have said, O Lord, I come."

It is with a solemn interest that we turn to the fragments of that work to which Ozanam devoted his life and {777} energies, and we find it to be the history of modern Europe. He himself lays down the three elements of history. "First, chronology, which preserves the general succession of events; then legend, which gives them life and color; and then philosophy, which fills them, as it were, with soul and intelligence."

In the childhood of the world, when the desire of knowledge was fresh and strong, all pagan histories began with the siege of Troy, and all Christian histories from Adam and Eve. Authors gained fame by chronicles of all past events, because it satisfied the natural curiosity of man to know the antecedents of his country or race. As time went on, history became the expression of popular feelings; and what took place generally may be inferred from what we know of our own country. The British monk, Geoffrey of Monmouth, wrote of Arthur, the champion of the faith and the model of chivalry; and the Venerable Bede wrote of the saints among his own Saxon countrymen; then came, with the evils of the reformation, a reverence for what was ancient, and Stow wrote of Catholic England with a fidelity which ranked him among the benefactors of his country. But then also egotism began. Each must think for himself, and appropriate the results of former labors; each must analyze, or generalize, or criticise; and perhaps it is true that the original writer is he who gives to the world his own view of things, and not the things themselves. If he is unselfish and loves truth for itself, he is a poet; if he subjects truth to his own views, he writes of history, but he does not write history; facts become subservient to theories, and he mentions only a few, as necessary illustrations of his own system. The reader yawns over the succession of kings and events, and chooses for his guide the infidel Hume, the philanthropic Mackintosh, or the Hanoverian Macaulay. The fashion of the present day is the idolization of nature. This has made art pre-Raphaelite, and poetry euphuistic. History, too, is perhaps becoming a laborious restoration of the past. With a taste for detail which is truly Gothic, the popular historian must reproduce his characters with their own features, costume, and entourage, and the long forgotten personages, as if restored to life by the genius of Sir Walter Scott, must walk about the stage in mediaeval garb. History has gone through nearly the same phases on the continent until the period of the reformation. Then in Catholic countries—as France, Spain, and Italy—arose a more reasoning but a grave and instructive school of history, which preserved past events as a deposit of the ages of faith; and latterly, since excitement is become necessary to all, and the speculations of German literature have taught almost all to think, the French and German historians have adopted the philosophy of history. The German school takes a naked problem and proves it by a series of abstractions. We read Schlegel and Guizot, and we find, instead of facts or dates or persons, a sort of allegorical personification of civilization, liberty, progress, etc. This is rather declamation than narration, and those among the learned who value antiquity have found the art of realizing not the externals but the spirit of the past. Thus when Ozanam, as the professor of foreign literature at Paris, writes of the middle ages, the persons whom he names are, for the moment, living, not petrified, as in the stereoscope, but thinking, speaking, and acting, as if the writer could open a bright glimpse into the eternal world, where St. Denys, St. Bernard, St. Bonaventure, and St. Thomas still contemplate the author and giver of all they knew. And when he speaks of the succession of events, it seems as if we passed from the midst of a crowded procession, jostling along the dusty highway, to an eminence from which we see the points of its departure and arrival, the distinguished persons, the great objects, and the direction of the march, and that we {778} not only see but understand and sympathize with the spirit of the undertaking. The thought is from above, but it becomes our own. For he not only classifies and generalizes, but he christianizes his glimpses into history. His pictures are indeed only illustrative of his principles; but when he introduces a person or a fact, he speaks of them with such intimacy of knowledge that it creates a keen curiosity as well as a consciousness of ignorance in the reader. But the reader of Ozanam must be already a historian before he can appreciate the benefit of having his knowledge classified and animated by a living principle, as well as vivified and rendered distinct, as the objects in a dull landscape by a beam of sunshine.

The mission of Ozanam seems to be the destruction of those errors as to the value of the knowledge possessed in the middle ages, which have existed since the renaissance.

It was natural that when the calamities of Europe were so far past as to permit the development of the intellectual faculties, men should be elated by their new powers, and undervalue the painful labors of men interrupted by violence and crime. Maitland, by the evidence of his own reading, saw the injustice of this, and said wittily, that "by the dark ages were meant the ages about which we are in the dark." But he could see only the outward face of mediaeval knowledge, and missed its vivifying spirit—the faith of the Church. Ozanam had the gift of faith, and traces with a firm hand the progress of human intellect, often concealed and limited, but always advancing, and often breaking out in power and glory when some sainted pope or doctor of the Church explained the principles of religion and philosophy.

But it would be presumptuous to anticipate Ozanam himself, whose own words as well as his very life itself have given a résumé of his great object. It is at the conclusion of a lecture that he thus addresses the students:

"It is not my intention to follow out into its minor details the literary history of the fifth century. I only seek in it that light which will clear up the obscurity of the following ages. Travellers tell us of rivers which flow underneath rocks, and which reappear at a distance from the place where they were lost to the view. I trace up the stream of these traditions above the point where it seems to be lost, and I shall endeavor to descend with the stream into the abyss, in order to assure myself that I really behold the same waters at their outlet. Historians have opened a chasm between antiquity and barbarism. I have attempted to replace the connections which Providence has never suffered to fail in time any more than in space, etc. I should not brave the difficulties of such a study, gentlemen, if I were not supported, nay, urged onwards, by you. I call to witness these walls, that if ever, at rare intervals, I have been visited by inspiration, it was within their circuit; whether they have given back some of the glorious echoes with which they have formerly rung, or whether I have felt myself carried away by your ardent sympathies. Perhaps my design is rash; but you must share the responsibility. You will make up the deficiency of my strength. I shall grow old and gray-haired in the labor, if God permits; but the coldness of age shall not gain upon me so far as that I shall not be able to return, as this day, in order to renew the young vigor of my heart in the warmth of your youthful days."

It is in his lecture on pagan empires that Ozanam lays down the principle on which his views of mediaeval history are based: "Each epoch has a ruin and a conquest—a decadence and a renaissance." The greatest epoch of the world's history is that when all that was given to man at his creation was exchanged for a better nature at his redemption. This truth of destruction and regeneration is repeated over and over again through all created things—the seed must die before the {779} new grain can live. As each individual must be changed from the excellence of what he is still by nature to a heavenly model, so nations must be changed, and institutions perish and revive, and the great republic of letters, founded before the flood and perfected in Greece and Rome, must die and be regenerated in the Christian Church. The first decadence is that of pagan Rome.

It is impossible to represent by quotations the grand but terrible picture which Ozanam draws of paganism, in its glory, its worldly splendor, and its spiritual darkness. He does full justice to the excellence of every art and science which the heathens attained; but he shows that while the court of Augustus was the model of refinement and civilization, the altars were smoking with incense to devils, who were the personifications of every vice, and the rites of the temples were incantations and abominations. An audience of Christian students could not bear the too revolting details.

His object was the same as that of the great author of "Callista"—to destroy the prestige which still invests all that is classical. Rome was in truth a majestic empire, and even St. Jerome trembled at its fall: "Elle est captive la cité qui mit en captivité le monde."

St. Augustin was not a Roman, and was less overpowered by the terror of its fall. In the midst of the outcries which accused Christianity as the cause of the ruin which involved the world by the evident vengeance of heaven, the saint wrote his "City of God," and developed from the creation of the world to the times in which he lived the great Christian law of progress. A new empire—that of conscience—was to rule all nations. In this new empire strength and courage were of no avail, and women were as powerful as men in converting the world. Clotilde converted the heathen Franks, and Theodolind the Arian Lombards. The holy bishop St. Patrick converted in his lifetime the whole Irish nation; and the holy monk St. Benedict founded in the desert of Cassino the monastic armies of the Church; while St. Gregory, from his bed of sickness, headed the battle of civilization against barbarism. The victory was complete, and every converted country sent forth its missionaries to form Christian colonies.

Thus fell the power of Rome, but not her influence, for the great influence of paganism was the excellence of its literature. Though the Augustan writers were no more, yet Ammianus Marcellinus wrote history with the spirit of a soldier, and Vegetius wrote the precepts of the art of conquering. Symmachus was thought to rival Pliny in his letters; and, at the same time, Claudian, the last and not the least of Latin poets, succeeded Lucan in those historical epics so popular at Rome. He celebrated the war of Gildo and the victories of Stilicho over the Goths in verses equal to the "Pharsalia;" and his invectives against Eutropius and Rufinus, in defense of Stilicho his patron, are still considered masterpieces. He ignored not only Christianity but Christian writers, though St. Ambrose was at Milan and St. Augustin at Carthage, and wrote gravely of mythology in an age when few pagans believed its fables. He was an Egyptian by birth, and trained in the schools of Alexandria, and was patronized by the Christian emperor Honorius, who erected to him—as to the best of poets— a statue in Trajan's Forum. Yet Claudian had truly pagan morals; he praised the vices of his patron Stilicho, and when he was murdered he wrote a poem to his enemy; "he misused both panegyric and satire, the powers of a good understanding and a rich fancy and flowing versification, which place him, after an interval of three hundred years, among the poets of ancient Rome." But while Claudian celebrated the conflict of Rome with the barbarians, he perceived not the mighty war between Christianity and paganism; and while our Lord and his blessed Mother {780} triumphed over the idols and their temples, he wasted his poetry in their praise; and when he recited a poem in the presence of Honorius and the senate, he spoke to them as if they believed in mythology. Ozanam gives one remarkable proof of the hold over men's minds retained by paganism. When Honorius took possession of the palace of Augustus on Mount Palatine, he assembled the senate, and in the presence of all these great persons, many of whom were Christian, Claudian unrolled the parchment whereon his verses were written in letters of gold, and addressed Honorius as resembling Jupiter conquering the giants. And again, when he had the office of showing the splendors of Rome to Honorius, when he visited it for the first time (404), he spoke of the city as a pagan in the language of idolatry. And the poet Rutilius, though born in Gaul, idolized Rome. "Rome was the last divinity of the ancients. Mother of men and gods" (he calls her, as he wrote his "Itinerary to Gaul"), "the sun rises and sets in thy dominions; thou hast made one country of many nations—one city of the world. Thy year is an eternal spring; the winter dares not stay thy joy." So powerful was the influence of pagan Rome over a foreigner; and that influence may be yet better perceived in the Christian poet Sidonius Apollinaris, who, though brought up, like Ausonius, in the Gallic schools, and sound in faith, could not write hexameters without mythology. The only language of poetry was pagan; and when he wrote to St. Patient, bishop of Lyons (who fed his people in famine), he compared him to Triptolemus.

The first antagonist of the Church, in her task of regenerating society, was paganism; the second, barbarism. Charlemagne constructed, on the ruins of the Roman empire, an empire of enlightened Christianity; but another decadence followed. The Normans sacked monasteries, and burned the Holy Scriptures, together with Aristotle and Virgil. The Huns destroyed the very grass of the fields. The Lombards seemed to be sent for the destruction of all that was left of human kind. Ozanam says, "Providence loves to surprise." The monks who escaped the Norman pirates preached to them amidst the ashes of their monasteries, and the Normans became Christians. Then arose the basilicas of Palermo and Monreale in Sicily, and the churches of Italy, Normandy, and England. St. Adalbert converted the Huns, and they defended Christendom against the vices of Byzantium and the invasions of Mohammedans. On the ruins of the Roman empire arose the kingdoms of France, Germany, and Italy. Of this new empire, feudality and chivalry were the opposite elements. Feudality was the principle of division, chivalry that of fraternity; and these remodelled society.

The calamities attending this final disruption of the empire interrupted study, and learning was confined to the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, from whence missionaries carried not only religion but learning into the countries where they were almost extinguished by the Goths. Germany had three great monasteries—Nouvelle Corbie, Fulda, and St. Gall. At this last monastery was preserved the classic literature. Monks studied grammar and wrote AEneids. The royal Hedwige introduced the study of Greek at St. Gull; and Ozanam relates it in one of those graphic incidents which are worth volumes. A new period began with Gregory VII. When he said, "Lord, I have loved justice, and hated iniquity; wherefore I die in exile," a bishop replied, "You cannot die in exile, because God has given you the earth for your jurisdiction, and the nations for your inheritance." Then followed the crusades, that wonderful and providential means by which the civilization of the East was brought into the service of the Western Church. They destroyed feudalism; for all who fought gained glory, whether serf or noble. {781} Chivalric poetry arose. Germany had its Niebelungen, Spain its Cid. Then arose the arts around Giotto and the tomb of St. Francis. Christian architecture was not Roman. The small temples and large amphitheatres, etc., were replaced by large churches, public halls, schools and hospitals, a small town round a large cathedral. There were three capitals: Rome, the seat of the Papacy; Aix-la-Chapelle, the seat of empire; and Paris, of the schools.

How paganism perished is perhaps one of the most useful lectures in the course, as it bears upon the doubts which are still felt by some as to the use of pagan books in Christian education. Ozanam shows that the monks preserved by transcribing the works of Seneca and Cicero, and that St. Augustin brought Plato and Aristotle into Christian schools; that St. Augustin, St. Jerome, and St. Basil preserved the heathen poets till Christian poets had learnt their art; nay, how the Church protected the Gallic bards and German scalds, and taught them to sing the praises of God. St. Gregory preserved the Saxon temples, and even adapted their rites and festivals to be used in Christian worship, that what had been perverted to the service of devils might be restored to God.

The contrast—the abyss—between the middle ages and the renaissance has been exaggerated. There was literary paganism in the ages of faith. The troubadours sang of mythology, and the language of idolatry was purified by its application to the praises of the martyrs, as is shown in the poems of St. Paulinus. When the Church emerged from persecution, the Roman schools became Christian; and when the Lombards threatened to plunge Christendom in darkness, there were two lamps still burning in the night—episcopal and monastic teaching; and in these, by degrees, the pagan books and pagan literature were replaced by Christian works, in which, however, there were still abundant traces of their pagan masters.

It is in a fragment that Ozanam speaks of the way in which the valuable part of antiquity was preserved. "When winter begins, it seems as if vegetation would perish. The wind sweeps away the flowers and leaves; but the seeds remain. The providence of God watches over them. They are defended by a husk against the cold, and have wings which bear them to congenial places, where they spring again. So, when the ages of barbarism came, the winter of human nature, it seems as if poetry and all the vegetation of thought would perish; but it was preserved in the dry questions of the schools through three or four centuries; and when the time and place came, the man of genius was raised up, and in his hands they grew again. Such was St. Thomas of Aquin, the champion of dogmatism; and St. Bonaventure, of mysticism; and Christendom had its own philosophy." Perhaps we do not realize sufficiently the despair which was the lot of reflecting heathens. They sought the aid of philosophy to console them "for hopeless deterioration from a golden to an iron age; but philosophy could only teach that the world was perishing, and that the pride of man must preserve him from erring and perishing with its possessions. The heathens knew not the idea of progress; but the gospel teaches and commands human perfectibility, and says to each, Be ye perfect; and to all, Let the Church grow into the fulness of Christ." It was faith, hope, and charity which produced progress.

And, first, faith set free the human mind from the ignorance of God. Idolatry was not only that men gave to devils the worship which they owed to God; it was the love of what is mortal and perishable, instead of what is spiritual and eternal; it sunk mankind into materialism and sensuality. "Painters and sculptors represented only corporeal beauty: there was no expression in the figures of Phidias or Parrhasius." Ozanam shows how Christian art used what is material {782} only as symbolism, and expressed by form and color what is invisible and celestial; while poetry was rescued from degradation, and became what it really is, the noblest aspiration after truth of which man in his present state is capable. Philosophy was freed from the trammels of false systems, and speculated securely and deeply on the divine and human nature. "Origen formed in the Catechetical schools of Alexandria the science of theology," and in "the golden age of this new science St. Jerome taught exegesis, St. Augustin dogmatic, and St. Ambrose moral theology. St. Anselm was tormented by the desire of finding a short proof that God exists, and with him began metaphysics." These were the rich treasures which lay concealed in the scholastic teaching of the middle ages.

As theology and Christian philosophy had sprung from faith, so hope extended knowledge, because men labored with fresh vigor in improving science. "The course of ages offers no grander spectacle than that of man taking possession of nature by knowledge." In the seventh century the Byzantine monks pierced the steppes of Central Asia, and passed the wall of China; monks took the message of the Pope to the Khan before Marco Polo visited the East; and monks, in the eighth century, visited Iceland and even America. It was the calculations of the middle ages which emboldened Columbus to discover a new world and new creation; and when Magellan sailed round the globe, "man was master of his abode." He goes on: "When man had conquered the earth, he could not rest; Copernicus burst through the false heavens of Ptolemy; the telescope discovered the secrets of the stars, and calculation numbered their laws and orbits in the abyss of heaven. Woe be to those who are led away by such a sight from God! The stars told his glory to David, and so they did also to Kepler and to Newton."

It was by the third and greatest of the theological virtues, charity, that the moral as well as the intellectual nature of man was regenerated, though the change was wrought, perhaps, by slower degrees. Slavery of the most revolting kind—that slavery which ignores the soul and the reason, as well as the social rights of the slave, was replaced by liberty, oppression and injustice by laws which are still based upon the letter of the Roman laws; but administered with the equity of the Christian code. Cruelty and indifference to human life, as shown in the national passion for gladiatorial games, was replaced by gentleness and all good works; and the luxury of palaces, baths, etc., was replaced by gorgeous churches and hospitals. Education, which had been restricted to the few, was thrown open to all by free schools and by Christian preaching. Above all, the daughters of Eve, who were degraded below the condition of the very slaves, were raised to be helps-meet for Christians, either by the sacrament of marriage or by the holiness of virginity.

In speaking of the reconstruction of intellectual action in the civilization of Western Christendom, Ozanam has a grand and striking thought, that the first step to this was uniformity of language. The confusion of tongues which began at Babel was silenced throughout the world by the universal use of the Latin language, which was adopted by the Church; and that language, which was formed to express all the passions and vices, as well as the strength and intelligence of man, conveyed, by the words of St. Gelasius and St. Gregory, the most sublime devotion; by those of St. Jerome, the deep senses of the Holy Scriptures; and when the Christian intellect was free to develop itself, there arose that Christian eloquence in preaching the gospel which influenced, for the first time, all ranks and all dispositions of men.

The present edition of the author's works is conducted by friends who understood and valued his object, and {783} who were able to fill up, without blemishing, the unfinished parts of his lectures. Nothing can be done more faithfully, or in better taste; but there are many blanks too wide to be filled even by such skilful hands. Ozanam says himself, that the two poles of his work are the "Essays on the Germans before Christianity," and that on Dante. These form the third and fourth volumes. In the fifth volume is his "Essay on the Franciscan Poets;" and that on Dante closes the series. We have confined ourselves to the subject-matter of the first and second volumes, which contain the lectures on the civilization of the fifth century, and which suffice to show the lofty Christian philosophy with which Ozanam beholds the course of modern history. More than this it would be difficult to show. The lectures themselves are fragments; ideas snatched from the rapid flow of his eloquence, and that eloquence itself could feebly express the thoughts which visited his mind, and the impressions of glory which left no trace but sensation. There is no chronology, no succession. He fixes his eyes on the fifth century—he penetrates its mysteries, and the secret influences which it sends forth to after times. He speaks of what he sees; and we learn that the world of Christendom has had its decadence and renaissance, yet that progress continues. The crimes of the middle ages conceal that progress, and so do the troubles of the present time. O passi graviora, dabit Deus hic quoque finem.

From Chambers's Journal.

THE BELLS OF AVIGNON.

  Avignon was a joyous city,
  A joyous town with many a steeple,
  Towers and tourelles, roofs and turrets,
  Sheltering a merry people.
  In each tower, the bells of silver,
  Bronze or iron, swayed so proudly,
  Tolling deep and swinging cheerly,
  Beating fast and beating loudly.

  One! Two! Three! Four! ever sounding;
  Two! Four! One! Three! still repeating;
  Five! Seven! Six! Eight! hurrying, chasing;
  Bim-bom-bing-bang merry beating.
  All the day the dancing sextons
  Dragged at bell-ropes, rising, falling;
  Clanging bells, inquiring, answering,
  From the towers were ever calling.

  Cardinals, in crimson garments,
  Stood and listened to the chiming;
  And within his lofty chateau
  Sate the pope, and beat the timing.
  Minstrels, soldiers, monks, and jesters
  Laughed to hear the merry clamor,
  As above them in the turrets
  Music clashed from many a hammer.

{784}

  Avignon was a joyous city:
  Far away across the bridges,
  'Mong the vine-slopes, upward lessening,
  To the brown cliffs' highest ridges,
  Clamored those sonorous bells;
  In the summer's noontide wrangling,
  In one silver knot of music
  All their chimes together tangling.

  Showering music on the people
  Round the town-house in the mornings;
  Scattering joy and jubilations,
  Hope and welcome, wrath and scornings;
  Ushering kings, or mourning pontiffs;
  Clanging in the times of thunder,
  And on nights when conflagrations
  Clove the city half asunder.

  Nights and nights across the river,
  Through the darkness starry-dotted,
  Far across the bridge so stately.
  Now by lichens blurred and blotted,
  Came that floating, mournful music,
  As from bands of angels flying,
  With the loud blasts of the tempest
  Still victoriously vieing.

  Who could tell why Avignon
  All its bells was ever pealing?
  Whether to scare evil spirits,
  Still round holy cities stealing.
  Yet, perhaps, that ceaseless chiming,
  And that pleasant silver beating,
  Was but as of children playing,
  And their mother's name repeating.

  One! Two! Three! the bells went prattling,
  With a music so untiring;
  One! Two! Three! in merry cadence,
  Rolling, crashing, clanging, firing.
  Hence it was that in past ages,
  When 'mid war those sounds seemed sweeter,
  La Ville Sonnante people called it,
  City sacred to Saint Peter.

  Years ago! but now all silent,
  Lone and sad, the grass-grown city,
  Has its bell-towers all deserted
  By those ringers—more's the pity.
  Pope and cardinal are vanished,
  And no music fills the night-air;
  Gone the red robes and the sable;
  Gone the crosier and the mitre.

{785}

From The Lamp.

ALL-HALLOW EVE; OR, THE TEST OF FUTURITY.

BY ROBERT CURTIS.

CHAPTER X.

It is not to be wondered at that two persons, equally clever in all respects, and having a similar though not identical object in view, should have pretty much the same thoughts respecting the manner of carrying it out, and finally pursue the same course to effect their purpose. But the matter involves some nicety, if not difficulty, when it so happens that those two persons have to work upon each other in a double case. It is then a matter of diamond cut diamond; and if, as I have suggested, both are equally clever, the discussion of the subject between them would make no bad scene in a play. Winny wanted to find out something from Kate Mulvey, and at the same time to hide something from her. Kate Mulvey was on precisely the same intent with Winny Cavana in both ways; so that some such tournament must come off between them the first time they met, with sufficient opportunity to "have it out" without interruption.

You have seen that Winny had determined to sound her friend Kate, as to how her land lay between these two young men. If Kate had not made a like determination as to sounding Winny, she was, at all events, ready for the encounter at any moment, and had discussed the matter over and over in her own mind. Their mutual object, then, was to find out which of the young men was the real object of the other's affections; and up to the present moment each believed the other to be a formidable rival to her own hopes.

Winny was not one who hesitated about any matter which she felt to require immediate performance; and as she knew that some indefinite time might elapse before an opportunity could occur to have her chat out with Kate Mulvey, she was resolved to make one.

Her father's house, as the reader has seen in the commencement, was not on the roadside. There was no general pass that way; and except persons had business to old Cavana's or Mick Murdock's, they never went up the lane, which was common to both the houses of these rich farmers. It was not so with the house where Kate Mulvey resided. Its full front was to the high-road, with a space not more than three perches between. This space had been originally what is termed in that rank of life "a bawn," but was now wisely converted into a cabbage-garden, with a broad clean gravel-walk running through the centre of the plot, from the road to the door. It was about half a mile from Cavana's, and there was a full view of the road, for a long stretch, from the door or window of the house—that is, of Mulvey's.

It was now a fine mild day toward the end of November. Old Mick Murdock's party had ceased to be spoken of, and perhaps forgotten, except by the few with whom we have to do. Winny Cavana put on her everyday bonnet and her everyday cloak, and started for a walk. Bully-dhu capered round her in an awkward playful manner, with a deep-toned howl of joy when he saw these preparations, and trotted down the lane before her. As may be anticipated, she bent her steps down the road toward Mulvey's house. She knew she could be seen coming for some distance, and hoped that Kate might greet her from the door as she passed. She {786} was not mistaken; Kate had seen her from the first turn in the road toward the house, and was all alive on her own account. She had tact and vanity enough, however,—for she had plenty of time before Winny came alongside of the house,—to slip in and put on a decent gown, and brush her beautiful and abundant hair; and she came to the door, as if by mere accident, but looking her very best, as Winny approached. Kate knew that she was looking very handsome, and Winny Cavana, at the very first glance, felt the same fact.

"Good morrow, Kate," said Winny; "that's a fine day."

"Good morrow kindly, Winny; won't you come in and sit down awhile?"

"No, thank you; the day is so fine, I'm out for a walk. You may as well put on your bonnet, and come along with me; it will do you good, Kitty."

"With all my heart; step up to the house, and I'll be ready in two twos." But she was not so sure that it would do her good.

The girls then turned up to the house, for Kate had run down in her hair to shake hands with her friend. Winny would not go in, but stood at the door, ordering Bully-dhu not to growl at Captain, and begging of Captain not to growl at Bully-dhu. Kate was scarcely the "two twos" she gave herself until she came out ready for the road; and the two friends, and the two dogs, having at once entered into most amicable relations with each other, went off together.

Winny was resolved that no "awkward pause" on her part should give Kate reason to suppose there was anything unusual upon her mind, and went on at once, as if from where she had left off.

"The day was so fine, Kate," she continued, "that I was anxious to get some fresh air. I have been churning, and packing butter, every day since Monday, and could not get out. Biddy Murtagh is very clean and honest, but she is very slow, and I could not leave her."

"It is well for you, Winny, that has the butter to pack."

"Yes, Kate, I suppose it will be well for me some day or other; but as long as my poor father lives—God between him and harm!—I don't feel the want of anything."

"God spare him to you, Winny mavourneen! He's a fine hale old man, and I hope he'll live to be at the christening of many a grandchild. If report speaks thrue, Winny dear, that same is not unlikely to come round."

"Report does not always speak the truth, Kate; don't you know that?"

"I do; but I also know that there's seldom smoke without fire, and that it sometimes makes a good hit. And sure, nothin's more reasonable than that it's right this time. Tom's a fine young fellow; an' like yourself, sure, he's an only child. There wasn't such a weddin' this hundred years—no, nor never—in the parish of Rathcash, as it will be—come now!"

"Tom is a fine young man, Kate; I don't deny it—"

"You couldn't—you couldn't, Winny Cavana! you'd belie yoursel' if you did," said Kate, with a little more warmth of manner than was quite politic under the circumstances.

"But I don't, Kate; and I can't see why you need fly at me in that way."

"I beg your pardon, Winny dear; but sure everybody sees an' knows that you're on for one another; an' why not?—wasn't he as cross as a bag of cats at his father's party because he let 'that whelp' (as he called him) Edward Lennon take you out for the first dance?"

"Emon-a-knock is no whelp; he couldn't call him a whelp. Did he call him one?"

"Didn't you hear him? for if you didn't you might; it wasn't but he spoke loud enough."

"It is well for him, Kate, that Emon did not hear him. He's as good a man as Tom Murdock at any rate. {787} He didn't fall over the poker and tongs as Tom did."

"That was a mere accident, Winny. I seen the fung of his pump loose myself; didn't I help to shut it for him, afther he fell?"

"You were well employed indeed, Kate," said Winny sneeringly.

"You would have done it yourself if he axed you as he did me," replied Kate.

"Certainly not," said Winny.

So far they seemed both to have the worst of it, in spite of all their caution. What they wanted was to find out how the other's heart stood between these two young men, without betraying their own—which latter they had both nearly done.

There was a pause, and Kate was the next to speak.

"Not but I must admit that Emon-a-knock is a milder, better boy in some respects than Tom. He has a nicer way with him, Winny, and I think it is easier somehow to like him than to like Tom."

"Report says you do, Kate dear."

"But you know, Winny, report does not always spake thrue, as you say yourself."

"Ay, but as you said just now, Kate, it sometimes makes a good hit."

"Well, Winny, I wish you joy at all events, with all my heart. Both your fathers is anxious for your match; an' sure, when the two farms is joined in one, with you an' Tom, you can live like a lady. I suppose you'll hould your head too high for poor Kate an' Emon-a-knock then."

There was a sadness in Kate's tone as she said this, which, from ignorance of how matters really stood, was partly genuine, and, from anxiety to find it out, was partly assumed.

But she had turned the key and the door flew open. Winny could fence with her feelings no longer.

"Kate Mulvey," she exclaimed, "do not believe the reports you hear about me and Tom Murdock. I'm aware of what you say about his father and mine being anxious to unite the farms by our marriage. I don't want to say anything against Tom Murdock; but he'll never call me wife. There now, Kate jewel, you have the truth. I'll be well enough off, Kitty, without Tom Murdock's money or land; and when I really don't care for him, don't you think it would be much better and handsomer of him to bestow himself and it upon some nice girl without a penny" (and she glanced slyly at Kate, whose cheeks got rosy red), "than to be striving to force it upon one that doesn't want it—nor wish for it? And don't you think it would be much better and handsomer for me, who has a nice little fodeen, and must come in for my father's land,—God between him and harm!—to do the same, if I could meet with a nice boy that really cared for myself, and not for my money? Answer me them questions, Kate."

Kate was silent; but her eyes had assumed quite a different expression, if they had not altogether turned almost a different color. The weight of Winny's rich rivalry had been lifted from her heart, and so far as that obstacle had been dreaded, the coast was now clear. Of course she secretly agreed in the propriety of Winny's views, and it was only necessary that she should now do so openly.

"You didn't answer me them questions yet, Kate."

"Well I could, Winny, if I liked it; but I don't wish to have act, hand, or part in setting you against your father's wishes."

"You need not fear that, Kitty; my father won't force me to do what I really do not wish to do. He never put the matter to me plainly yet, but I expect it every day. He's always praising Tom Murdock, and hinting at the business, by saying he wishes he could see me comfortably settled; that he is growing old and is not the man he used to be; and all that. I know very well, Kate, what he means, both ways; and, God between him and harm! I say again; but he'll never see me Tom Murdock's wife. {788} I have my answer ready for them both."

"Well, Winny, as you seem determined, I suppose I may spake; and, to tell you the truth, I always thought it would be a pity to put them two farms into one, and so spoil two good establishments; for sure any one of them is lashings, Winny, for any decent boy and girl in the parish; an' what's more, if they were joined together tomorrow, there is not a gentleman in the county would think a bit the better of them that had them."

"Never, Kitty, except it was some poor broken-down fellow that wanted to borrow a couple of hundred pounds, and rob them in the end. And now, Kitty, let us be plain and free with one another. My opinion is that Tom could raise you—I won't say out of poverty, Kate; for, thanks be to God, it is not come to that with you, and that it never may—but into comfort and plenty; and that I could, some day, do the same, if I could meet with a nice boy that, as I said, would care for myself and not for my money. If Tom took a liking to you, Kitty, you might know he was in earnest for yourself; I know he's only put up to his make-belief liking for me by his own father and mine. But, Kitty dear, I'm afraid, like myself, you have no fancy for him."

"Well, Winny, to tell you the truth, I always believed what the neighbors said about you an' him; an' I tried not to think of him for that same reason. There's no doubt, Winny dear, but it would be a fine match for me; but I know he's out an' out for you: only for that, Winny, I could love every bone in his body—there now! you have it out."

"He'll soon find his mistake, Kate dear, about me. I'm sure the thing will be brought to a point before long between us, and between my father and me too. When Tom finds I'm positive, he can't be blind to your merits and beauty, Kitty—yes, I will say it out, your beauty!—you needn't be putting your hand to my mouth that way; there's no mistake about it."

"Ah, Winny, Winny dear, you're too lenient to me entirely; sure I couldn't sit or stand beside you in that respect at all, an' with your money; sure they'll settle it all between themselves."

"They may settle what they like, Kitty; but they can't make me do what I am determined not to do; so as far as that goes, you have nothing to fear."

"Well, Winny dear, I'm glad I know the truth; for now I won't be afeard of crossing you, at any rate; and I know another that wouldn't be sorry to know as much as I do."

"Who, Kitty? tell us."

"Ah, then now, Winny, can't you guess? or maybe it's what you know better than I do myself."

"Well, I suppose you mean Emon-a-knock; for indeed, Kitty, he's always on the top of your tongue, and the parish has it that you and he are promised. Come now, Kitty, tell us the truth. I told you how there was no truth in the report about me and Tom Murdock, and how there never could be."

If this was not leading Kate Mulvey to the answer most devoutly wished for, I do not know what the meaning of the latter part of the sentence could be. It was what the lawyers would call a "leading question." The excitement too of Winny, during the pause which ensued, showed very plainly the object with which she spoke, and the anxiety she felt for the result.

Kate did not in the least misunderstand her. Perhaps she knew more of her thoughts than Winny was aware of, and that it was not then she found them out for the first time; for Kate was a shrewd observer. She had gained her own object, and it was only fair she should now permit Winny to gain hers.

"Ah, Winny dear," she said, after a contemplative pause, "there never was a word of the kind between us. {789} You know, Winny, in the first place, it wouldn't do at all—two empty sacks could never stand; and in the next place, neither his heart was on me, nor mine on him. It was all idle talk of the neighbors. Not but Emon is a nice boy as there is to be found in this or any other parish, and you know that, Winny; don't you, now?"

"Kitty dear, there's nobody can deny what you say, and for that self-same reason I believed what the neighbors said regarding you and him."

"Tell me this now, Winny,—you know we were reared, I may say, at the door with one another, and have been fast friends since we were that height" (and she held her hand within about two feet of the ground, at the same time looking fully and very kindly into her friend's face),— "tell me now, Winny dear, did it fret you to believe what you heard? Come now."

"For your sake, and for his, Kitty, it could not fret me; but for my own sake—there now, don't ask me."

"No, avourneen, I won't; what need have I, Winny, when I see them cheeks of yours,—or is it the sun that cum suddenly out upon you, Winny asthore?"

"Kate Mulvey, I'll tell you the truth, as I believe you have told it to me. For many a long day I'm striving to keep myself from liking that boy on your account. I think, Kate, if I hadn't a penny-piece in the world no more than yourself, I would have done my very best to take him from you; it would have been a fair fight then, Kitty; but I didn't like to use any odds against you, Kitty dear; and I never gave him so much as one word to go upon."

"I'm very thankful to you, Winny dear; an' signs on the boy, he thought you were for a high match with rich Tom Murdock; an' any private chat Emon an' I ever had was about that same thing."

"Then he has spoken to you about me! O Kitty, dear Kitty, what used he to be saying of me? do tell me."

"The never a word I'll tell you, Winny dear. Let him spake to yourself; which maybe he'll do when he finds you give Tom the go-by; but I'm book-sworn; so don't ask me."

"Well, Kitty, I'm glad I happened to come across you this morning; for now we understand each other, and there's no fear of our interrupting one another in our thoughts any more."

"None, thank God," said Kitty.

By this time the girls had wandered along the road to nearly a mile from home. They had both gained their object, though not in the roundabout sounding manner which we had anticipated, and they were now both happy. They were no longer even the imaginary rivals which it appears was all they had ever been; and as this light broke upon them the endearing epithets of "dear" and "jewel" became more frequent and emphatic than was usual in a conversation of the same length.

Their mutual confidences, as they retraced their steps, were imparted to the fullest extent. They now perfectly "understood each other," as Winny had said; and to their cordial shake-hands at the turn up to Kate Mulvey's house was added an affectionate kiss, as good as if they swore never to interfere with each other in love-affairs.

CHAPTER XI.

Winny Cavana, as far as her own feelings and belief were concerned, had not made a bad morning's work of it. Hitherto she had supposed that Kate Mulvey had forestalled her in the affections of Emon-a-knock. The neighbors had given them to each other, and she feared that Emon was not free from the power of her charms. With these doubts, or almost with this belief, upon her mind, she could not have met her father's {790} importunities about Tom Murdock with the same careless and happy determination which matters, as they now stood, would enable her to do. Being assured, from her conversation with Kate, that there was nothing between her and Emon, she could "riddle" more easily some circumstances and expressions which, to say the least of it, were puzzling, with a belief that these two persons were mutually attached. Winny knew now how to reconcile them; and the view she took of them was anything but favorable to her father's wishes or Tom Murdock's hopes.

She could not hope, however,—perhaps she did not wish,—for any interview with Emon just then, when her change of manner, emanating from her knowledge of facts, might draw him out, for her heart now told her that this would surely come. She had some fears that her father might sound her about Emon, and she wished to be able to say with a clear conscience that he had never spoken, or even hinted at the subject, to her; but she was determined, nevertheless, to act toward her father, and subsequently toward Tom Murdock, as if her troth and Emon's had been already irrevocably plighted. She was in hopes that if she had an interview with her father upon the subject of Tom Murdock in the first instance, the unalterable dislike which she would exhibit to the match might save her the horrible necessity of going through the business with the man himself. But poor Winny had settled matters in her own mind in an order in which they did not occur; and it so happened that, although she thought her heart had gone through enough excitement for one day, and that she would, for the rest of that evening, hide beneath the happiness which was creeping over her, yet she was mistaken.

Tom Murdock had seen her pass down the road; and hastily putting on one of his best coats and his very best hat, he followed her, determined to have good news in return for his father's advice; but he was disappointed. Before he could overtake her, he perceived that she had been joined by Kate Mulvey, and that they went coshering away together. Of course he saw that it was "no go," as he said, for that time; but he would watch her returning, when he could not fail to meet her alone.

"Hang me," said he, as he saw them walking away, "if I don't think Kate Mulvey is the finest girl of the two, and very nearly as handsome as ever she was—some people say handsomer. If it was not for her money, and that grand farm she'll have, I'd let her see how soon I could get a girl in every other respect as good, if not better, than she is. Look at the two of them: upon my faith, I think Kate is the lightest stepper of the two."

Tom paused for a few moments, if not in his thoughts, at least in the expression of them; for all the above had been uttered aloud. Then, as if they had received a sudden spur which made him start, he muttered with his usual scowl, "No, no; I'll follow it up to the death if necessary. That whelp shall never have it to say that Tom Murdock failed, and perhaps add, where he did not. I'll have her, by fair means if I can; but if not, by them five crosses," and he clasped his hands together, "she shall be mine by foul. Sure it is not possible they are going to meet that whelp this blessed moment!" And he dogged them at so long a distance behind that, even if their conversation had been less interesting, they would not have been aware of his stealthy espionage.

When they turned to return, he turned also, and was then so far before them that, with the bushes and the bends in the road, he could not be perceived. Thus he watched and watched, until, to his great satisfaction, he saw them part company at Kate's house. Winny Cavana, as we have seen, had still some distance to walk ere she reached the lane turning up to her father's; and Kate having gone in and shut the {791} door, Tom strolled on, as if by mere accident, until he met Winny on the road.

Tom was determined to be as mild and as bland, as cordial and good-natured, as possible. He felt there had always been a sort of undefined snappish battle between him and Winny; and he had the honesty of mind, as well as the vanity, to blame his own harsh and abrupt manner for this. Perhaps it arose no less from a consciousness of his personal advantages than from a belief that in his position as an only son, and heir to his father's interest in a rich and profitable farm, he had no great need of those blandishments of expression so generally requisite in making way to a young and unhackneyed heart. He resolved, therefore, upon this occasion to give Winny no cause to accuse him of uncouthness of manner; neither was he inclined to be uncouth when he beheld the glowing beauty of her face, heightened, as he thought, solely by the exercise of her walk; but not a little increased, without his knowledge of the fact, by the new light which had just dawned upon the horizon of her hopes.

Her heart bounced in her bosom as she saw him approach.

"Good morning, Winny," he said, holding out his hand.

"Good morrow kindly, Tom," she replied, wishing to be civil, and taking it. She knew she was "in for it," as she expressed it to herself; but encouraged "by the hope within her springing," and softened by the anticipation of its fulfilment, she was determined to be kind but firm.

"Have you been walking far, Winny? Upon my life, it seems to agree with you. It has improved your beauty, Winny, if that was possible."

"Tom, don't flatter me; you're always paying me compliments, and I often told you that I did not like it. Beside, you did not let me answer your question until you begin at your old work. I walked about a mile of the road with Kate Mulvey."

"Kate Mulvey is a complete nice girl. You are not tired, Winny, are you?"

"Ah, then, what would tire me? is it a mile of a walk, and the road under my feet? I could walk to Boher-na-Milthiogue and back this minute."

By this time they had come to the end of the lane turning up to Rathcash House.

"I'm glad to find you are not tired, Winny. You may as well come on toward the cross; I have something to say to you."

"And welcome, Tom; what is it?"

Winny felt that the thing was coming, and she wished to appear as careless and unconscious as possible. When she recollected all Kate Mulvey had said to her, she was just in the humor to have it over. Upon reflection, too, she was not sorry that it should so happen before the grand passage between her and her father upon the same subject. She could the more easily dispose of the case with him, having already disposed of it with Tom himself. She therefore went on, past the end of her own lane; and Tom, taking this for an unequivocal token in his favor, was beginning to get really fond of her—at least he thought so.

"Well, Winny, I'm very glad I happened to meet you, and that you seem inclined to take a walk with me; for to tell you the truth, Winny, I can't help thinking of you."

"Perhaps you don't try, Tom."

"True for you, Winny dear; I wouldn't help thinking of you if I could, and I couldn't if I would."

"Is that the way with you, Tom?"

But Winny did not smile or look at him, as he had hoped she would have done.

"You know it is, Winny dear; but I can keep the truth, in plain English, from you no longer."

"See that now! Ah, then, Tom, I pity you."

And Tom could not tell from her manner, or from the tone of her voice, whether she was in earnest or {792} only joking. He preferred the former.

"Well, Winny Cavana, if you knew how much I love you, you would surely take pity on me, my own colleen dhass."

"Faith, Tom, I believe it's in earnest you are, sure enough."

"In earnest! Yes, Winny, by the bright sky over me—and it is not brighter than your own eyes—I am in earnest! It is a long day now since I first took to loving you, though it was only of late you might have picked it out of my looks. Ah, Winny dear, if you hadn't a penny-piece but yourself, I would have spoken to you long ago. But there was a great deal of talk among the neighbors about the joining of them two farms together, and I was afraid you might think—"

"I understand. You were afraid I might think it was my money and the farm you were after, and not myself. Was not that it, Tom?"

"Just so, Winny. But I am indeed in earnest, and for yourself alone, Winny dear; and I'm willing to prove my words by making you my wife, and mistress of all I have coming Shraftide, God willing." And he took her by the hand.

She withdrew it at once, after a slight struggle, and replied, "Tom Murdock, put such a thing totally out of your head, for it can never be—never, by the same oath you swore just now, and that is the blue heaven above me!" And she turned back toward the lane.

"I cross, Winny. Don't say that. I know that your father and mine would both be willing for the match. As to what your father would do for you, Winny mavourneen, I don't care a boughalawn lui; for I'm rich enough without a cross of his money or his land. My own father will make over to me by lawful deed, the day you become my wife, his house and furniture, together with the whole of his land and cattle. Your father, I know, Winny, would do the same for you, for he has but yourself belonging to him; and although your fortune or your land has nothing to say to my love, yet, Winny, dear, between us, if you will consent to my prayer, for it is nothing less, there's few grandees in the country could compare to you,—I'll say nothing for myself, Winny dear, only say the word."

"No, Tom, I'll say no word but what I'm after saying; and you are only making matters worse, talking of grandeur and riches that way. You would only be striving at what you would not be able for, nor allowed to keep up, Tom, and as for myself, I'd look well, wouldn't I? stuck up on a new sidecar, and a drawn bonnet and feathers, coming down the lane of a Sunday, and the neighbors thronging to mass,—aping my betters, and getting myself and yourself laughed at. Devil a one, Tom, but they'd call you Lord Boher-na-Milthiogue. No, Tom; put it out of your head; that is my first and last word to you." And she hastened her step.

"No, Winny, you won't leave me that way, will you? By all the books that were ever shut and opened, you may make what you please of me. I'll never ask to put yourself or myself a pin's-point beyond what we always were, either in grandeur or anything else. But wouldn't it be a fine thing, Winny dear, to have our children able to hold up their heads with the best in the county, in a manner?"

"Ay, in a manner, indeed. No, Tom; they would never be anything but the Murdocks of Rathcashmore—grandchildren of ould Mick Murdock and ould Ned Cavana, the common farmers."

"And what have you to say against old Mick Murdock?" exclaimed Tom, beginning to feel that his suit was hopeless, and flaming up inwardly in the spirit which was most natural to him.

"Nothing indeed, Tom; you need not be so angry, I meant no offence; I said as much against my own father as against yours, if there was anything against either. But we must soon {793} part now, Tom, and let us part friends at all events, living as we do within a stone's-throw of each other." She held out her hand, but he took it coldly and loosely. He felt that his game was up.

"Take my advice, Tom Murdock"—this was the second time she had found it necessary to overcome her antipathy to pronounce the name—"take my advice, and never speak to me again upon the subject. Sure, there's many a fine handsome girl would be glad to listen to you; and I'll now ask you one question before we part. Wouldn't it be better and fitter for you to bestow yourself and your land upon some handsome young girl who has nothing of her own, and was, maybe, well inclined for you, and to rise her up to be independent, than to be striving to force yourself and it upon them that doesn't want your land, and cannot care for yourself? Why don't you look about you? There's many a girl in the parish as handsome, and handsomer, than I am, that would just jump at you."

Winny had no sooner uttered these latter words than she regretted them. She did not wish Tom Murdock to know that she had overheard him. She was glad however to perceive that, in his anger, he had not recognized them as a quotation from his conversation with his father at the gate.

There was a silence now for a minute or two. Tom's blood was 'up; his hopes of success were over, and he was determined to speak his mind in an opposite direction.

"Have I set you thinking, Tom?" said Winny, half timidly.

"I'm d—d but you have, Winny Cavana; and I'll answer your question with one much like it. And would not it be better and fitter for you—of course it would—to bestow yourself and your fortune and your land upon some handsome young fellow that has nothing but his day's wages, and was well inclined for you, and to rise him up out of poverty, than to spoil a good chance for a friend by joining yours to them that has enough without it? Why didn't you follow up your first question with that, Winny Cavana?" And he stopped short, enjoying the evident confusion he had caused.

Winny thought, too, for a few moments in silence. She was considering the probability of Tom Murdock's having overheard her conversation with Kate Mulvey from behind some hedge. But the result of her calculations was that it was impossible.

She was right. It was a mere paraphrase of her own question to him, and only shows how two clever people may hit upon the same idea, and express it in nearly the same language. And the question was prompted by his suspicions in the quarter already intimated.

"Yes, I see how it is," he exclaimed, breaking the silence, and giving way to his ungovernable temper. "But, by the hatred I bear to that whelp, that shall never be, at all events. I'll go to your father this moment, and let him know what's going on—"

"And who do you dare to call 'a whelp,' Tom Murdock? If it be Edward Lennon, let me tell you that his little finger is worth your whole head and heart—body and bones together."

"There, there—she acknowledges it. But I'll put a spoke in that whelp's wheel,—for it was him I called a whelp, since you must know,—see if I don't; so let him look out, that's all."

"I have acknowledged nothing, Tom Murdock. A word beyond common civility never passed between Edward Lennon and myself; and take care how you venture to interfere between my father and me. You have got your answer, and I have sworn to it. You have no right to interfere further."

By this time they had reached the end of the lane again; and Winny, with her heart on fire, and her face in a flame, hurried to the house. Fortunately, her father had not returned {794} from the fields, and rushing to her own room, she locked the door, took off her bonnet and cloak, and "threw herself" (I believe that is the proper expression) upon the bed. Perhaps a sensation novelist would add that she "burst into an agony of tears."

CHAPTER XII.

Winny lay for nearly an hour meditating upon the past, the present, and the future. Upon the whole she did not regret what had occurred, either before or after she had met Tom Murdock, and she cooled down into her accustomed self-possession sooner than she had supposed possible.

One grand object had been attained. Tom Murdock had come to the point, and she had given him his final and irrevocable answer, if she had twenty fathers thundering parental authority in her ears. A spot of blue sky had appeared too in the east, above the outline of Shanvilla mountain, in which the morning-star of her young life might soon arise, and shine brightly through the flimsy clouds—or she could call them nothing but flimsy now—which had hitherto darkened her hopes. What if Tom Murdock was a villain?—and she believed he was: what dared he—what could he do? Pshaw, nothing! But, oh that the passage-of-arms between herself and her father was over! "Then," thought she, "all might be plain sailing before me."

But, Winny, supposing all these matters fairly over,—and the battle with your father is likely to be as cranky and tough upon his part as it is certain to be straightforward and determined upon yours,—there will still be a doubtful blank upon your mind and in your heart, and one the solution of which you cannot, even with Kate Mulvey's assistance, seek an occasion to fill up. Ah, no, you must trust to chance for time and opportunity for that most important of all your interviews. And what if you be mistaken after all, and, if mistaken, crushed for ever by the result?

Let Winny alone for that. Women seldom make a bad guess in such a case.

Winny's mental and nervous system having both regained their ordinary degree of composure, she left her room, and proceeded through the house upon her usual occupations. She was not, however, quite free from a certain degree of anxiety at the anticipated interview with her father. He had not in any way intimated his intention to ask certain questions touching any communication she might have received from Tom Murdock, together with her answers thereto; and yet she felt certain that on the first favorable occasion he would ask the questions, without any notice whatever. She had subsided for the day, after a very exciting morning upon two very different subjects. Yes; she called them different, though they were pretty much akin; and she would now prefer a cessation of her anxiety for the remainder of that afternoon at least.

So far she was fortunate. Her father did not come in until it was very late; and being much fatigued by his stewardship of the day, he did not appear inclined to enter upon any important subject, but fell asleep in his arm-chair after a hasty and (Winny observed) scarcely-touched dinner.

Winny was an affectionate good child. She was devotedly fond of her father, with whose image were associated all her thoughts of happiness and love since she was able to clasp his knees and clamber to his lap. Even yet no absolute allegiance of a decided nature claimed the disloyalty of her heart; but she felt that the time was not far distant when either he must abdicate his royalty, or she must rebel.

{795}

"It is clearly my duty now," she said to herself, "not to delay this business about Tom, upon the chance of his being the first to speak of it: to-morrow, before the cares and labors of the day occupy his mind, and perhaps make him ever so little a bit cross, I will tell him what has happened. I am afraid he will be very angry with me for refusing that man; but it cannot be helped: not for all the gold they both possess would I marry Tom Murdock. I shall not betray his sordid villany, however, until all other resources fail; but I know my father will scorn the fellow as I do when he knows the whole truth—but ah, I have no witness," thought she, "and they will make a liar of me."

If the old man could have ever perceived any difference in the kind and affectionate attention so uniformly bestowed upon him by his fond daughter, perhaps it might have been upon that night after he awoke from a rather lengthened nap in his easy chair.

Winny had sat during the whole time gazing upon the loved features of the sleeping old man. She could not call to mind, from the day upon which her memory first became conscious, a single unkind or even a harsh word which he had uttered to her. That he could be more than harsh to others she knew, and she was now in her nineteenth year; fifteen clear years, she might say, of unbroken memory. She could remember her fifth birthday quite well, and so much as a snappish word or a commanding look she had never received from him; not, God knows, but he had good reason, many's the time, for more than either. And there he lay now, calm, and fast asleep, the only one belonging to her on the wide earth, and she meditating an opposition in her heart to his plans respecting her—all, she knew, arising from the great love he had for her, and the frustration of which, she was aware, would vex him sore. "Oh, Tom Murdock, Tom Murdock, why are you Tom Murdock? or Emon-a-knock, why did I ever see you?" was the conclusion to this train of thought, as she sat still, gazing on her sleeping father.

Then a happier train succeeded, and a fond smile lit up her handsome face. "Ah no, no! I am the only being belonging to him, the only one he loves. The father who for nearly twenty years never spoke an unkind word—and if he had reason to reprove me did so by example and request, and not the rod—has only to know that a marriage with Tom Murdock would make me miserable to make him spurn him, as I did myself. As to the other boy, I know nothing for certain myself about him, and I can fairly deny any accusation he may make; and I am certain he has been put up to it by old Murdock through his son. Yet even on this score I'll deny as little as I can."

Here it was her father awakened; and Winny had only time to conclude her thoughts by wondering how that fellow dare call Emon "a whelp."

"Well, father dear," she said, "you have had a nice nap; you must have been very tired. I wish I was a man, that I might help you on the farm."

"Winny darlin', I wouldn't have you anything but what you are for the world. I have not much to do at all on the farm but to poke about, and see that the men I have at work don't rob me by idling; and I must say I never saw honester work than what they leave after them. But, Winny, I came across old Murdock shortly after I went out, and he came over my land with me, and I went over his with him, so that we had rather a long walk. I'll engage he's as tired as what I am. I did not think his farm was so extensive as it is, or that the land was so good, or in such to-au-op caun-di-shon." And poor old Ned yawned and stretched himself.

Winny saw through the whole thing at once. The matter of a marriage between herself and Tom Murdock, and a union of the farms, had doubtless been discussed between her father and old Mick Murdock, and a final arrangement, so far as they were concerned, had been arrived at. A hitch upon her part she was certain neither {796} of them had ever dreamt of; and yet "hitch" was a slight word to express the opposition she was determined to give to their wishes.

She knew that if her father had got so far as where he had been interrupted by the yawn when he was fresh after breakfast, the whole thing would have come out. She was, however, a considerate girl; and although she knew there was at that moment a good opening, where a word would have brought the matter on, she knew that the result would have completely driven rest and sleep from the poor old man's pillow for the night, tired and fatigued as he was. She therefore adroitly changed the conversation to his own comforts in a cup of tea before he went to bed.

"Yes, mavourneen" he said, "I fell asleep before I mixed a tumbler of punch, and I'll take the tea now instead; for, Winny, my love, you can join me at that. Do you know, Winny, I'm very thirsty?"

"Well, father dear, I'll soon give you what will refresh you."

While Winny was busying herself for the tea, putting down a huge kettle of water in the kitchen, and rattling the cups and saucers until you'd think she was trying to break them, the old man wakened up into a train of thought not altogether dissimilar to that which Winny herself had indulged in over his sleeping form.

Winny was quite right. The whole matter had been discussed on that day between the old men during their perambulations round the two farms; the respective value and condition of the land forming a minute calculation not unconnected with the other portion of their discourse—settlements, deeds of conveyance, etc., etc., had all been touched upon.

Winny was right in another of her surmises, although at the time she scarcely believed so herself. Old Murdock, taking his cue from Tom, told old Ned that if he found Winny at all averse to marrying Tom, he was certain young Lennon would be at the bottom of it—at least Tom had more than hinted such to him.

Old Ned was furious at this, declaring that if Tom Murdock was never to the fore, his daughter should never bestow his long and hard earnings upon a pauper like that, looking for a day's wages here and there, and as often without it as with it; how dare the likes of him lift his eyes to his little girl! But he'd soon put a stop to that, if there was anything in it, let what would turn up. Every penny-piece he was worth in the world was in his own power, and there was a very easy way of bringing Miss Winny to her senses, if she had that wild notion in her head.

Poor old Ned, in his indignation for what he thought Winny's welfare, forgot that she was the only being belonging to him in the world, and that when it came to the point he would find it impossible to put this threat of "cutting her off" into execution.

Old Murdock was delighted with this tirade against young Lennon, whom he looked upon as the only real obstacle to Tom's acquisition of land and money, to say nothing of a handsome wife.

"Be studdy with her, Ned," said he, "she has a very floostherin' way wid her where you're concerned; I often remarked it. Don't let her come round you, Ned, wid her pillaverin' about that 'whelp,' as Tom calls him."

"An' he calls him quite right. If he daars to look up to my little girl, he'll soon find out his mistake, I can tell him."

"Nothin' would show him his mistake so much as to have Tom's business an' hers settled at Shraft, Ned."

"I know that, Mick; an' with the blessing I'll spake to her in the mornin' upon the subjict. I dunna did Tom ever spake to herself, Mick?"

"If he didn't he will afore to-morrow night; he's on the watch to meet with her by accident; he says it's betther nor to go straight up to her, an' maybe frighten her."

"Very well, Mick; I'll have an eye to them; maybe it would be betther {797} let Tom himself spake first. These girls are so dam' proud; an' I can tell you it is betther not vex Winny."

Of course these two old men said a great deal more; but the above is the pith of what set old Ned Cavana thinking the greater part of the night; for the tea Winny made was very strong, and, as he said, he was thirsty, having missed his tumbler of punch after dinner. He fell asleep, however, much sooner than he would have done had the sequel to his plans become known to him before he went to bed.

[TO BE CONTINUED in Volume II]

From The Book of Days.

YOUNG'S NARCISSA.

The Third Night of Young's Complaint is entitled Narcissa, from its being dedicated to the sad history of the early death of a beautiful lady, thus poetically designated by the author. Whatever doubts may exist with respect to the reality or personal identity of the other characters noticed in the "Night Thoughts," there can be none whatever as regards Narcissa. She was the daughter of Young's wife, by her first husband, Colonel Lee. When scarcely seventeen years of age she was married to Mr. Henry Temple, son of the then Lord Palmerston. [Footnote 158] Soon afterward, being attacked by consumption, she was taken by Young to the south of France in hopes of a change for the better; but she died there about a year after her marriage, and Dr. Johnson tells us, in his "Lives of the Poets," that "her funeral was attended with the difficulties painted in such animated colors in Night the Third." Young's words in relation to the burial of Narcissa, eliminating, for brevity's sake, some extraneous and redundant lines, are as follows:

[Footnote 158: By a second wife, grandfather of the present Premier.]

  "While nature melted, superstition raved;
  That mourned the dead; and this denied a grave.
  For oh! the curst ungodliness of zeal!
  While sinful flesh retarded, spirit nursed
  In blind infallibility's embrace,
  Denied the charity of dust to spread
  O'er dust! a charity their dogs enjoy.
  What could I do? what succor? what resource?
  With pious sacrilege a grave I stole;
  With impious piety that grave I wronged;
  Short in my duty: coward in my grief!
  More like her murderer than friend, I crept
  With soft suspended step, and muffled deep
  In midnight darkness, whispered my last sigh.
  I whispered what should echo through their realms,
  Nor writ her name whose tomb should pierce the skies."

All Young's biographers have told the same story from Johnson down to the last edition of the "Night Thoughts," edited by Mr. Gilfillan, who, speaking of Narcissa, says "her remains were brutally denied sepulture as the dust of a Protestant." Le Tourneure translated the "Night Thoughts" into French in 1770, and, strange to say, the work soon became exceedingly popular in France, more so probably than ever it has been in England. Naturally enough, then, curiosity became excited as to where the unfortunate Narcissa was buried, and it was soon discovered that she had been interred in the Botanic Garden of Montpellier. An old gate-keeper of the garden, named Mercier, confessed that many years previously he had assisted to bury an English lady in a hollow, waste spot of the garden. As he told the story, an English clergyman came to him and begged that he would bury a lady; but he refused, until the Englishman, with tears in his eyes, said that she was his only daughter; on hearing this, he (the gate-keeper), being a father himself, consented. Accordingly the Englishman brought the dead {798} body on his shoulders, his eyes raining tears, to the garden at midnight, and he there and then buried the corpse. About the time this confession was made, Professor Gouan, an eminent botanist, was writing a work on the plants in the garden, into which he introduced the above story, thus giving it a sort of scientific authority; and consequently the grave of Narcissa became one of the treasures of the garden, and one of the leading lions of Montpellier. A writer in the "Evangelical Magazine" of 1797 gives an account of a visit to the garden, and a conversation with one Bannal, who had succeeded Mercier in his office, and who had often heard the sad story of the burial of Narcissa from Mercier's lips. Subsequently, Talma, the tragedian, was so profoundly impressed with the story that he commenced a subscription to erect a magnificent tomb to the memory of Narcissa; but as the days of bigotry in matters of sepulture had nearly passed away, it was thought better to erect a simple monument, inscribed, as we learn from "Murray's Handbook," with the words:

"Placandis Narcissae manibus,"

the "Handbook" adding, "She was buried here at a time when the atrocious laws which accompanied the Revocation of Nantes, backed by the superstition of a fanatic populace, denied Christian burial to Protestants."

Strange to say, this striking story is almost wholly devoid of truth. Narcissa never was at Montpellier. That she died at Lyons we know from Mr. Herbert Crofts's account of Young, published by Dr. Johnson; that she was buried there we know by her burial registry and her tombstone, both of which are yet in existence. And by these we also learn that Young's "animated" account of her funeral in the "Night Thoughts" is simply untrue. She was not denied a grave:

  "Denied the charity of dust to spread
  O'er dust,"

nor did he steal a grave, as he asserts, but bought and paid for it.

Her name was not unwrit, as her tombstone still testifies. The central square of the Hotel de Dieu at Lyons was long used as a burial place for Protestants; but the alteration in the laws at the time of the great Revolution doing away with the necessity of having separate burial places for different religions, the central garden was converted into a medical garden for the use of the hospital. The Protestants of Lyons being of the poorer class, there were few memorials to move when the ancient burying place was made into a garden. The principal one, however, consisting of a large slab of black marble, was set up against a wall, close beside an old Spanish mulberry-tree. About twenty years ago the increasing growth of this tree necessitated the removal of the slab, when it was found that the side which had been placed against the wall contained a Latin inscription to the memory of Narcissa. The inscription, which is too long to be quoted here, leaves no doubt upon the matter. It mentions the names of her father and mother, her connection with the noble family of Lichfield, her descent from Charles II., and concludes by stating that she died on the 8th of Oct., 1736, aged 18 years. On discovering this inscription M. Ozanam, the director of the Hotel de Dieu, searched the registry of the Protestant burial, still preserved in the Hotel de Ville at Lyons, and found an entry, of which the following is a correct translation: "Madam Lee, daughter of Col. Lee, aged about eighteen years, wife of Henry Temple, English by birth, was buried at the Hotel de Dieu at Lyons, in the cemetery of persons of the Reformed religion of the Swiss nation, the 12th of Oct., 1736, at eleven o'clock at night, by order of the Prévôt of merchants." "Received 729 livres 12 sols. Signed, Para, priest and treasurer." From this document, the authenticity of which is indisputable, we learn the utter untruthfulness of Young's recital. True, Narcissa was buried at night, and most probably {799} without any religious service, and a considerable sum charged for the privilege of interment, but she was not denied the "charity their dogs enjoy." Calculating according to the average rate of exchange at the period, 729 livres would amount to thirty-five pounds sterling. Was it this sum that excited a poetical imagination so strong as to overstep the bounds of veracity? We could grant the excuse of poetical license had not Young declared in his preface that the poem was "real, not fictitious." The subject is not a pleasing one, and we need not carry it any further; but may conclude, in the words of Mr. Cecil, who, alluding to Young's renunciation of the world in his writings when he was eagerly hunting for church preferment, says: "Young is, of all other men, one of the most striking examples of the sad disunion of piety from truth."

From The Dublin Review.

MADAME DE MAINTENON.

Madame de Maintenon et sa Famille. Lettres et Documents inédits. Par HONORÉ BONHOMME. Paris: Didier. 1863.

Histoire de Madame de Maintenon, et des principaux Evénements du Règne de Louis XIV. Par M. le DUC DE NOAILLES, de l'Académie Française. Tomes 4. Paris: Comon. 1849-1858.

The Life of Madame de Maintenon. Translated from the French. London: Lockyer Davis. 1772.

The Secret Correspondence of Madame de Maintenon with the Princess des Ursins, from the original manuscripts in the possession of the Duke of Choiseul. Translated from the French. 3 vols. London: Whittaker. 1827.

Mémorial de Saint-Cyr. Paris: Fulgence. 1846.

Female characters have, for good or ill, played a larger part on the stage of French history than of English. We have no names which correspond in extensive influence to those of Mesdames de Sévigné, de Maintenon, de Genlis, and Récamier; while the extraordinary power, both political and social, exercised by royal mistresses in France, finds no parallel in England, even in the worst days of courtly profligacy. Nor is it easy to say to what cause this difference between the two countries is to be ascribed. It may be that public opinion has been brought to bear more fully on individual action here than in France, and acts as a more powerful restraint; and it may be also that extreme prominence in society is repugnant to the more modest and retiring habits of Englishwomen. There is no lady in our annals who has occupied a position similar to that of Madame de Maintenon in relation to royalty except Mrs. Fitzherbert; but she, though highly distinguished for her virtues, was altogether wanting in those intellectual endowments which adorned that gifted woman who won the esteem and fixed the affections of Louis XIV. Many circumstances combined to make her the most striking example of female ascendency in France; and the object of this paper will be to trace the causes which led to it, as well as to her being, to this day, an object of never-failing interest to the French people. Like all great women, she has had many virulent detractors and many ardent eulogists; but we shall endeavor to avoid the {800} extremes of both, more especially as M. Bonhomme is of opinion that her biography has still to be written. If there were no higher consideration, self-respect alone would demand scrupulous impartiality in a historical inquiry; and we are the less tempted to depart from this rule in the present instance because we are convinced that in Madame de Maintenon's history there is ample scope for the most chivalrous vindication of her fame, and that, as time goes on, and the materials relative to her contemporaries are collated, her apparent defects will lessen in importance, and her character stand out in fairer proportions and clearer light. It needs only to compare recent memoirs of her with the jejune attempts of the last century, to perceive how much her cause gains from fuller and closer investigation. The Due de Noailles has rendered good service to the literature of his country by his voluminous history of this lady, conducted as it is on the sound and admirable principle of making the subject of the biography speak for herself. There is no historical personage about whom more untruths have been circulated; and, after all that has been said and written, the only way to know her is to read her correspondence.

Lord Macaulay speaks of Franchise de Maintenon in terms so pointed, that they well deserve to be quoted at the outset:

"It would be hard to name any woman who, with so little romance in her temper, has had so much in her life. Her early years had been passed in poverty and obscurity. Her first husband had supported himself by writing burlesques, farces, and poems. When she attracted the notice of her sovereign, she could no longer boast of youth or beauty; but she possessed in an extraordinary degree those more lasting charms, which men of sense, whose passions age has tamed, and whose life is a life of business and care, prize most highly in a female companion. Her character was such as has well been compared to that soft green on which the eye, wearied by warm tints and glaring lights, reposes with pleasure. A just understanding; an inexhaustible yet never redundant flow of rational, gentle, and sprightly conversation; a temper of which the serenity was never for a moment ruffled; a tact which surpassed the tact of her sex as much as the tact of her sex surpasses the tact of ours; such were the qualities which made the widow of a buffoon first the confidential friend, and then the spouse, of the proudest and most powerful of European kings. It was said that Louis had been with difficulty prevented by the arguments and vehement entreaties of Louvois from declaring her Queen of France." [Footnote 159]

[Footnote 159: "History of England," chap, xi., 1689.]

The romance of her life began with her birth, which took place on the 27th of November, 1635, [Footnote 160] in the prison of Niort, where her father was confined. His life had been full of adventure and crime, and he was unworthy of the faithful and affectionate wife who shared his imprisonment. He changed his religious profession several times, but at the moment of Frances' birth he called himself Protestant. The child accordingly was baptized in the Calvinist church of Niort, though her mother was a Catholic, and was placed under the charge of her aunt, Madame de Vilette, at Murçay, about a league from the prison. The prisoner, Constant d'Aubigné, was at length released, and being disinherited by his father for his ill conduct, embarked a second time for America about the year 1643, [Footnote 161] taking with him his wife and children. Little Frances suffered so much from the voyage that at one time she was thought to be dead, and a sailor held her in his arms, ready to sink her in a watery grave. "On ne revient pas" as the Bishop of Metz said long after {801} to Madame de Maintenon, "de si loin pour pen de chose." [Footnote 162]

[Footnote 160: "Bonhomme," p. 235.]

[Footnote 161: Ibid., p. 230. ]

[Footnote 162: "One does not return from so far but for a great object."]

Notwithstanding her father's evil example, there was enough in Frances d'Aubigné's ancestral remembrances to have dazzled her imagination in after life. Her aunt, who had been her earliest instructress, was a zealous Protestant; and her grandfather, Agrippa d'Aubigné, as a soldier, a historian, and a satirical poet, was one of the first men of his day. He had served Henry IV. in various capacities, and was used to address his royal master so freely as to reproach him for his change of religion. One day, when the king was showing a courtier his lip pierced by an assassin's knife, d'Aubigné said, "Sire, you have as yet renounced God only with your lips, and he has pierced them; if you renounce him in heart, he will pierce your heart also."

Frances' father died in Martinique, having lost all he had gained by gambling. Madame d'Aubigné therefore returned to France, and devoted herself to the education of her child. She made her familiar with "Plutarch's Lives," and exercised her in composition. She would gladly have kept the task of instruction to herself, but poverty constrained her at last to resign Frances with many fears into the hands of her aunt, Madame de Vilette. The effect of this transfer was her becoming imbued with Calvinist tenets; and when, through the interference of the government, [Footnote 163] she was removed from Madame de Vilette's care, and made over to a Catholic relative, she proved very refractory, and persisted in turning her back to the altar during mass. Various means of persuasion were tried in vain; and it was not till the Ursuline sisters in Paris took her in hand that her scruples vanished, and she consented to abjure her errors and to believe anything except that her aunt Vilette would be damned. In after-life she used often to say that her mother and several of the nuns had been very injudicious and severe with her, and that, but for the kindness and good sense of one lady in the convent, she should probably never have embraced the Catholic faith.

[Footnote 163: "Duc de Noailles," tome I., p. 77.]

Only a few years passed before she had to choose between a conventual life and a distasteful marriage. Her mother was dead, and "the beautiful Indian," as she was called, was left almost without resources. She had become acquainted with the comic poet Scarron, and often visited him. He was five-and-twenty years older than herself, and hideously deformed. A singular paralysis, caused by quack medicines, had deprived him of the use of his limbs, his hands and mouth only being left free. His satirical pieces had been very popular, and, though fixed to his chair, he received a great deal of company, and joked incessantly. He was much struck by Frances d'Aubigné, and appreciated her talents the more highly because mental culture was rapidly advancing, and the conversation in drawing-rooms began to be rational. His offer of marriage was accepted by her, for "she preferred," as she said, "marrying him to marrying a convent." In the summer of 1652 she became his bride. Such a union deserved a place in one of his own farces, and gave little promise of happiness or virtue. But the consequences were far different from what might have been expected. A change for the better had taken place in public morals, and Madame Scarron had no sooner a house of her own than she took a prominent part in the movement. She carefully tended her helpless spouse; brushed the flies from his nose when he could not use his fingers, and administered to him the opiate draught without which he could not sleep. She received his guests with a dignity beyond her years, and her conduct was regulated on a plan of general reserve. No one dared address her in words of double signification; and one of the young men of fashion who frequented the house declared that he {802} would sooner think of venturing on any familiarity with the queen than with Madame Scarron. People saw that she was in earnest. During Lent, she would eat a herring at the lower end of the table, and retire before the rest. So young and attractive, in a capital of brilliant dissipation, and with such a husband as Scarron, her example could not but have an effect. Meanwhile she cultivated her mind, and learned Italian, Spanish, and Latin. She knew not what might be required of her, for Scarron's fortune was dwindling away, and he had been compelled to resign the prebend of Mans. He was a lay-ecclesiastic, and, like many literary men of that day, bore the title of abbé. Poverty again stared her in the face, and the servant who waited at table had often to whisper, "Madame, no roast again to-day!" Devoted to her husband's sick chamber, she avoided society abroad, and wrote, only two years after her marriage, letters which might have come from an aged saint on the brink of eternity. "All below is vanity," she said, "and vexation of spirit. Throw yourself into the arms of God; one wearies of all but him, who never wearies of those who love him."

Her enemies have strongly contested her virtue at this period, and appealed to her intimacy with Ninon de Lenclos in proof of their allegations. This modern Leontium certainly frequented Scarron's drawing-room and also (such were the dissolute manners of the age) that of most other celebrities in Paris. But the unhappy woman herself has left behind her an unquestionable testimony to Madame Scarron's purity. "In her youth," she says, "she was virtuous through weakness of mind: I tried to cure her of it, but she feared God too much." She had, of course, many admirers, and she must needs have gone out of the world not to have them. But to be admired and courted is one thing, to yield and sin mortally is another. It might be wished that Madame Scarron's name had never been mixed up with that of Ninon, to whom virtue was "faibleese d'esprit" but the freedom of her conduct must not be tried too severely by the stricter laws of propriety which prevail among us now. She never forgot Ninon, corresponded with her at times, aided her when she was in distress, and was consoled by her dying like a Christian at the age of 90. [Footnote 164 ] She who had boasted that Epicurus was her model gave the closing years of her life to God. [Footnote 165]

[Footnote 164: In 1705.]

[Footnote 165: "Duc de Noailles," tome i., p. 206. ]

Madame Scarron's resistance to the importunities of Villarceaux was well known, and is thus alluded to by Bois-Robert in verses addressed to the marquis himself: [Footnote 166]

  "Si c'est cette rare beauté
  Qui tieut ton esprit enchaîné,
  Marquis, j'ai raison de te plaindre;
  Car son humeur est fort à craindre:
  Elle a presque autant de fierté
  Qu'elle a de grâce et de beauté."

[Footnote 166: "Marquis, if it is this rare beauty who holds you in chains, I have reason to pity you; for she as of a temper much to be feared. She has almost as much pride as she has grace and beauty."]

But those who follow the course of Madame de Maintenon's interior life know perfectly well how to interpret what Bois-Robert called "haughtiness," and Ninon "weakness of mind." It is a matter of no small importance to rescue such characters from the foul grasp of calumny. Gilles Boileau was the only one of her contemporaries while she was young who dared to throw out any suspicion against her honor, but this he did evidently to avenge himself on Scarron, against whom he had a mortal pique.

A new era was dawning on France. Richelieu and Mazarin had by their policy prepared the triumphs of monarchy; Turenne and Condé had displayed their genius in war; the great ministers and captains waited for the moment when their master should call them to his service; and arts and letters were ready to embellish all with their rich coloring. Louis XIV. really mounted the throne in 1660, and the glory and greatness of France rose {803} with him. Pascal, Molière, La Fontaine, and Boileau published their works almost at the same time. Racine presented to the king the first-fruits of his master mind, and the voice of Bossuet had already been heard from the pulpit. Scarron foresaw the brilliancy of the epoch, but he saw also that his own end was nigh. "I shall have," he said, "no cause for regret in dying, except that I have no fortune to leave my wife, who deserves more than I can tell, and for whom I have every reason in the world to be thankful." Humorous to the last, he made a jest of his sufferings, and, when seized with violent hiccough, said if he could only get over it, he would write a good satire upon it. He died perfectly himself, and was not even for a moment untrue to his character. A few seconds before his end, seeing those around him in tears, he said, "You weep, my children; ah! I shall never make you cry as much as I have made you laugh." He had but one serious interval to give to death—that in which Madame Scarron caused him to fulfil his religious duties. He had always been a Christian, and neither in his writings nor in his conversation had allowed anything prejudicial to religion to escape him. A chaplain came every Sunday to say mass at his house. "I leave you no fortune," he said to his wife when dying, "and virtue will bring none: nevertheless be always virtuous." The point of this admonition must be gathered from the corruption of the times. Her mother's last words also had sunk deep into Frances' memory, for she had warned her "to hope everything from God and to fear everything from man." Scarron died in 1660, and was soon forgotten. His name would now scarcely be known, nor would any at this day be conversant with his comedies and satires but for the exalted position which his widow subsequently attained. His immediate successors obeyed unconsciously the epitaph which he had himself composed, and made no noise over the grave where poor Scarron took his "first night's rest."

  "Passants, ne faites pas de bruit,
  De crainte que je ne m'éveille;
  Car voilà la première nuit
  Que le pauvre Scarron sommeille."   [Footnote 167]

[Footnote 167: "Poor Scarron his first night of sleep enjoys: Hush, passers-by, nor wake him with your noise!"]

Was there ever a more pathetic joke?

When Mazarin died in 1661, the young king summoned his council and said, "Gentlemen, I have hitherto allowed the affairs of state to be conducted by the late cardinal; henceforward I intend to govern myself, and you will aid me with your advice when I ask it." From that day, the face of society in France rapidly changed. Then, as Voltaire says, the revolution in arts, intellect, and morals which had been preparing for half a century took effect, and at the court of Louis XIV. were formed that refinement of manners and those social principles which have since extended through Europe. The example long set by the Hôtel de Rambouillet in Paris was followed by many others, and numerous salons which have since become matter of history united all that was most brilliant in genius and talent with much that was estimable for worth and even piety.

The first ten years of Madame Scarron's widowhood were passed in the midst of these elegant and intellectual circles. The assemblies of Madame de Sévigné, Madame de Coulanges, Louvois' cousin, and Madame de Lafayette, the novelist, were, with the hôtels of Albret and Richelieu, those which she principally frequented. She was in great distress, and her friends tried to obtain for her the pension her husband had once enjoyed. But Cardinal Mazarin was inflexible. He remembered the "Mazarinade," in which Scarron had satirized him, and refused to grant any relief to his charming widow. But she would be beholden to none for a subsistence. She retired into the {804} convent of the Hospitalers, where a relation lent her an apartment, and lived for some time on a pittance she had hoarded. The queen-mother then became interested in her behalf, and a pension of £50 a year was assigned her. "Henceforward," she said in a letter to Madame d'Albret, "I shall be able to labor for my salvation in peace. I have made a promise to God that I will give one fourth of my pension to the poor." She now removed to the Ursuline convent, where she lived simply and modestly, but visited constantly, and received, as the sisters complained, "a furious deal of company." Her dress was elegant, but of cheap materials, and she managed by rare economy to keep a maid, pay her wages, and have a little over at the end of the year. She might have accepted the Maréchal d'Albret's offer of a home in her hôtel, but she preferred entire independence in her own humble asylum. Many a page could we fill with accounts of the friendships she formed at this period. To epitomize her life is in one respect a painful task, for the records we possess respecting her are equally interesting and copious. She has found at last a biographer worthy of her, and it is to the Due de Noailles' volumes we must refer those who long for further details than our space allows us to give. He is the ablest champion of her honor that has yet appeared, and refutes triumphantly the calumnies of the Duc de Saint Simon by which so many have been deceived.

At the Hôtel d'Albret Madame Scarron often met Madame de Montespan, who soon after became the mistress of Louis. The two ladies had many tastes in common, and an intimacy sprang up between them. How strangely they became related to each other afterward we shall presently see. Meanwhile Madame Scarron was overtaken by another reverse. The queen-mother died in 1666, and with her the pension ceased. Many splendid mansions were eager to receive and entertain her, but she declined them all as permanent abodes. A rich and dissolute old man proposed to marry her, and her friends unwisely seconded his overtures; but she was proof against them, and wrote to Ninon to express her gratitude, because the voice of that licentious woman alone was raised in approval of her conduct. She was indignant at the comparison her friends made between the unworthy aspirant and her late husband, and avowed her readiness to endure any hardships rather than sacrifice her liberty, and entangle herself in an engagement which conscience could not approve. Constrained, therefore, by want, she was about to expatriate herself, and follow in the train of the Duchesse de Nemours, who was affianced to the King of Portugal. It was a sore trial, for none are more attached to their country, none endure exile with less fortitude, than the French. She saw Madame de Montespan once more; it was in the royal palace, and that incident changed her destiny. The future rivals met under conditions how different from those which were one day to exist! Madame de Montespan, though not yet the king's mistress, was already in high favor, and the patroness of that poor widow who was afterward, by winning Louis' esteem, to supplant her in his affections, and become, all but in name, Queen of France. Through her mediation the forfeited pension was restored, and we find her name in the list of ladies invited to a court fête in 1688. Nevertheless, her troubles withdrew her very much from the world, and she thought for a time of adopting a religious habit. Indeed, it is not impossible that she might actually have done so, had she not been made averse to the step by the severity of her confessor, the Abbé Gobelin. With a view of mortifying her ambition to please and be admired, he recommended her to dress still more plainly, and be silent in company. She obeyed, and became so disagreeable to herself and others that she sometimes felt inclined to {805} renounce her habits of devotion. [Footnote 168] She retired, however, to a small lodging in the Rue des Tournelles, lived more alone, and, as she wrote to Ninon, "read nothing but the Book of Job and the Maxims."

[Footnote 168: "Duc de Noailles," tome i., pp. 310-12.]

Here fortune came to her relief. The infidelities of Louis XIV. are unhappily too well known. Suffice it in this place to say that Madame de Montespan bore him a daughter in 1669, and a son, afterward the Duc du Maine, in 1670. Circumstances required that the existence of these children should be concealed, and their mother, in whose heart the voice of conscience was never stifled, bethought her of the good Madame Scarron as one who was well fitted to take charge of their education. Accordingly, she was sounded on the subject. The king's name was not mentioned, but she was informed that the secret regarding the children was to be kept inviolate. She hesitated, refused, reconsidered the matter, and at last consented on condition that the king himself should command her services. The office was far from dishonorable in the eyes of the world. Madame Colbert, the minister's wife, had been intrusted with two of his majesty's children by Madame de la Vallière. It was not on this point that Madame Scarron was anxious, but she feared lest she should give scandal and entangle her conscience by a seeming indulgence to such immorality. Louis at last requested that she would be as a mother to his babes. They were placed with a nurse in an obscure little house outside the walls of Paris. Madame Scarron was to live as before in her own lodgings, but without losing sight of the infants. It was a point of honor with her to observe the utmost secrecy. She visited each of them separately, for they were kept apart, and passed in and out disguised as a poor woman, and carrying linen or meat in a basket. Returning home on foot, she entered by a private door, dressed, and drove to the Hôtel d'Albret or Richelieu to lull suspicion asleep. When the secret was at length known, she caused herself to be bled lest she should blush. [Footnote 169] In two years' time the number of children had increased, and a different arrangement was adopted. A large house was purchased in the country, not far from Vaugirard, and Madame Scarron, now enjoying a certain degree of opulence, established herself there, and gave all her time to the task of education. She was lost to the world, and her friends deeply lamented her disappearance. But she was sowing the seed of her future greatness. The king, who had a great love for his children, often saw her when he visited them; the aversion he had felt for her at first gradually melted away; he admired her tender and maternal care of his offspring, contrasted it with the comparative indifference of their own mother, greatly increased her pension, and, having legitimized the Duc du Maine, the Count de Vexin, and Mademoiselle de Nantes in 1673, soon after appointed them with their gouvernante a place at court. Thus, step by step, without her own seeking, she was led on to exercise a higher and most salutary influence on the king's moral character, till, in reward of her long-tried virtue, she was ultimately to fix his wandering affections and effect his conversion; an object which for so many years she had regarded as the end of her being. She was nearly forty years of age when she entered on her duties in the palace; and, in that difficult and trying position, she set the glorious example of one who was guided in all things by principle, and who thought that the highest talents were best devoted to leading an irreproachable life. She had a work before her, and it was great. She contributed to withdraw the king from his disorderly habits, to restore him to the queen, and to bring about a reformation of morals in a quarter where it {806} had been most wantonly retarded by the royal example. The king, in that day, was all in all. The ideal of the government was royalty. The Fronde had died away, and with it the power of the nobles. That of the people, in the sense in which it is now generally understood, was unknown; even infidels and scoffers scarcely dreamed of it. The monarch, like Cyrus [Footnote 170] and the Caesars, believed himself something more than man. Diseases fled at his touch, and he virtually set himself above all laws, human and divine. It needed the eloquence of a Bossuet to convince Louis that a priest had done his duty in refusing absolution to the mother of his illegitimate children, [Footnote 171] The success of his arms enhanced his self-esteem, and the atmosphere of his court was so tainted with corruption that Madame Scarron often sighed for retirement, and resolved to flee from so perilous and painful a promotion. Her intercourse with Madame de Montespan was chequered with stormy dissensions, and the jealousy of the latter became almost insupportable. The education of the children was a constant subject of contention, and Madame Scarron, who knew that they would be ruined if left to their mother, was not disposed to yield any of her rights. But the Duc du Maine was the idol of his father and mother, and this served to attach them both to the incomparable gouvernante, who loved the boy with an affection truly maternal.

[Footnote 169: "Deuxième Entretien à Saint-Cyr."]

[Footnote 170: "Herodotus, Clio," cciv.]

[Footnote 171: "Duc de Noailles," tome i., p. 316.]

Being disgusted with the court, and having received from the king a present of 200,000 francs, she bought in 1674 the estate of Maintenon, about thirty miles from Versailles, with the intention of retiring thither. But a rupture between the king and his favorite mistress was at hand, and on this circumstance hinged Madame Scarron's future career.

In spite of his profligacy, Louis XIV. was at bottom religiously disposed. His serious attention to business proved him to be a man of thought and reflection, and, when the great festivals came round, it grieved him not to be in a condition to fulfil his religious duties. The sermons of Bourdaloue during the Lent of 1675 touched him, and the expostulations of Bossuet in private deepened their effect. He resolved to dismiss Madame de Montespan, and departed to join the army without seeing her. "I have satisfied you, father," he said to Bourdaloue: "Madame de Montespan is at Clagny." "Yes, sire," replied the preacher; "but God would be better satisfied if Clagny were seventy leagues from Versailles." Meanwhile Madame Scarron, with the Duc du Maine, went to Barèges, and, as the king had, before creating her a marchioness, graciously called her, in presence of his nobles, Madame de Maintenon, we shall henceforward speak of her by the name which she bears in history. The three most important personages in our drama were now separated. The king, at the head of his army, received the letters of Bossuet, conjuring him to persevere in his promises of amendment, while Madame de Montespan, in her retreat, was pressed by the same fervid eloquence to return to the path of virtue. But the Duc du Maine was everywhere entertained as the king's son, and fetes that vied with each other in splendor awaited him and his gouvernante everywhere. So popular was the king, so loyal his people, that his vice passed for virtue or innocent gallantry.

Barèges was not then what it has now become. A few thatched cottages and one house with a slated roof were all it could boast. Madame de Maintenon and her sick charge, the little duke, had but one room, meanly furnished, where he slept by her side. The place was then scarcely known; but the physician Fagon had discovered it during his excursions among the Pyrenees, and, by making Madame de Maintenon acquainted with the {807} efficacy of its baths, he raised it to importance and secured for himself fortune and renown. Here she received many letters from the king in attestation of his friendship; and returning hence, she visited Niort and the prison where she was born, the aunt she had so tenderly loved, and the Ursuline convent where she had first been schooled and supported by charity. Attentions were lavished on her in every quarter, and many valuable records of her family fell into her hands. Among these was the life of her illustrious grandfather, Agrippa d'Aubigné, written by himself.

Her reception by the king was more cordial than ever; but the high favor in which she stood did not break her resolution to renounce a court life as soon as circumstances should permit. She corresponded regularly with the Abbé Gobelin, and often expressed her willingness to follow implicitly his advice. Madame de Montespan regained her ascendancy, at least in appearance; but many thought that the king was fast becoming weaned from her, through the new influence. Madame de Maintenon exerted daily a more manifest empire. Everything, as Madame de Sévigné wrote in 1676, yielded to her. One attendant held the pommade before her on bended knee, another brought her gloves, and a third lulled her to sleep. She saluted no one; but those who knew her believed that she laughed in her heart at these formalities. "I desire more than ever," she said to M. Gobelin, "to be away from this place; and I am more and more confirmed in my opinion that I cannot serve God here." Madame de Montespan, during some years, continued to be the recognized favorite; but the beautiful Fontanges divided with her the unenviable distinction till, having just been made a duchess, she died in the flower of her youth. But amidst all this levity, Louis paid the severe Madame de Maintenon the most delicate attentions, which failed not to excite the utmost indignation in the breast of the royal mistress. At length, in 1680, the dauphin espoused the daughter of the Elector of Bavaria, and Louis, anxious to retain Madame de Maintenon in the service of the court, made her lady of the bed-chamber to the dauphiness. In this honorable office she was set free from the bondage she had endured. She had now nothing in common with Madame de Montespan; and she exchanged the apartments she had occupied for others immediately over those of the king, where he could visit her at will, and, by her lively and flowing conversation, refresh his mind when weary with business, or jaded with pleasures that had long since begun to pall. Surrounded by minions of every sort, it was something new to him to be addressed freely and without any selfish view. This was the secret of Madame de Maintenon's power over his heart, and he confessed the potency of the spell. Madame de Montespan was visited less and less, and Louis passed hours every day in the apartments of the dauphiness, where he found also her lady of the bed-chamber. A cabal was formed by the deserted mistresses and some profligate ministers against the new and truly estimable object of Louis' favor; but their machinations failed. The sovereign at last broke his chains, and Madame de Montespan, like Ninon and La Vallière, made profit of the time which was allowed to her for repentance, but which had been denied to Fontanges. The miserable death-bed of that young creature, distracted by remorse, but still clinging passionately to her unlawful love, deeply affected the king, [Footnote 172] and is said to have powerfully contributed to reclaim him from his evil habits. The benign influence of Madame de Maintenon reunited him to the long abandoned queen, who, with all her exalted piety and Christian virtue, was deficient, it must be confessed, in tact and discernment, as well as in those intellectual {808} gifts which would have made her an acceptable companion to Louis; while her strict devotional practices and retiring habits—habits which her native modesty and timidity of character, combined with her husband's neglect, tended to confirm—may have had no small share in increasing his estrangement. His evenings were now frequently spent with her; and every member of the royal family was delighted with the happy change, and grateful to her by whom it had been brought about. The king himself found the paths of virtue to be those of peace, and the finer parts of his character were displayed to advantage. He had naturally a kind and feeling heart, and was by no means that monster of selfishness and formality which historians so often make him. [Footnote 173]

[Footnote 172: Gabourd, "Histoire de France," tome xiv., p. 453, note. ]

[Footnote 173: "Duc de Noailles," tome ii., p. 28.]

After the peace of Nimeguen, Louis XIV., having seen his enterprises everywhere crowned with victory, became intoxicated with his own greatness, and arrogant toward foreign powers. But the counsels of Madame de Maintenon tended to restrain his ambition and modify the defiant tone of his government. She well knew that such an attitude, beside being wrong in itself, was the certain forerunner of formidable coalitions. However lightly she might have thought of the Prince of Orange, if singly matched with the greatest potentate of Europe, she wisely judged his talents and prowess capable of inflicting great injury on France if he were in union with exasperated allies. While her hand thus nearly touched the helm of state, it was busy as ever in dispensing private charities; and it was about this time also that she founded an establishment at Rueil which was the origin of "Saint-Cyr." "For the first time," she said, in a letter to her brother, [Footnote 174] "I am happy."

[Footnote 174: 20th February, 1682.]

In 1683 the queen died, and Louis, who had become convinced of her merits too late, wept over her when expiring and said, "It is the first trouble she has ever caused me." Madame de Maintenon, who had staid with her to the last, was about to retire, when the Duc de la Rochefoucauld, taking her by the arm, drew her toward the king, saying, "It is no time, madame, to leave him: he needs you in his present condition." Her position at court was now very embarrassing. She was aware of the king's predilections, and he was no less persuaded that she could be attached to him by none but virtuous ties. The dauphiness requested her to accept the place of lady of honor, but she steadily refused. Was it indeed that she aspired higher? Could she fancy for one moment that Louis would exalt her to the rank of his wife? An anecdote related by Madame de Caylus would lead us to suppose that the thought had crossed her mind, and that the king himself had perhaps given her some pledge of his intentions. Madame de Caylus was astonished at her declining a post of such high dignity. "Would you," asked her aunt, "rather be the niece of a lady of honor, or the niece of one who refused to be such?" Madame de Caylus replied that she should look upon her who refused as immeasurably higher than her who accepted: on which Madame de Maintenon kissed her. She had given the right answer. Madame de Montespan was still at court with her children, but her day was gone by; and she whose silent influence had wrought her overthrow never triumphed over her, and even deemed it prudent to abstain from any overt attempt to prevent the king's seeing her.

The decorations at Versailles were at this time conducted on such a scale as to make that spot one of the wonders of the world. All Europe was curious to see its gardens or read of their matchless splendor. Its fountains and cascades were never to be silent, night or day, and the waters of the Eure were to supply them by means of a canal and aqueduct more than fourteen leagues in length. {809} Twenty-two thousand men worked on the line, which traversed the estate and valley of Maintenon. The aqueduct was there supported by magnificent arcades, and its entire cost, without counting purchase of land, was about nine millions of francs. To the town of Maintenon the "very powerful and pious" lady who bore its name was a great benefactress. She obtained for it fairs and markets, and founded in it a hospital and schools. She rebuilt, entirely at her own cost, the church and presbytery, as well as those of two adjoining parishes. She brought thither Normans and Flemings to teach the villagers how to weave, and distributed abundant alms to the poor and infirm. The king staid at her chateau repeatedly, and inspected the works that were rapidly advancing among the hills. Racine also was her guest about this period, and was charmed with his visit. Here, too, in the very house where Charles X., and with him the direct Bourbon line, afterward ceased to reign, was probably fixed that remarkable marriage of which we shall have much to record.

Madame de Maintenon was still beautiful, though in her fiftieth year. She was three years older than the king, and the influence she exerted over him was no matter of surprise to those who were used to watch her radiant eyes and face beaming with animation and intelligence. Severe virtue gave additional dignity to her distinguished and graceful manners, and, while she yielded to none in conversational powers, she was also a good listener. The proud king found in her one to whom he could bow without humiliation, and her conquest of his heart was a signal triumph of moral worth. The marriage was private, and the secrecy so well preserved that its date cannot be ascertained. It is supposed to have taken place in 1685, and was celebrated by the Archbishop of Paris, in the presence of Père la Chaise; Bontemps, a valet-de-chambre, who served the mass; and M. de Montchevreuil, Madame de Maintenon's intimate friend. A union satisfactory to her conscience was all she required, and this being obtained, she took the utmost pains to prevent the matter becoming public. The court remained for some time in ignorance of the marriage; but the fact is beyond all doubt, and is dwelt on with little disguise by the Bishop of Chartres, in letters to the king and his wife, and by Bourdaloue in his private instructions to the latter. While Saint-Simon denounces it as "so profound a humiliation for the proudest of kings that posterity will never credit it," Voltaire, with more good sense, maintains that Louis in this marriage in no degree compromised his dignity, and that the court, never having any certainty on the subject, respected the king's choice without treating Madame de Maintenon as queen. [Footnote 175] There is not the slightest proof that Louis ever contemplated sharing his throne with her openly, and still less that her ambition extended so far. In the passage we quoted from Macaulay the reader will have observed that he introduces the fable with "It was said." He is, in fact, there following Saint-Simon and the Abbé de Choisy, [Footnote 176] whose "Memoirs" are, in this particular, altogether at variance with Madame de Maintenon's character as revealed in her letters, with the modesty and reserve which distinguished her in so high a station, and with the impenetrable silence she always observed with regard to the fact of the king being her husband. [Footnote 177]

[Footnote 175: "Siècle de Louis XIV.," tome ii.]

[Footnote 176: Livre vii.]

[Footnote 177: "Duc de Noailles," tome ii., pp. 131-2.]

Though living in the midst of the court, her elevation was, as Voltaire says, nothing but a retreat. She restricted her society to a small number of female friends, and devoted herself almost exclusively to the king. No distinction marked her in public, except that she occupied in chapel a gilded tribune made for the queen. {810} Louis spoke of her as Madame, and if the Abbé de Choisy may be trusted, Bontemps, the valet, addressed her in private as "your majesty." She was seldom seen in the reception-halls, but the king passed all the time that was not occupied with public affairs in her apartment. He rose at eight, surrounded by his officers; as soon as dressed, he was closeted with his ministers, with whom he remained till midday; at half-past twelve he heard mass, and in passing and repassing through the grand gallery, to which the public was admitted, might be addressed by any one who asked permission of the captain of his guards. After mass, he visited Madame de Montespan daily till the year 1691, [Footnote 178] and staid with her till dinner was announced. This was ordinarily about half-past one. Madame de Maintenon, though she supped in her own room, dined always at the king's table, sitting opposite him. Then followed shooting in the park, which was his favorite amusement. Sometimes he hunted the stag, the wolf, or the wild boar; but from the time he dislocated his arm in 1683, through his horse's stumbling over a rabbit-burrow, he seldom went to the chase mounted, but in a calash, which he drove himself, with some ladies, and very often Madame de Maintenon. Banquets were spread in the woods, and in the summer evenings gondolas with music plied on the canal, and Madame de Maintenon's place was always in that of the king. At six or seven he returned home, and worked or amused himself till ten, the hour for supper; after which he passed an hour with his children, lawful and legitimized, his brother sitting in an arm-chair like himself, the dauphin and the other princes standing, and the princesses on tabourets. During winter at Versailles, a ball, a comedy, or an appartement followed every evening in regular succession. The appartement was an assembly of the entire court, and sometimes ended with dancing, after music, chess, billiards, and all sorts of games.

[Footnote 178: "Duc de Noailles" tome ii., p. 147, note.]

There was nothing in Madame de Maintenon's temper opposed to the ceaseless festivities of Versailles, Marly, and Fontainebleau. She heightened them, indeed, by the noble pleasures of the mind, which her influence could not fail to introduce. Her style of dress was exquisite, and elderly beyond what her age required; and while she treated all around her with the utmost attention, she was altogether free from airs of importance. She rose between six and seven, went straight to mass, and communicated three or four times a week. While she was dressing, one of her attendants read the New Testament or the "Imitation of Jesus Christ;" and during the rest of the day her movements were regulated by those of the king. Whenever she was at liberty, she passed her mornings at Saint-Cyr, and Louis came to her regularly several hours before supper. She never went to him except when he was ill. Her income amounted to nearly four thousand pounds a year of our money; and of this the larger part was given to the poor. In vain the members of her family looked to her for promotion, in vain they reproached her with forgetting the claims of kindred: "I refer you, madam," she wrote to the Princesse des Ursins, "to the valley of Josaphat to see whether I have been a bad kinswoman. I may be deceived, but I believe I have done as I ought, and that God has not placed me where I am to persecute him continually for whom I wish to procure that repose which he does not enjoy. No, madam, it is only in the vale of Josaphat that the reasons for my conduct toward my relatives will be apparent. Meanwhile, I conjure you not to condemn me." [Footnote 179]

[Footnote 179: Letter of 16th February, 1710. ]

The poor and unfortunate had no cause for similar complaints. She gave away between two and three {811} thousand pounds a year. During the scarcity of 1694, having parted with all she had, she sold a beautiful ring and a pair of horses, to supply the wants of the sufferers. "Distribute my alms," she wrote to her steward, "as quickly as you can. Spare no pains, and repine at no difficulty. Circumstances require unusual charities. See if peas, beans, milk, and barley-meal, if anything, in short, will supply the place of the bread which is so dear. Do in my house as you would in your own family. I leave it in your charge. Incite the people to courage and to labor. If they do not sow, they will reap nothing next year."

She often visited the needy, and relieved their wants with her own hand. She would put off buying anything for herself to the last moment, and then say, "There, I have taken that from the poor." Her charity inspired others with the spirit of self-denial, and the king and his chief almoner often dispensed their bounty through her. But neither poor nor rich diverted her attention from Louis. To his ease, his tastes, his sentiments—even when they shocked her—his time, and his very friendships, she sacrificed everything. He was her vocation; and her own friends could not, as she said, but look upon her as dead to them. To her the king confided all; and thus the cares of state, the perils of war, the intrigues of the court, cabals, petitions, private interests, and even family disputes, were continually rolling their din at her feet. Princes, princesses, ministers, and a crowd of persons anxious to secure their own interests, forced themselves upon her, and broke up all the pleasures of solitude and society, of study, meditation, and correspondence, for which she pined. But she had counted the cost, and bore with equanimity the absence of that perfect happiness which she never expected to attain on earth. The honors which encircled her were brilliant fetters, and galled her no less because they glittered. "I can hold out no longer," she said one day to her brother, Count d'Aubigné; "I would that I were dead!" The sense of duty was her abiding strength, and she derived consolation from reflecting that her elevation was not of her own seeking. The path by which she had been led was strange—so strange that she could not but believe she had a divine mission to accomplish. It was easy to interpret her conduct in a worldly and ambitious sense; but when, since the Master of the house was called Beelzebub, have the children of his household been rightly understood? Whatever is in the heart comes out sooner or later in the writings, and those who read Madame de Maintenon in her letters, will be in no doubt as to what were her guiding principles. Always true to herself, she was an enigma to those only who had not the key to her true character. The year of her marriage was signalized by one of the most important legislative acts in the history of modern Europe. This was the revocation of the edict of Nantes, by which, eighty-seven years before, Henry IV. had, shortly after his abjuration of Protestantism, terminated a long civil war by granting to the Calvinists freedom of religious worship and admission to offices of state. The edict itself was as contrary to the spirit of that age as it would be consonant with the ideas of this. Those who regarded each other respectively as idolaters and heretics had not yet learned to live together in social and political brotherhood. The popes and saintly doctors of those times looked on such fraternity with horror, and foresaw that, if it became general, indifference and widespread infidelity would be its certain results. Events have justified their anticipations; and though it may be doubted whether this or that act of intolerance, such as the revocation of the edict in question by Louis XIV., were wise and expedient under the circumstances, it ought never to be forgotten that the establishment and maintenance of Catholic unity in a {812} kingdom redounds, abstractly considered, to the glory of a Christian prince. To this glory the government of Louis aspired; and while it is clear from Madame de Maintenon's correspondence that she took no active part in the matter, it is evident also that she approved it, as did the nation in general. Voltaire concurs with the Duc de Noailles in exonerating her from the charge of having instigated the revocation and applauded its results. No traces of a spirit of persecution can be discovered in her character. Nothing can exceed the sweetness of disposition with which she reproved her brother, when governor of Cognac, for having treated the Calvinists with needless severity. "Have pity," she wrote, "on persons more unfortunate than culpable. They hold the errors we once held ourselves, and from which violence never withdrew us. Do not disquiet them; such men must be allured by gentleness and love: Jesus Christ has set us the example." [Footnote 180] Ruvigny, a Protestant, afterward made Earl of Galway by William III., spoke of her to the king as one who had a leaning to the Reformed religion; and though nothing could be more untrue, it shows that her zeal as a Catholic could not have been intemperate. The king himself told her that her tenderness toward the Huguenots came, he thought, of her having formerly been one of them; and the historians of the French refugees in Brandeburg, Erman and Reclam, allow that she never advised the violent measures that were used, and declare that she abhorred the persecutions consequent on the revocation. The authors of them, they add, concealed them from her as far as possible, knowing that she desired the adoption of no other means but instruction and kindness. [Footnote 181] In her conversations with the sisters at Saint-Cyr, her language was always in conformity with these statements. The king, she told them, who had a wonderful zeal for religion, pressed her to dismiss some Huguenots from her service, or oblige them to enter the fold of the Church. "I pray you, sire," she replied, "to let me be mistress of my own domestics, and manage them in my own way." Accordingly, she never pressed them to renounce their errors. She showed them the more excellent way when ever she had an opportunity, and in good time had the satisfaction of seeing them all embrace the Catholic faith.

[Footnote 180: Lettre à M. d' Aubigné, 1682.]

[Footnote 181: Tome i., p. 77.]

If, then, Madame de Maintenon applauded the revocation of the edict of Nantes, she must not be held responsible for the forced conversions, the dragonades, imprisonments, and emigration in which it issued. Her approval must be interpreted in the same sense as the brief addressed to Louis by Innocent XI., [Footnote 182] in which the pontiff congratulated him on "revoking all the ordinances issued in favor of heretics throughout his kingdom, and providing, by very sage edicts, for the propagation of the orthodox faith." The immunities granted to the Calvinists by Henry IV. involved, according to Ranke, a Protestant historian, "a degree of independence which seems hardly compatible with the idea of a state." [Footnote 183] Religious dissent naturally engendered political disaffection. The Protestant assemblies in the time of Louis XIII. endeavored to establish a kind of federal republic. Six times during that king's reign the Calvinists took up arms. Richelieu maintained that nothing great could be undertaken so long as the Huguenots had a footing in the kingdom. They formed a treaty with Spain, with a view to their independence, and were regarded by the nation at large as a public enemy.

[Footnote 182: 13th November, 1685.]

[Footnote 183: "Lives of the Popes," vol. ii., p. 439.]

Zealously as Madame de Maintenon labored for the conversion of her own relatives—particularly M. de Vilette and his children—it is no wonder that she concurred with the king, the clergy, and the people in thinking that the {813} time was come to withdraw from the Protestants of France privileges dangerous to religion and to the state, and to concert more effective measures for their conversion. She held with Bossuet that a Christian prince "ought to use his authority for the destruction of false religions in his realm, and that he is at liberty to employ rigorous measures, but that gentleness is to be preferred." [Footnote 184] She believed with Fénelon that the religious toleration which is necessary in one country may be dangerous in another—for the mild and loving prelate of Cambray agreed at bottom with the sterner Bossuet on this subject. [Footnote 185] Whether subsequent events vindicated the political expediency of the revocation; whether the evils it produced were not greater than the good it proposed; whether those who recommended it would not, if furnished with our experience, have wished it had never been carried into effect—are questions of great importance and interest, but foreign to the purpose of this paper.

[Footnote 184: "Politique tirée de l'Ecriture Sainte," livre vii.]

[Footnote 185: "Essai sur le Gouvernement civil," tome xxii.]

We have more than once alluded to Saint-Cyr, and it is time now to give some account of the origin and nature of that noble institution, which perished with the monarchy and old aristocracy of France, on which it depended, and of which it was a support. Like most other great works, its beginnings were small. Before Madame de Maintenon was raised so near the throne, she used often to meet at the Chateau de Montchevreuil an Ursuline sister named Madame de Brinon, whose convent had been ruined. Devoted to the work of education, this lady spent her days in giving instruction to some children in the village. Her resources being very low, Madame de Maintenon intrusted her with the care of several children whom she charitably maintained, and often visited them and their mistress, first at Rueil, and afterward at Noisy, where the king placed a chateau at her disposal, and enabled her to enlarge the establishment. The daughters of poor gentlemen were then admitted to the school. The king, returning from the chase one day, paid them an unexpected visit, and was so pleased with all he saw that Madame de Maintenon had little difficulty in inducing him to extend his royal patronage much further, and provide means whereby two hundred and fifty young ladies, of noble birth and poor fortunes, might be instructed, clothed, and fed, from the age of seven or twelve years to twenty. The domain of Saint-Cyr was purchased; and twelve young persons belonging to the establishment, and destined for the most part to a religious life, were selected as mistresses to direct the larger institution. They entered on their duties after a noviciate of nine months, and were called Dames de Saint Louis. Their vows were simple, had reference to the purpose in hand, and were not binding for life. The young ladies were nominated by the king, and were required to prove their poverty and four degrees of nobility on the father's side. The final transfer of the revenues of the abbey of St. Denis to the establishment of Saint-Cyr was not approved by the Holy See till after some years, in consequence of the dispute existing between Louis and the court of Rome. In 1689, however, Alexander VIII. formally authorized the foundation, and in the February of the next year addressed a suitable brief to Madame de Maintenon, expressing the warm interest he felt in her undertaking. Madame de Brinon was elected superior for life, but, as she did not altogether second the designs of the foundress, relaxed the rules, and introduced amusements which were thought too worldly, a change became necessary. It was not without much patience on the part of Madame de Maintenon that the difficulties were at last overcome. Madame de Montchevreuil, their mutual friend, was charged with a lettre de cachet by which the king commanded Madame de Brinon to quit {814} Saint-Cyr. She retired to the abbey of Maubisson, of which the Princess Louisa of Hanover was abbess, and there passed the remainder of her days in honorable retirement, and in the enjoyment of a small pension. She was fond of great personages, and of playing an important part, and this feeling led to her becoming the intermediary between Leibnitz and Bossuet, in a correspondence which aimed at the reunion of Catholics and Protestants, and which, as might have been expected, produced no results.

After Madame de Brinon's departure, Madame de Maintenon devoted herself more and more to her important enterprise. As the young ladies were educated for home and the world, not the cloister, they were indulged occasionally with dramatic representations. This gave rise to two of Racine's finest pieces. Having been requested by Madame de Maintenon to invent some moral or historical poem in dialogue, from which love should be excluded, he produced "Esther," which was first acted at Saint-Cyr in 1689, in presence of the king. His majesty was charmed; the prince wept. Racine had never written anything finer, or more touching. Esther's prayer to Assuerus transported the audience. Madame de Sévigné only lamented that a little girl personated that great king. Numerous representations followed, and crowds of eager spectators, courtiers, ecclesiastics, literati, and religious sat beside the ex-king and queen of England, to hear the pure and harmonious verses of Racine recited by the young, the innocent, and the beautiful, to the richest and softest music Moreau could compose. This success was but the forerunner of a still greater. At the request of Louis, Racine wrote another tragedy the following year—viz., "Athalie;" in the opinion of French critics the most perfect of all tragedies. But the excitement attending the play of "Esther" had been too great to allow of a renewal of the experiment. The "comedy," as it was called, of "Athalie" was performed therefore by "the blue class," without stage or costume, in presence only of the king, Madame de Maintenon, James II., and six or seven other persons, among whom was Fénelon.

In the midst of such amusements, pride and frivolity crept into Saint-Cyr, and Madame de Maintenon became convinced that she had allowed its pupils more freedom than they could enjoy without abuse. Reform was indispensable. The Dames de Saint Louis took monastic vows under the rule of St. Augustin. No effort was spared to inculcate piety and make religion loved. Bossuet and Fénelon were frequently invited to address the young people. One of the sermons thus delivered is found in the works of Bossuet, but the original manuscript is said to be in the handwriting of the Archbishop of Cambray. It bears, in fact, the impress of their twofold genius, but the pathos of its style stamps it as more peculiarly the production of Fénelon. [Footnote 86]

[Footnote 186: "Duc de Noailles," tome iii., p. 140.]

The Duc de Saint-Simon, incapable of mastering ideas of a religious order, carps and jeers at Madame de Maintenon as one who thought herself an "universal abbess." Those who carefully examine the annals of Saint-Cyr, and weigh the difficulties that arose from the various characters of the superiors chosen, the tendency at one time to relax and at another to overstrain the religious education of the pupils, will arrive at the conclusion that few ladies in an exalted position, and in the midst of all that is most worldly, ever possessed so much of that wise and loving spirit of government which should distinguish an abbess, as the wife, friend, companion, and counsellor of Louis XIV. One might almost say that Saint-Cyr was the passion of her life. When at Versailles she went there daily, and often arrived at six in the morning. The young ladies, scarcely yet awake, had the joy of seeing her beloved and {815} revered figure among them in the sleeping apartments; and she frequently helped to dress the little ones and comb their hair, with unaffected and maternal kindness. The unremitting attention she gave to the establishment was soon rewarded, and its beneficial effects on society were placed beyond all doubt. The pupils and mistresses alike of Saint-Cyr were held in great esteem, and many of them, scattered through the kingdom, filled important educational and conventual posts; while in Hungary, Austria, Russia, and the Milanese, institutions were formed on its model. By interesting the king in its details, and inducing him to visit it very often, Madame de Maintenon partly secured the other great aim of her existence, namely, his amusement.

Of all the errors that have, from time to time, insinuated themselves into the minds of Catholics, none has worn a more plausible and poetic aspect than Quietism. It crept into Saint-Cyr under the auspices of Madame de la Maisonfort, a person of a peculiarly imaginative and mystic temperament. She discoursed with like fluency with Racine and Fénelon, and always appeared brimful of intelligence and devotional feelings. Madame de Maintenon had received her as a friend, and hailed with delight her resolution to adopt a religious habit and become one of the Dames de Saint Louis. She made her profession in 1692, and by moderating her vivacity for a time deceived others, and perhaps herself also. Errors akin to those of Molinos were then spreading fast, and Madame Guyon, their chief propagandist, happened to be a relation of Madame de la Maisonfort. When the former lady was arrested for the first time in 1688, her kinswoman and Madame de Maintenon interceded for her. After this she often visited Saint-Cyr, and gradually became intimate with the ladies engaged in the institution. Her manuscripts were eagerly read, and a chosen few who were first initiated in their mysteries inoculated others with the subtle poison, until all the novices, one confessor, the lay-sisters, and many under instruction, abandoning themselves, as they believed, to the sole guidance of the Holy Spirit, practiced all kinds of mystic devotion, talked incessantly the pious jargon of Quietism, looked down upon those who could not embrace the new tenets, and strangely forgot their vows of obedience to superiors. Nothing was heard but the praises of pure love, holy indifference, inactive contemplation, passive prayer, and that entire abandonment of one's self to God which exempts us from caring about anything, and even from being anxious about our own salvation. [Footnote 187] Fénelon, by his intimacy with Madame Guyon, whose director he was, lent life and vigor to these extravagant ideas.

[Footnote 187: Madame Guyon herself disowned many of the monstrous conclusions of the Quietists, while her own opinions were in excess of those of Fénelon.]

His elevation to the see of Cambray, in 1695, was regarded by them as the triumph of their cause, and Saint-Cyr bade fair to rival Port Royal as a stronghold of suspected tenets. But episcopal authority interfered at last, and through the remonstrances of the Bishop of Chartres, Madame Guyon was dismissed, and her books were forbidden. She continued, however, to correspond with the inmates of Saint-Cyr; and when, in December, 1695, she was imprisoned anew, they exhorted each other to remain firm and endure the coming persecution. Bossuet himself, at the request of Madame de Maintenon, now fully alive to the danger, came to assist in extinguishing the nascent error, while Fénelon, on the contrary, defended his own and Madame Guyon's opinions from what he considered to be exaggerated charges, and wrote his famous "Maximes des Saints" in opposition to Bossuet's "Etats d' Oraison." It is a question whether Bossuet was not led, in the zeal of his antagonism, to make indefensible statements of a different tendency. Fénelon, in fact, charged him with so doing, and the spirit {816} displayed by the Bishop of Meaux in defending himself and prosecuting the condemnation of his former friend, does not present the most pleasing incident in the great Bossuet's career. Perhaps Fénelon has won more glory by his ready and humble submission to the ultimate decision of the Holy See than has Bossuet by his zeal in procuring a just censure on Fénelon's errors. The temper and ability with which Fénelon pleaded his cause began to enlist public opinion in his favor. He utterly disclaimed all participation in the errors of Quietism, and said he could easily have calmed the heated minds of the sisters of Saint-Cyr, and have brought them in all docility under their bishop's yoke. [Footnote 188] But Bossuet invoked the authority of the king, the decision of his brother prelates, and the judgment of the Holy See. The Bishop of Chartres, on making a personal inquiry into the state of things, required that not only Madame Guyon's writings, but those of Fénelon himself, should be delivered into his hands. Whatever the merits of the question in other respects, and whatever opinion may be formed of the respective teaching of these two great men, there can be no doubt that the "Maximes des Saints" had fostered prevailing errors. The king expressed great displeasure at the course events had taken, and by a lettre de cachet in 1698 ordered Madame de la Maisonfort and another lady to quit the establishment, and all other infected persons to be removed. They passed the night in tears in the superior's apartment; and the next day Madame de Maintenon come to console the community for their loss. If she erred at all throughout this perplexing affair, it was by over-indulgence and by forbearing too long. When her duty became clear and imperative, she was never undecided, nor showed any inclination to encourage novelties in religion.

[Footnote 188: "Duc de Noailles," tome iii., p. 241.]

A history of Madame de Maintenon, however detailed, must always be wanting in those personal traits which distinguish most striking biographies, and this for the simple reason that her habits and disposition were retiring, and her daily effort was to throw a veil over herself. That her influence in the long run was enhanced by this modesty, no one can doubt; yet it is not on that account the less true, that in the scenes through which she passed it is difficult to seize and depict her individually. We must, nevertheless, endeavor to give some idea of her relations with the royal family, by some of whom she was beloved, by others hated, and by all held in high consideration. Monsieur, the king's brother, liked and respected her for Louis' sake, to whom he was sincerely attached; but it was far otherwise with Madame. A Bavarian by birth, she was completely German in her tastes, and in the midst of Parisian splendor sighed for her home beyond the Rhine. She was, she said, a hermit in a crowd, and passed her days in utter loneliness. She was a Protestant at heart, intensely masculine, and had little sympathy with Madame de Maintenon's quiet mode of life. So fond was she of the chase, that she continued to follow it, though she had been thrown from her horse six-and-twenty times. Madame de Maintenon was her special aversion, and this antipathy arose principally from her national prejudices against unequal marriages. The king's wife was, in her view, an upstart, and the credit she had obtained at court did not diminish this impression. She spoke with contempt of her piety as mere hypocrisy, and laid to her charge every species of enormity. She had pandered to the dauphin's profligacy; killed the dauphiness by means of her accoucheur; led the young Duchess of Bourgogne into sin; monopolized corn during a famine to enrich herself; and never dreamed of anything but her own pleasures and ambition; she had poisoned Louvois and, nobody knew why, the architect Mansart; she, with Père {817} la Chaise, had instigated the persecution of the Protestants; she had set fire to the chateau of Lunéville; and, from her retreat at Saint-Cyr, fomented conspiracies against the regent! Truly the poison of asps was under the lips of Madame Elizabeth of Bavaria. The dauphiness, on the other hand, neglected by her dissolute husband, made Madame de Maintenon her friend, and found consolation in pouring her troubles into her ear, and listening in return to her sage and tender counsels. After ten years of sickness and sorrow in her married life, she died of consumption in 1690. "See," said the king to her unworthy partner, "what the grandeur of this world comes to! This is what awaits you and me. God grant us the grace to die as holily as she has done!"

The pages of French history present few pictures more replete with grandeur and interest than the retreat of the great Condé at Chantilly. Crowned with the laurels of a hundred victories, the princely veteran there gathered around him a more distinguished staff than had ever sat in his councils of war—men who, endued with intellectual might and moral greatness, were to achieve lasting conquests in the realm of mind. Profoundly skilled himself in history, philosophy, art, science, and even theology, he loved to entertain those who, in various ways, had devoted their lives to the triumph of knowledge and reflection over ignorance and sensuality. All that was noblest in birth and cultivated in mind met together in his orangeries, and sauntered among his gardens and fountains. There the most eminent prelates of their time were seen side by side with the greatest dramatists, historians, and poets. There was Fléchier and Fleury; there La Fontaine, Boileau, and Molière; there Rapin and Huet, La Bruyère and Bossuet. There wit sparkled and wisdom shone as incessantly as the jets and cascades that rose and fell in light and music by night and day. Thither came often the entire court, and with it Madame de Maintenon, a star among stars, brilliant but retiring, to enhance the glory of the illustrious and aged chief. There, honored by the king and closeted with him daily, as at Versailles and elsewhere, she could not fail to receive the willing homage of every member of the house of Condé. There, too, after the general's death, she saw her former pupil, the king's daughter, Mademoiselle de Nantes, espoused to Condé's grandson; and thus, as time went on, she watched the career of those whom she had educated, and who formed the more noble alliances because the king had raised them to the rank of royal princesses. Never did any lady occupy a more remarkable and in some respects a more enviable position than herself. "There never was a case like it," says Madame de Sévigné, "and there never will be such a one again." She united the most opposite conditions. By her union with Louis she was all but queen, and by her admirable tact exerted over state affairs a far greater influence than belongs in general to a sovereign's consort. She had been the servant of that very king of whom she was now the helpmate; a wise instructress to his children, and a mother in her affection and care. At one moment she was acting abbess, controlling the complicated irregularities which had crept into the religious and secular economy of Saint-Cyr, and at another she was mediating as peace-maker in the family quarrels and petty jealousies of pampered courtiers, or by her sage counsels arresting the ravages of war, and rescuing harmless populations from the scourge of fire and sword. Children loved to hear her voice, and hung upon her smiles; the poor and afflicted were fain to touch the hem of her garment, for they felt that virtue went forth from her; none were so great as to look down upon her; none so lowly as to think that she despised them. Her sovereignty over others was that to which men render the most willing obedience—the sovereignty, not merely of station or {818} intellect, but of character of sterling worth, of wisdom learned in the school of suffering, of virtue tried like gold in the fire.

As Madame de Maintenon's talents and merits prevented her being lost in a crowd of courtiers, or in any way identified with them, so, on the other hand, her affectionate disposition kept her from being isolated and closing herself round against any intrusion of private friendship. So far from it, she had with her a select group of ladies who were called her familiars, who shared with her, in a measure, the king's intimacy, accompanied her in her walks and drives at Marly, and were her guests at the dinners and suppers she gave at Versailles and Trianon. They were in some sort her ladies of honor, though, like herself, without any visible distinction. Of these the principal were Madame de Montchevreuil and Madame d'Heudicourt, both old friends, and with them nine others, among whom were her two nieces, Mesdames de Mailly and de Caylus. To each of these a history attaches; for the constant companions of so extraordinary a woman could not but have special attractions and remarkable qualities. There were in this number those who had drunk deeply of the intoxicating cup of worldly pleasure, and having drained its poisonous dregs, thirsted for the fountain of living waters. It was Madame de Maintenon's especial care to encourage such friends in their heavenly aspirations, and lead them, in the midst of the court, to enter the devotional life. Often she called the fervent Fénelon to her assistance, and his letters addressed to Madame de Grammont are a lasting proof of the readiness with which he answered to the call. If, as all her contemporaries assure us, it was impossible to combine more that was pleasing and solid in conversation than did Madame de Maintenon—if, in her case, reason, as Fénelon expressed it, spoke by the lips of the Graces—how admirable must she have appeared when she directed her powers of persuasion to the highest and most blessed of all ends! Neither pen nor pencil can adequately recall the charms which surrounded her; but the captive heart of Louis and the unanimous voice of the richest and most lettered court in Europe attest their reality and power. In her ceaseless efforts to amuse the king, his immortal interests were never lost sight of; and if she spoke to him comparatively seldom on the subject, it was because it occupied all her thoughts. Out of the abundance of the heart the lips are often mute.

In 1686 Louis suffered extreme pain and incurred great danger from a tumor, which at last required an operation. This circumstance brought Madame de Maintenon's capacity for nursing into full play. It was she who watched by his bedside, and alleviated the sufferings of the nation's idol. The surgery of that day was wretched, and the operation for fistula which had to be performed was attended with great danger. Intense solicitude prevailed through the country; for, in spite of all efforts to prevent anxiety, the report spread rapidly that the king's life was in peril. The churches were thronged, and the people's attachment found vent in prayer. The royal patient alone was unmoved. The grande operation, as it was called, had been decided on six weeks previously, and the evening before it was to take place he walked in his gardens as usual, and then slept soundly through the night, as if nothing were to happen. On waking he commended himself to God, and submitted to the painful operation with the utmost coolness. Louvois held his hand, and Madame de Maintenon was in the room. In the afternoon he sent for his ministers, and continued to hold councils daily, though the surgeon's knife cruelly renewed the incisions several times. "It is in God," wrote Madame de Maintenon, "that we must place our trust; for men know not what they say, nor what they do." The fourteen physicians of {819} Charles II. were still more unskilful in his last illness, [Footnote 189] and justify equally the opinion of the Northern Farmer:

  "Doctors, they knaws nowt, for a says what's nawways true:
  Naw soort a' koind o' use to saäy the things that a do."

[Footnote 189: "The king was in a chair—they had placed a hot iron on his head, and they held his teeth open by force." Agnes Strickland's "Lives of the Queens of England;" vol. viii., p. 447.

"A loathsome volatile salt, extracted from human skulls, was forced into his mouth." Macaulay's "History of England," chap. iv.. 1685.]

In the case of Louis, however, the operator Félix answered to his name. A cure was effected, and the kingdom was filled with demonstrations of joy. "Every one," as Madame de Maintenon wrote, "was in raptures. Father Bourdaloue preached a most beautiful sermon. Toward the close he addressed the king. He spoke to him of his health, his love for his people, and the fears of his court. He caused many tears to be shed; he shed them himself. It was his heart that spoke, and he touched all hearts. You know well what I mean." After dining with the citizens of Paris at the Hôtel de Ville, Louis drove through every quarter amid the loudest acclamations. "The king," wrote his wife again, "has never been in such a good humor as since he has witnessed the enthusiastic love the capital bears toward him. I very much like his sentiments: perhaps they will inspire him with the design of relieving his people." Absolute as the sovereignty of Louis was, his subjects delighted in his rule. He was the last of a long line who, century after century, had formed the nation out of the confusion of feudal times, and had, of all kings, the best right to say, if indeed he ever did say, [Footnote 190] "L'état, c'est moi!"

[Footnote 190: See "Duc de Noailles," tome iii., p. 668.]

In him the state was summed up, and the kingdom was impersonated in him. The soldier expiring on the battlefield cried "Vive le roi!" and vessels have gone down at sea with the entire crew shouting the same words; for "Vive le roi!" was, in their minds, equivalent to "Vive la France!" The government of Louis XIV., though despotic, was, on the whole, marked by moderation, particularly after the death of Louvois; and if sometimes, seduced by the glory of foreign conquests and the love of regal display he forgot the interests of his people and the misery his magnificence entailed on them, Madame de Maintenon was always near to counteract the arrogant minister, urge counsels of peace, and heal the bleeding wounds of a loyal population. Yet she was far from being a meddling politician, Her advice was not offered, but asked. She abstained from entering into details, and confined herself to general suggestions of a moral character, dictated by conscience, not ambition. If she guided, or, rather, gently disposed, the king to this or that measure, she was in turn guided herself. Her correspondence with the Abbé Gobelin, Fénelon, and the Bishop of Chartres sufficiently proves that her highest ambition was to be a servant of God. That Racine, of whom she was the friend and patroness, should extol her in his verse [Footnote 191] is not surprising; but the satirist Boileau, be it remembered, was no less her eulogist. If Byron's beautiful lines on Kirke White had the more weight because they occurred in his most biting satire, something of the same kind may be said of Boileau's testimony to Madame de Maintenon:

[Footnote 191: "Esther," act ii., scene vii.]

  "J'en sais une, chérie et du monde et de Dieu;
  Humble dans les grandeurs, sage dana la fortune:
  Qui gémit comme Esther de sa gloire importune;
  Que le vice lui-même est contraint d'estimer,
  Et que, sur ce tableau, d'abord tu sais nonmer."

  [Footnote 192]

[Footnote 192: "I know one beloved of God and man, who is humble in her grandeur and wise in her good fortune; who groans like Esther over her trying glory; whom vice itself is compelled to respect; and whom, on seeing this picture, you will name in an instant." Satire X.]

The Duc de Noailles is not the only member of the French Academy who has arisen of late years to refute the calumnies of Saint-Simon. M. Saint-Marc Girardin has ably defended the {820} victim of his malignity in the Journal des Débats, [Footnote 193] and Messieurs Rigault, de Pontmartin, Monty, Chasles, and Hocquet, have pursued successfully the same generous and equitable course.

[Footnote 193: 4th and 16th October, 1856.]

When James II., in December, 1688, fled from his kingdom, the sympathies of more than half the French people were enlisted on his side. Ignorant of the British constitution, they knew little of the peril it had incurred through the king's extraordinary extension of the dispensing power, and they saw in the landing and success of the Prince of Orange nothing but a horrible domestic tragedy, in which, through personal ambition and hatred of the true religion, a Catholic sovereign was hurled from his throne by an unnatural daughter and son-in-law. They joined, therefore, without any misgiving, in the cordial reception given to the royal fugitives by Louis, and desired nothing so much as to make common cause with them, and take vengeance on their foes. Madame de Maintenon was not among those who pressed with all ceremony into the presence of the exiled king and queen; but she visited them in private, and was received as became her station. The compassion she felt for their fate, her respectful address and Christian consolations, so won upon Mary Beatrice, that a lasting friendship was formed between the queen in name, not in reality, and the queen in reality, not in name. It continued without interruption during five-and-twenty years, and was cemented by unity of sentiments and mutual services. The ex-queen had married in her fifteenth year, and had overcome, by the advice of her mother and the Pope, her desire to devote herself to a religious life. [Footnote 194] Whatever may have been her trials in a convent, they could hardly have equalled those which befel her as queen. A hundred and forty-five of her letters to Madame de Maintenon are extant, and the readers of Miss Strickland's "Lives" are familiar with the Chaillot correspondence, in which the desolate and sorrowful queen pours forth the fulness of her sensitive heart, and never tires of expressing her love and esteem for that remarkable friend whom Providence has led across her thorny path. Often Madame de Maintenon repaired to Saint-Germain to visit her, and still more frequently the latter came to Versailles to see Madame de Maintenon. It was some relief to escape for a time from that downcast, dreary court in exile, where a crowd of poor but faithful followers gathered around a master equally wrong-headed and unfortunate. The semblance of royalty which was there kept up only increased the sadness of the place, and fostered those jealousies, intrigues, and cabals of which a banished court is so often the parent and victim.

[Footnote 194: "Duc de Noailles," tome iv., p. 231.]

A powerful coalition, in the creation of which the Prince of Orange was the chief agent, had long been menacing France, and was now actually formed. Louis found himself opposed to the greater part of Europe, for the Emperor Leopold, the Germanic and Batavian federations, the kings of Spain and Sweden, and the Pope himself, obliged to act on the defensive, adhered to the league of Augsburg. [Footnote 195]

[Footnote 195: "Duc de Noailles," p. 253.]

Three powerful armies were sent by the king of France to the seat of war. The mission of one of them was to capture Philipsburg; and from the camp before that stronghold the king's brother wrote many letters to Madame de Maintenon, describing the operations in progress. The Duc du Maine also, once her pupil, and now in his eighteenth year, wrote to her from time to time, and received thankfully the advice she offered him with all a mother's solicitude. The second of the three armies was charged with the devastation of the Palatinate, and fulfilled the part assigned it with distressing precision. If its soil was not to supply the French, it must {821} furnish nought to the Germans. It was a perfect garden, and Duras received orders to reduce it to a wilderness. Half a million of human beings were warned that in three days their houses would be burned and their fields laid waste. Fiercely the flames went up from city and hamlet, and the fugitives sank with fatigue and hunger in the snow, or, escaping beyond the borders, filled the towns of Europe with squalid beggary. Every orchard was hewn down, every vine and almond tree was destroyed. The castle of the Elector Palatine was a heap of ruins; the stones of Manheim were hurled into the Rhine. The cathedral of Spires and the marble sepulchres of eight Caesars were no more; and the fair city of Trèves was doomed to the same cruel fate. It was time for the voice of mercy to speak. Marshal Duras had already written to Louvois, [Footnote 196] to remonstrate against the barbarous orders he was compelled to execute, and Madame de Maintenon herself is said to have interceded with Louis for the suffering people of the Rhine. The Duc de Noailles, indeed, does not state this, like Macaulay, [Footnote 197] as matter of history, though he allows that it is probably true; and this variety in the views of the two historians, each anxious to do justice in this particular to the king's wife, proves how difficult it is for even the most sagacious and unprejudiced writers to arrive at the exact truth in reference to bygone days. Macaulay is certainly inclined to attribute to Madame de Maintenon a much larger measure of political power than she really exercised; and it is curious to observe the chain of pure assumptions by which, having taken it for granted that she "governed" Louis, he arrives at the conclusion that she induced him to recognize the Pretender as James III. [Footnote 198] In a letter written [Footnote 199] soon after the taking of Philipsburg, she seems to disclaim all active interference in state affairs. In speaking of Louvois, she says that she never contradicted him, and adds, "People think that I govern the kingdom, and they do not know that I am convinced God has bestowed on me so many favors only that I may seek more earnestly the king's salvation. I pray God daily to enlighten and sanctify, him." But it is evident how completely an earnest recommendation to Louis to spare Trèves, and stay the ravages in the Palatinate, may have tallied with that unique and hallowed purpose. Have not those from whom such truculent orders emanate a terrible account to render? Has not she who dissuades a ruler from an iniquitous measure done something toward saving his soul?

[Footnote 196: 21st May, 1689.]

[Footnote 197: Hist., chap, xi., 1689.]

[Footnote 198: Hist, chap, xxv, 1701.]

[Footnote 199: 4th October, 1688.]

There are stories afloat respecting Madame de Maintenon, and in everybody's mouth, which the Duc de Noailles scarcely condescends to notice. That she who always spoke and wrote of Louis in terms of affectionate homage should have seriously committed herself to such assertions, as that her daily task ever since her marriage was to amuse a king who could not be amused, and that he was so selfish that he never loved anything but himself, is an improbability as inconsistent with her character and policy as it is at variance with the facts of the case. That in his latter years her life was embittered by his fretful and querulous temper, and by the fits of passion into which he often fell, and that in one of her letters written at that period she complains of the difficulty of amusing him, is undoubtedly true; but this and similar complaints ought not to be stretched beyond their natural meaning, and made to tell too severely against the king. When, in the early part of 1691, Louis appeared in the camp before Mons, his wife, separated from him for the first time since their marriage, retired to Saint-Cyr, alarmed at the dangers he was about to incur, and unable to conceal her sadness. Consolatory letters poured in upon her from all quarters, especially {822} from her spiritual friends and advisers—the Abbé Gobelin, the Bishop of Chartres, and Fénelon. But, "the selfish monarch who could not be amused," did he, amid the bustle of a siege, find time to write to a lady fifty-five years old, whose only business had been to amuse him or fail in the attempt? He did; and that not once now and then; not briefly and drily, as a matter of form; not like a man who had little to say, and still less attachment, to the person to whom he said it. No; every day in her solitude Madame de Maintenon was consoled by seeing a royal dragoon ride into the court-yard with a letter for her from his majesty, and almost every day with one from the king's brother also. Nor was this all; the king, "who had never loved any one but himself," proved that there was at least one exception to this rule, and that he loved his wife. In 1692 she joined him at Mons, by his command, in company with other ladies of the court, and followed him to the siege of Namur. Amusements were not wanting in the royal camp. The king and his courtiers dined to the music of timbrels, trumpets, and hautboys, and he reviewed his troops in the presence of carriages full of fair faces. But, with all this, he visited the different quarters so diligently, and inspected so closely the works and trenches, riding continually within range of the enemy's guns, that his wife had almost as much anxiety for his safety as when she pondered at a distance the cruel chances of war.

In spite of his many faults, there was much in Louis XIV. to captivate the imagination of one like Madame de Maintenon. "No prince," says the Duke of Berwick, [Footnote 200] "was ever so little known as this monarch. He has been represented as a man not only cruel and false, but difficult of access. I have frequently had the honor of audiences from him, and have been very familiarly admitted to his presence; and I can affirm that his pride is only in appearance. He was born with an air of majesty, which struck every one so much, that nobody could approach him without being seized with awe and respect; but as soon as you spoke to him, he softened his countenance, and put you quite at ease. He was the most polite man in his kingdom; and his answers were accompanied by so many obliging expressions, that, if he granted your request, the obligation was doubled by the manner of conferring it; and if he refused, you could not complain."

[Footnote 200: Memoirs, vol. ii.]

Madame de Maintenon's campaigning life was not altogether free from disagreeables. On one occasion, writing from Dinant, [Footnote 201] she relates how they encountered more difficulty in retiring from Namur than in approaching it. They were eleven hours and a half on the road, and wholly unprovided with food. She arrived at her journey's end exhausted with hunger and suffering also from rheumatism and headache; but, it being an abstinence day, the only repast that awaited her was oil-soup. The king likewise, though throughout the campaign he dined ordinarily with all the sumptuousness of Versailles, found himself obliged sometimes to partake of a cold collation under a hedge, without quitting his travelling carriage. Warfare would be an easy calling if such were its worst hardships.

[Footnote 201: 12th June, 1693.]

In Flanders, as in France, Madame de Maintenon continued to take the most lively interest in the course of events, martial, political, and social. Proximity to the scene of action did not induce her to exceed those limits of reserve which she had long since marked out for herself. Though informed of all that happened, and forming a sound judgment on almost every occurrence, though earnestly desiring peace rather than aggrandizement, and justice rather than glory, she obtruded no views of her own in the cabinet of the king, nor even influenced the choice of generals. It was her habit of close observation, and her exact description {823} of all that passed, which made Napoleon Bonaparte delight in reading her correspondence, and pronounce it superior to that of Madame de Sévigné, because it had more in it. Madame de Maintenon speaks in one place of her own style as "dry and succinct;" and, indeed, were it not for the piety which constantly breathes through them, her letters would often read like the despatches of a general. She is brief, terse, sententious; her mind being evidently bent on things rather than on words. As a letter-writer, she resembles Napoleon himself more than any other French authoress. Her style is free from that vacillation, that timid adoption of a definite line, which always indicates a weak thinker and a total absence of system in the mind. Had it been otherwise, she would never have stood so high in the esteem of foreign courts, nor would princes and sovereigns, such as the Elector of Cologne, the Duc de Lorraine, and his mother, Queen Eleanor, have written to ask favors at her hands.

The reign of Louis XIV. lasted so long, that neither his son nor grandson ever sat on the throne. If the latter, the Duc de Bourgogne, had not died in his thirtieth year, he might, as the once docile pupil of Fénelon and Madame de Maintenon, have fulfilled his promises of excellence, and have left to his successors a rich inheritance of wisdom. "Telemachus" was not composed expressly for him in vain. He was born in 1682, and at an early age was affianced to Marie-Adélaïde of Savoy. The princess was at that time only eleven years old, and was, by the marriage contract, to remove to France, and be wedded in the ensuing year. The union of the young couple was celebrated in 1697, but on account of their extreme youth they continued to live apart two years longer. During this time, Madame de Maintenon undertook to complete Marie-Adélaïde's education. The instructress was worthy of a princess destined, as it was believed, to govern France. All day she sat by her when sick, and Racine read Plutarch's "Lives" to her during the pauses of the night; Bossuet was her chaplain, and Dangeau, whose manuscript memoirs of Louis' court have proved so useful to historians, [Footnote 202] was her knight of honor. She was the delight of all around, and so charmed the king, that he was never willing to part with her. But there were no apartments Marie-Adélaïde so much loved to frequent as those of Madame de Maintenon. Severe as her admonitions often were, she possessed in the highest degree the art of attaching young persons to her, and inspired them insensibly with taste, wisdom, and nobility of mind. She had long been convinced that the education of princes was conducted, generally, in such a way as to prepare them for habitual ennui. They learned and saw everything in childhood, and, when grown up, had nothing fresh to see or learn. She withdrew her, therefore, as far as possible from the court, and submitted her to the simple and wholesome routine of Saint-Cyr. The princess proved extremely docile, and her amiability was as striking as her diligence. The society of the religious in Saint-Cyr, so far from putting a constraint on her lively and winning ways, seemed only to fit her more completely to be the pet companion of Louis XIV. Her sprightly talk, her opening mind, her elegant simplicity, amused him in his walks and drives, in the gardens, the galleries, and the chase; and while he contrived daily some new diversion for the fascinating child, he could not but trace in her the happy results of Madame de Maintenon's unwearied attention. She entered into all her childish pleasures, and even played hide-and-seek with her, that she might, as she said afterward, gain her ear for serious truths, and by yielding all she could, have the better reason for withholding what would have been hurtful. At last—nor was the time long—Marie-Adélaïde quitted Madame de Maintenon's embrace, and with her heavenly counsels {824} graven on her memory, and given in writing into her hands, bidding farewell to the hallowed cloisters of Saint-Cyr, and to her daily gambols and prattle with the loving and indulgent king, she took her place beside her destined bridegroom, and "entered other realms of love."

[Footnote 202: They were first published entire in 1856.]

Such was the woman of whom the worldly and sceptical speak jeeringly as the proud widow of Scarron; the intriguing, austere, ambitious Marquise de Maintenon; the persecutrix of Huguenots, and the despot of her royal spouse. They know not what they speak, nor whereof they affirm; for they are incapable of estimating the character of the righteous. Outward acts are to them an enigma and a stumbling-block, because the soul and its guiding principles cannot be seen. A true Christian, such as Madame de Maintenon, is an object of faith, as is the Church, and as was the Church's Lord in the days of his humiliation. Seated, to say the least, on the footstool of the throne, and surrounded by all the pomp and circumstance of royal life, she was to jaundiced eyes but one in a crowd of princes and courtiers, and differing from them only in that she was more astute; but, seen as the prelates of Cambray and Meaux saw her—seen as her letters and conversations with the nuns of Saint-Cyr exhibit her—seen as the Duc de Noailles describes her, and "time, the beautifier of the dead," has rendered her—she was using this world and not abusing it; seeking society only to improve it, and solitude only to pray; holding all she possessed in fealty to her unseen King, and making every occupation subordinate to that of loosening her affections from earthly vanities, and fastening them wholly upon God. The Duc de Noailles' history does not end with the fourth volume. It leaves Madame de Maintenon in her sixty-second year—two-and-twenty years before her death. To trace her intercourse with Louis during the long and disastrous war with Spain, called the War of the Succession—her counsels and influence during the defeats by Marlborough and Prince Eugene, and the triumphant reprisals of Vendôme and Villars—her grief at the king's death in 1715, when she had reached her eightieth year—her retirement to the long-loved shades of Saint-Cyr—her devotion and zeal heightening as age advanced, and the celestial goal was neared—her conversations with the sisters, and her letters to the Princesse des Ursins—to analyze her correspondence, and her vade-mecum as published by M. Bonhomme—to record the pillage of Saint-Cyr, and the outrage done to her venerable remains, as to those of the royal dead in St. Denis, by the frantic revolutionists of 1792—would supply ample materials for another article, but would only confirm the views already formed of her prevailing character and principles. Enough, perhaps, has been said to place our readers on their guard against the malice and fictions of the Duc de Saint-Simon and a host of detractors who rely too readily on his word, and to dispose them favorably toward a most judicious and remarkable history, which does honor to the French Academy and the illustrious house of de Noailles.

{825}

From All The Year Round.

A DUBLIN MAY MORNING.

When I look down on this gay May morning from a window into Great Sackville street, where there is a huge column to Admiral Nelson, and a golden shop-front board dedicated to O'Connell, on the site for his statue, and which is by-and-by to be made into a French boulevard and planted with trees—I say, on this May morning it is easy to see that one of the many great days for Ireland has come round once more. For the crowds in the great thoroughfares, and the "boys" sitting on the bridges, and the flags and streamers, and the rolling carriages, and the general air of busy idleness, tell me that a great festival is toward; and placards in fiercely carbuncled letters proclaim in an angry fit of St. Anthony's fire that the Prince of Wales is to "OPEN" something: which something a still greater scorbutic operation of type tells us is THE DUBLIN EXHIBITION OF 1865.

Not without charms, and marked and special features of its own, is this Dublin city—to say nothing of the fresh and fair Irish faces and violet eyes which pass by in streams, or of the cheerful voices and the gay laughs heard at every turn; or of the giant policemen who wear moustaches and beards, and thus compete on more favorable terms with military rivals; or of the rollicking drivers, who stand up as they drive, very like the cocchieri of Rome, and who look out for "fares" in a debonnaire indifferent fashion. There is a gay, busy, foreign, particolored look about the place, which reminds one of a foreign town. The background is composed of wide spacious streets, Grecian buildings wonderfully classic in tone and shape, fitted into corners with porticoes that belong to the street, and under which the people walk—pretty breaks where the bridges come, and the masts of shipping seen in the sun half way down a long, long thoroughfare. There are no warehouses or ugly business associations; but all is shops and shopping, and color and liveliness, and carriages and walkers.

I think, as I look out on this May morning, that it is curious that a people popularly supposed to want "self-reliance" and "independence," and who are utterly ignorant of the "self-help" principle, should, after all, have done some few self-reliant things in this very matter of exhibitions. Some one tells me that many decades of years before glass palaces were thought of, and when the universal peace and brotherhood glass palaces were mysteriously supposed to bring with them were not quite believed in, this "un-self-reliant" people had their regular triennial exhibition of manufactures, on the French model. Further, that close on the footsteps of the Hyde Park Exhibition came the great one of Cork, and closer again on the footsteps of Cork the really great Dublin Exhibition of 1853, the building of which cost nearly eighty thousand pounds, and which was remarkable for the first international collection of pictures, and for the first performance of Handel on a colossal scale. Not content with this, I am told that this people, who were not self-reliant, went further, had two more successful exhibitions on a smaller scale, and have now finally girded themselves up for this yet more complete effort of 1865. Not so bad, this, for our poor wo-begone sister with the harp, especially when we consider that our well-to-do Scotch sister has not "fashed" herself with such follies, justly considering the margin of profit too uncertain or too slight to repay the trouble. {826} But this is a grim and statistical ungracious view, not all suited to this Dublin May morning.

It is known, then, on this gay Dublin May morning, that the young prince, who in this island has always been looked to with an affectionate interest, has been in the city since over-night, and out at the pretty lodge, which lies out in the "Phaynix." Hence the flags and the streamers. Hence, too, in front of the palace, the balconies fringed with scarlet, and the softened and melodious buzz of distant military music, with the staff officers flying north and south, and the regiments tramping by. But the flags grow thicker, and the balconies gayer, and the music more distinct, as I find myself at the corner of the great place, or square dedicated to St. Stephen, which is a good mile's walking all round, and near which I see the great building, with the heavy porches and pillars, round which, and over which, run delicately, the light entrance of a Moorish-looking glass temple—a silver howdah on the back of a gray elephant. Such is the rather novel design for this last comer in the long series of exhibitions.

After all the miles of glass greenhouse, and the long protracted repetitions of gorgeous decorated pillars and girders, I cannot but think what a happy combination this is of solidity and lightness; and acknowledge that in these days, when Paxton Palace succeeds Paxton Palace with some monotony, there is something original in striking out the idea of fitting the glass-house to a great solid building, with huge halls, and long, cool passages, and spacious rooms, and surrounding the whole with a garden, and greenery, and cascades.

There has been the usual crush and pressure, the tremendous toiling against time, to get all done; the straining of every nerve, the sitting up all night, the hammering and sawing, the stitching of a hundred workmen and workwomen, changing the utter disorder and the naked deal boards and the rude planks of five o'clock last evening to perfect order—to the regularity of a drawing-room and acres of scarlet cloth. And in a crowd of light May morning dresses we drift into the huge concert hall, which is to hold thousands, and to echo to brass throats, and where there are the great organ, and the orchestra which holds the musical army a thousand strong: on the floor of which have grown up beds upon beds of human lilies that flutter and flutter again, whose flowers are white parasols and gossamer shawls. This hall, as a feature, is not so remarkable, for there are many great halls; but at its far end it is open and crossed half way by a gallery: and through this opening we see far on into a Winter Garden and Crystal Palace, where are the light airy galleries, with the old familiar rimson labels, and the French trophies, and the bright objects, and the great apse like a glass cathedral, and Mr. Doyle's pale coloring, the faint lines of delicate green, chosen with rare good taste, which in itself is a novelty.

Looking out through the open end of the concert hall, and facing the organ, I see a grand marone velvet eastern canopy and dais, under which the Pasha of Egypt is to sit a few months hereafter and receive his tribes; and on this dais are the nobles and gentlemen gathering, in the fine rich theatrical suits which give a coloring to a festival, and of which we have not half enough. Judges in scarlet and ermine, privy councillors with coats that seem "clotted" with gold, the never-failing lords-lieutenant and deputy-lieutenants, knights of St. Patrick, deans, doctors in scarlet, soldiers in scarlet, a lord chancellor all black and gold, eastern dervishes (it may be, from the pillow-case look of their caps), a lord mayor of York, a lord provost of Edinburgh; in short, all shapes of particolored finery. Turning round for a second, I see that the black musical army has debouched and taken ground, and that {827} the great orchestra has spread like a large dark fan from floor to ceiling. I can see "Ulster" in a gorgeous tabard, flitting to and fro, marshalling grandees, as none so well know how to marshal them, each according to his or her degree. That marvellous tabard is so stiff and gorgeous, that when it is laid by, it surely cannot be hung up or folded or put to sleep on its back like other robes, but, I fancy, must stand up straight in a wardrobe on its end, like a steel cuirass.

We seem to riot in mayors. The eye can be feasted on mayors; they can become as the air we breathe if we so choose it. They have flowed in from every town in the three kingdoms. And it does strike one, with having such a municipal gathering brought together, that there is a sort of corporate expression, a kind of municipal smirk or perk, a kind of smiling burgess air of complacency which makes the whole of this world akin. Every one, too, seems to be invested with the collar of the Golden Fleece.

Here, also, are many known faces, who wear no scarlet nor gold nor collars. Faces like that of the famous dog and animal painter whose four-footed friends look down at him from the walls: faces like that of the Sir David who invented the most popular toy in the world: faces from the science and art: from South Kensington, which, as we all know, is science and art: faces from France, from Canada, Rome, India, and a hundred other places.

Now, I hear the hum of distant martial music, and the yet fainter but more inspiriting sound of distant cheering. Then the scarlet and ermine, the privy council clotted gold, the May morning bonnets, glitter and rustle with excitement. The hum and chatter of voices full of expectation travel on softly down the glass aisles and into the great hall. There has been a grand plunging of military troopers outside, a violent arrest of fiery horses pulled up suddenly, and the prince and a royal duke and the vice-king and all their attendants have descended. From the outside, the shouting creeps in gradually, until at last it comes to its fullest pitch; when the crimson and gold crowd parts a little, we see this prince standing modestly under the Egyptian pasha's canopy, with thirty thousand eyes upon him. At this moment a speck half way up the dark orchestra, but which is a very skilful and most musical speck, gives a signal with what seems a white pin, and the musical army advances with the fine Old Hundredth. The grand Old Hundredth travels out in rising waves through the open end of the hall into the glass cathedral, then loses itself up and down in the aisles. For two verses the voices do the battle by themselves; but, at the third, the trumpets and the grand brass and the rolling of monster drums burst out, and every syllable is emphasized with a stirring crash. It is like the deluge after a drought.

Then the sun gets up, and the gold and colored figures cross, and crowd, and flit past, as some business is being transacted under that Egyptian pasha's canopy; for there are addresses to be read and spoken, and there is much advancing and backing to be done. Now, the party under the pasha's canopy breaks up for a time, and the stiff gold and scarlet and privy council strait-waistcoats, and the corporate dressing-gowns, having formed themselves into a procession, take the prince round to look at the place.

And there is a great deal to see. There are many charming pictures, and among the choicest those of which the queen of Spain has stripped her palaces, and sent here. Is there not a hint of many a Velasquez most exquisite, and of Mr. Stirling, which are worth a journey to the Escurial to worship? Here is many a rare Reynolds which Mr. Tom Taylor might find worth making a note of, and here are walls covered with noble cartoons of the severe Munich school. These, with the photographs and water-colors, and mediaeval objects, are common to many {828} an exhibition held before; but there is one feature unique—a noble sculpture gallery, artistic, charmingly lighted, sufficient to delight Mr. Gibson, and drive the Royal Academy to despair. A sculpture-hall, on which you can look down from a balustrade in a room overhead, as if into a Pompeiian court. A sculpture-hall, in which you can look up to an arching glass roof, and, half way down again, to the balustrade just mentioned, which is dotted with small statutes. A sculpture-hall, where I can walk round and think myself in a Roman palace, to which these fine objects belong, and not in a temporary shed where some scattered objects that have been lent are shown. For here I see that the Roman studios have been emptied of their treasures; that Miss Hosmer has sent her Faun, in toned yellow marble: a marvellous—if the speech be not impolite— work for a woman. With Story's wonderful Judith, and a Baby Girl by Mogni—a pendant for the now famous Reading Girl. But it is easy to prophesy that this Baby Girl will be photographed, and stereoscoped, and binocularized in a hundred ways, and watched over by policemen specially, and visited by a steady crowd. This hall and its contents—the like of which it is no boast to say has not been yet seen in these kingdoms—is the feature of this exhibition.

Then, having seen all that is most curious and beautiful—in the fashion in which such things must be seen where there is only a quarter of an hour to see them—the stiff' gold and crimson strands, which we call the procession, came back to the pasha's dais. And then, with a crash and a smash, and a thundering of monster drums, and the rattle and rolling of little drums, and the sharp brassy bark of trumpets, the true English national Old Hundredth, in which musical and unmusical—people with ears, and people without, even people with voices, and people without—can join, then God save the Queen is sung. Sung! Rather fired off! Discharged! Salvoed!

And then the glittering mass begins to dissolve and fade away. The stage, which has been laid out under the pasha's canopy, gradually clears. At the door there is a struggle, and the scatter of new gravel, with the frantic leaping up behind carriages of many footmen, and the closing in of mounted soldiers. And then the pageant melts away, and the work of the day is done.

As I walk and wander from the light glass arcades to the darker courts, and from the courts to the open terraces, and hear the hum of Saxons' voices, and from at least every third mouth the sharp "burr" of some Saxon dialect, and when I meet burly shoulders and massive chests which are not of the country, some out-of-place speculations come into my mind, and I am tempted to make suppositions. First, I speculate—of course shrinking away from the dry bones of politics—whether there might not have been some mistake in the old and constant treatment of a people who seem cheerful and grateful for a kind word or a kinder act, and who are "willing" and even clever in their way—and think whether the "want of progress" and want of "capital" and of "self-reliance," and the want of a hundred other things which puzzle and dispirit the political physician, may not in some degree be laid to the account of old mistakes, old laws, old errors, old harsh treatment, old jealousies and restraints, the folly of which is now seen and admitted, but the fruits of which remain to this day?

Just as the fruits of a bad education linger in a grown man, and the marks of early hardship are stamped upon the face and constitution, it will take many years yet, in the life of a nation, before old faults are worked out of its constitution. And I think—still in the walks of the Winter Garden—that if my friendly Briton tell me that his experience of the lower orders of Irish is that "you can't depend upon a word they say," I cannot but recollect that half a century ago they were civilly slaves, without rights; {829} and that a century ago they were a proscribed caste, against whom one-half the laws of the land were directed. If we have found them indolent, and disinclined to perseverance and the making of money, have we not dim recollections of seeing acts of parliament passed again and again to cripple their trade? A people must grow up, as a child must grow up; and it is hard to expect that a child whose body has suffered by an unkind or an injudicious nurse, should become at once strong under better treatment. Then I speculate on the mysterious relation of Irishmen to Irish land, through which the "bit" of land is as necessary as the "bit" of bread; where a tenant holds his tiny scrap, on which he pays his thirty-shilling rent; and during the whole year is struggling desperately to work out of this great estate a few potatoes, and fewer clothes for himself and family, beside the miserable thirty-shilling margin for the landlord. I think how some estates have two, four, six, eight thousand tenants of this valuable class—and think beside, in answer to a natural objection, how this miserable system was created for political ends, to multiply voters "to support government," If the Palace and Winter Garden were twice as long and twice as broad, I should not have half time or space enough for the speculations that come crowding on me with reference to this perplexing country.

And having made these speculations, and having gone quite round the garden, I begin—in addition to my speculations—to make some rather wild suppositions. As, suppose that, for a mere experiment, there were a greater spirit of charity of speech introduced into our dealings with this country. Suppose that we gave the people time and reasonable allowance—looked on with encouragement where there was any good attempt made, and with indulgence where there was failure. Suppose that some of our journals gave over writing "slashing" articles, and some men desisted from speeches and bitter epigrams on the "mere Irish," which, being copied in every cheap print, and brought to every cabin door, do incalculable mischief, fatally widening the breach, and causing England and Englishmen to be sometimes almost hated. Suppose that there were some little restraint on the traditional stock ridicule of Irish matters. Suppose that the Englishmen who visited the country carried themselves with a little less of William the Conqueror and Strongbow air, and suppose that—

But here are the umbrellas, and the sticks, and the gate.

From Chambers's Journal.

SPEECH.

  Be choice and frugal of thy speech alway:
  The arrow from the engine of the thoughts
  Once shot, is past recall; for scorn is barbed,
  And will not out, but rankles in the wound;
  And calumny doth leave a darkening spot
  On wounded fame, which, as it would infect,
  Marks its sad victim in the eyes of men,
  Till no one dare approach and know the truth.

{830}

From The Lamp.

A VISIT TO THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE.

Our pilgrimage to La Grande Chartreuse was an event in our lives worth remembering. At about half-past five on the morning of the 22d of June we left Lyons. Nothing could have been more auspicious than the brilliant sun and balmy air of that early morning. The birds sang cheerily as we walked from St. Irénée down to the railway station, where our kind friends took leave of us. The country in the neighborhood of Lyons was exceedingly pretty; but as we drew nearer to Grenoble, it became more and more attractive. The railway passes through two ranges of mountains, whose snow-capped summits stood out in beautiful contrast to the azure sky. Our only fellow-traveller was a priest, who for a long time had been intent on his breviary. Amused perhaps at our exclamations of delight, he entered into conversation with us; and we were soon very good friends. He expressed particular interest in the condition of the Catholic Church in England, having heard that there were many conversions in consequence of the hard work doing in our missions. He spoke very highly in favor of a visit to La Grande Chartreuse. He kindly promised always to pray for us, and the conversion of those we had left behind, and to remember us in the mass he was about to offer. We reached Grenoble at about twenty minutes to ten. It will not do to stop to describe the magnificent situation of this old city, completely surrounded as it is with mountains, between the rivers Isère and Drac. Until recently it was a frontier town; a very strong one too, judging from the appearance of the citadel, piled fortress after fortress up the steep mountain side. The cathedral is interesting, as having belonged to St. Hugo, the friend of the great founder of the Grande Chartreuse.

We made an agreement with the driver of a carriage to take us to the Grande Chartreuse; and he promised to take us there in about five hours, and put us down at the door of the convent; so, at least, we understood him. We returned to the hotel, got some refreshment, and started in an open carriage at about twelve o'clock. The road for several miles runs through a richly cultivated valley, with wooded mountains on either side. Everywhere the vine was trained in graceful festoons, and stately walnut and chestnut trees grew along the roadside, shading us from the mid-day sun with their rich foliage. Every now and then we caught beautiful glimpses of the distant Alps, abruptly rising from the green level of the valley, beyond the hills clad with the dark verdure of the pine forests, piled curiously one over another, which run the whole length of the plain, forming the first steps, as it were, of those mighty Alpine mountains which rear their magnificent heights, shrouded in eternal glaciers, behind these graduated ranges. Just before reaching St. Laurent du Pont, what was our astonishment to hear our driver proclaim we should shortly reach our destination! We could not conceive how that could be, for we were evidently approaching a small town. How different it looked from all we had read and heard of La Grande Chartreuse! Our amazement increased when the carriage was driven up in front of a small inn; the driver, getting down, opened the door, and said, with evident satisfaction, "Nous voilà." We demanded an explanation, and his reply was that this was St. Laurent du Pont, and as far as he could take us. Here we {831} could either procure another carriage or mules to carry us up the mountain to the monastery, which we might reach in about two hours.

It was difficult to suppress all the indignation one felt at being so completely taken in; and we threatened the unfortunate driver with all kinds of complaints on our return to Grenoble. There was nothing to be done, so we agreed we had better make the best of it. It was five o'clock, and we could not afford to waste our time in words; so we ordered another carriage, and in a few minutes a most rickety, uninviting conveyance was brought to the door. St. Laurent du Pont is situated at the opening of the narrow gorge leading to the wild solitude where the monastery is built. The scenery was grand and beautiful as we gradually began the ascent about a mile from St. Laurent du Pont, where the mountains closed upon our road, and the rocky stream of the Guiers Mort brawling beneath us. Tall pines and stately trees overshadowed us, rising from the almost naked rocks themselves. One of the great peculiarities of the Chartreuse mountain is the extreme luxuriance of the vegetation, mingled as it is with the huge blocks of limestone, which sometimes formed walls on either side of our way. We had a miserable horse, which stoutly refused to go beyond a sleepy walk, the driver and the horse being of the same dreamy nature. We lost all patience, and got out. No language can adequately describe the enjoyment of that walk. The scenery, so sublimely wild; the sound of the rushing torrent, now far below our road, filled us with awe. The pines, rising like weird giants by the mountain side, mile after mile; the scene changing and becoming more majestic with every curve of the road. Every now and then we crossed a handsomely built stone bridge, erected by the good monks, across the torrent, and passed under several tunnels cut through the rock. The sun was declining, and nothing could exceed the beauty of the evening; we had walked for nearly two hours in almost uninterrupted silence, for there was that in the solemnity of the scene, as we penetrated further into the heart of the desert, which filled one's mind with thoughts and one's soul with feelings which could not be uttered. At length, on a sudden turn in the road, the breeze wafted toward us the sound of the chapel-bell, ringing, we supposed, for vespers. This was truly a most grateful sound to our ears, for we were weary with our walk and the excitement of the scene, and longed for our journey's end. A few steps further, and the vast monastery lay before us. How solemn and silent it looked! The tones of the bell, how sweetly musical they were! To listen to them, to gaze on that gray pile, and, high above it, on the lofty snow-capped peaks of the mountains, was an indescribable rest. How wonderfully grand was that mountain top! and far beyond the forests of pine rose still more distant mountain peaks, ascending until they reached the very skies, now gilded with all the glories of a setting sun. It filled one with peace the thought of all the centuries that that vast pile had lasted; of the long ages the voices of the monks had mingled with the varied voices of nature in one hymn of praise to the almighty Creator of all. We waited until the arrival of our carriage interrupted our musings. It could go no further; so, followed by the driver carrying our baggage, we walked up to the door of the convent of the Soeurs de la Providence, where we were most hospitably received. A friendly sister took us to our cells, and said supper would shortly be ready. The blazing logs of pine in a huge fireplace in the refectory were most cheering, for the evening air was quite cold in these high regions even at the close of a hot June day. A maigre supper was served at half-past seven. We were amused to hear that it had all been cooked by the monks, and sent to us from the monastery, {832} where nothing but maigre is ever allowed.

From eight to nine we walked round the monastery, following a path close to the dark pine forest, which forms the background to the building. We could look down from this height upon the cells, church, and little gardens of the monks. Returning toward the hospice, we met the reverend mother and a sister; they took us into the little chapel where we were to hear mass the following morning. It was very plain and small; there was a grille in front of the altar, on which the blessed sacrament was not reserved. What a trial this must be to the good sisters!

At half-past nine, rev. mother advised our retiring to our cells, as we were to be up early the next morning, and en route for St. Bruno's chapel by half-past four. A very intelligent young guide was provided us; he told us he had spent his life with the fathers, and hoped to live there to the end. He was extremely communicative and willing to answer all our questions.

There are about forty monks in this monastery, beside several lay brothers. The monks live each in his cell, which has a little garden attached to it. They maintain silence, excepting on Sundays and great festivals, and during their Monday walk together through the desert for four hours. They eat alone in their cells, excepting on Sundays; each one's maigre meal is passed by a lay brother from the cloister through a little turn into his cell. On Sundays they go to the choir at all the hours except complin; on other days they only go to sing matins and lauds at midnight; for high mass and vespers; the other hours are recited in their cells. Women are not only excluded their enclosure, but even their church, under pain of excommunication. It was very tantalizing to hear of their solemn midnight office, sung as it is in darkness; each monk takes with him into choir a dark lantern, and for each antiphon he does not know opens a slide which throws the light on it. It must have a wonderful effect these sudden flashes of light, lighting up the Chartreux, clothed in their white woollen habits, with their patriarchal beards and hooded heads. Beside the divine office, they say the office of our Blessed Lady, and, almost every day, the office of the dead. Their library was plundered by the revolutionists, and now forms the public library at Grenoble, one of the finest small collections of books in France. Nearly all this we learnt from our guide while walking up to the chapel of St. Bruno. Before we reached it, far into the midst of a dark forest, we came to the chapel called De Casalibus, erected upon the very spot where the first convent stood, which was destroyed by an avalanche. The chapel of St. Bruno is built over the same rock under which he dwelt, beside a gushing spring, his only beverage, which supplies the monastery to this day.

The chapel is about an hour's walk above the present monastery. It is very plain, but adorned with frescoes, representing some of the early fathers of the order. A most beautiful altar stands at one end of it, of exquisitely carved Italian marbles, on which has been placed the same altar-stone on which St. Bruno celebrated the holy mysteries; behind this is a basso-relievo of St. Bruno, with our Blessed Lady appearing to him, beautifully executed. We lingered here awhile, loth to leave so holy a spot. The guide told us that there are frequently as many as sixty masses said in the Chartreuse church in one morning. Many hundred priests make their annual retreat here. What place, indeed, could they find more fitting for the repose their souls thirst for! Here truly they might die to the world and all its allurements, and meditate in peace on the deep mysteries of God and eternity. We descended the mountain to assist at the offering of the holy sacrifice at seven o'clock in the little chapel we had {833} visited on the previous evening, It was a great joy to make our communion in this vast mountain solitude, where all combined to elevate the soul to God. We had hoped a Carthusian would say mass, but in this were disappointed, for a secular priest had been requested to do so by the ladies of his party.

At the Homo factus est of the Credo, the fathers prostrate themselves on the ground, and the mode of celebrating mass is strange, and differs in many points from the ordinary mass of seculars. As the blessed sacrament was not reserved in the chapel, we preferred finishing our thanksgiving beneath the blue sky on the skirts of the forest of pines. After breakfast we tasted the celebrated liqueur made by the monks from the wild mountain flowers. It was very good; there was a certain charm in taking it on the spot where it was made. We had a talk with the reverend mother, and left with her a long list of intentions to be given to the fathers, asking especially their prayers for the conversion of England. This, we were thankful to hear, was frequently an object of their devotions. Before leaving, our curiosity to see some of the fathers was gratified; for two came out to give instructions to some workmen. We began to descend the mountain at about half-past eight, arrived at St. Laurent du Pont about ten, and as soon as our carriage of the previous day was ready started for Grenoble. Once the horse came to a dead stop, and we fancied the driver wished to prolong our journey as long as he could, that we might have no time for making the threatened complaints on reaching Grenoble. As it was, we arrived there five minutes before the time fixed for our departure at half past-one. There was hardly a minute to get anything to eat beyond some fruit and bread which we took with us. So the driver escaped his punishment, after all.

From The Reader.

DEATH BY LIGHTNING.

People in general imagine, if they think at all about the matter, that an impression upon the nerves—a blow, for example, or the prick of a pin—is felt the moment it is inflicted. But this is not the case. The nerves are not the repositories of sensation; they are but the conductors of the motion which produces sensation. The seat of sensation is the brain, and to it the intelligence of any injury done to the nerves has to be transmitted, before that injury becomes manifest in consciousness. The transmission, moreover, requires time, and the consequence is, that a wound inflicted at a portion of the body distant from the brain is more tardily appreciated than one inflicted adjacent to the brain. By an extremely ingenious experimental arrangement, Helmholtz has determined the velocity of nervous transmission both in warm-blooded and cold-blooded animals. In a frog, he found the velocity to be about eighty feet a second, or less than one-thirteenth of the velocity of sound in air. If this holds good, which it probably does, in the case of a whale, then a creature of this class, eighty feet long, if wounded in the tail, would not, as Helmholtz has remarked, be conscious of the injury till a second after the wound had been inflicted. But this is not the only ingredient in the delay that occurs between the impression on {834} the nerves and the consciousness of the impression. There can scarcely be a doubt that to every act of consciousness belongs a determinate molecular arrangement of the brain—that every thought or feeling has its physical correlative in that organ; and nothing can be more certain than that every physical change, whether molecular or mechanical, requires time for its accomplishment. So that, even after the intelligence of an impression, made upon a distant portion of the body, has reached the brain, a still further time is necessary for the brain itself to put its house in order—for its molecules to take up the position necessary to the completion of consciousness. Helmholtz considers one-tenth of a second necessary for this purpose. Thus, in the case of the whale above supposed, we have first one second consumed in the transmission of intelligence through the sensor nerves from the tail to the head; one-tenth of a second is required by the brain to become conscious of the intelligence it has received; and, if the velocity of transmission through the motor be the same as that through the sensor nerves, a second would be consumed in sending a command to the tail to defend itself. Thus more than two seconds would elapse before an impression made upon its caudal nerves could be responded to by a whale eighty feet long.

Now, it is quite conceivable that an injury might be inflicted which would render the nerves unfit to be the conductors of the motion which results in sensation; and if such a thing occurred, no matter how severe the injury might be, we should not be conscious of it. Or it may be, that long before the time required for the brain itself to complete the arrangement necessary for the act of consciousness, its power of arrangement might be wholly suspended. In such case also, though the injury might be of such a nature as to cause death, this would occur not only without pain, but absolutely without feeling of any kind.

Death, in this case, would be simply the sudden negation of life, accomplished without any intervention of consciousness. Doubtless, there are many kinds of death of this character. The passage of a musket bullet through the brain is a case in point; and the placid aspect of a man thus killed is in perfect accordance with the conclusion which might be drawn à priori from the experiments of Helmholtz. Cases of insensibility, moreover, are not uncommon, which do not result in death, and after which the person affected has been able to testify that no pain was felt prior to the loss of consciousness.

The time required for a rifle-bullet to pass clean through a man's head may be roughly estimated at one-thousandth of a second. Here, therefore, we should have no room for sensation, and death would be painless. But there are other actions which far transcend in rapidity that of the rifle-bullet. A flash of lightning cleaves a cloud, appearing and disappearing in less than one-hundred-thousandth of a second, and the velocity of electricity is such as would carry it over a distance equal to that which separates the earth and moon in a single second. It is well known that a luminous impression once made upon the retina endures for about one-sixth of a second, and that this is the reason why we see a ribbon of light when a glowing coal is caused to pass rapidly through the air. A body illuminated by an instantaneous flash continues to be seen for the sixth of a second after the flash has become extinct; and if the body thus illuminated be in motion, it appears at rest at the place which it occupied when the flash fell upon it. The color-top is familiar to most of us. By this instrument a disk with differently colored sectors is caused to rotate rapidly; the colors blend together, and if they are chosen in the proportions necessary to form white light, the disk appears white when the motion is sufficiently rapid. Such a top, rotating {835} in a dark room, and illuminated by an electric spark, appears motionless, each distinct color being clearly seen. Professor Dove has found that a flash of lightning produces the same effect. During a thunder-storm he put a color-top in exceedingly rapid motion, and found that every flash revealed the top as a motionless object with colors distinct. If illuminated solely by a flash of lightning, the motion of all bodies on the earth's surface would, as Dove has remarked, appear suspended. A cannon-ball, for example, would have its flight apparently arrested, and would seem to hang motionless in space as long as the luminous impression which revealed the ball remained upon the eye.

If, then, a rifle-bullet move with sufficient rapidity to destroy life without the interposition of sensation, much more is a flash of lightning competent to produce this effect. Accordingly, we have well authenticated cases of people being struck senseless by lightning who, on recovery, had no memory of pain. The following circumstantial case is described by Hemmer: On the 30th of June, 1788, a soldier in the neighborhood of Manheim, being overtaken by rain, placed himself under a tree, beneath which a woman had previously taken shelter. He looked upward to see whether the branches were thick enough to afford the required protection, and, in doing so, was struck by lightning, and fell senseless to the earth. The woman at his side experienced the shock in her foot, but was not struck down. Some hours afterward the man revived, but knew nothing about what had occurred, save the fact of his looking up at the branches. This was his last act of consciousness, and he passed from the conscious to the unconscious condition without pain. The visible marks of a lightning stroke are usually insignificant: the hair is sometimes burnt; slight wounds are observed; while, in some instances, a red streak marks the track of the discharge over the skin.

The effects of a shock of artificial lightning on a gentleman of our acquaintance, who is very sensitive to the electric discharge, may be here described. Under ordinary circumstances the discharge from a small Leyden jar is exceedingly unpleasant to him. Some time ago he happened to stand in the presence of a numerous audience, with a battery of fifteen large Leyden jars charged beside him. Through some awkwardness on his part, he touched a wire which he had no right to touch, and the discharge of the battery went through his body. Here life was absolutely blotted out for a very sensible interval, without a trace of pain. In a second or two consciousness returned; the recipient of the shock saw himself in the presence of his audience and apparatus, and by the help of these external facts immediately concluded that he had received the battery discharge. His intellectual consciousness of his position was restored with exceeding rapidity, but not so his optical consciousness. To prevent the audience from being alarmed, he observed that it had often been his desire to receive accidentally such a shock, and that his wish had at length been fulfilled. But while making this remark, the appearance which his body presented to him was that of a number of separate pieces. The arms, for example, were detached from the trunk, and seemed suspended in the air. In fact, memory, and the power of reasoning, appeared to be complete long before the optic nerve was restored to healthy action. But what we wish chiefly to dwell upon here is, the absolute painlessness of the shock; and there cannot be a doubt, to a person struck dead by lightning, the passage from life to death occurs without consciousness being in the least degree implicated. It is an abrupt stoppage of sensation, unaccompanied by a pang.

{836}

From The Dublin University Magazine

LONDON.

A Dublin saunterer of antiquarian propensities pacing the flags in front of Christ church, or elbowing his troublesome way down the narrow defile called Castle street, can scarcely escape a certain sense of awe as he looks on the houses and the passengers, and darts a thought back through dim and troubled time till he strives to arrive at an idea of' the first inhabitants and the scene in which they played out their short parts.

Passing over the mysterious and weak race that preceded the Gaels, he fancies these last in their quaint garb going about their ordinary occupations, or rushing to their earth mounds and dykes to repel the fierce Northmen. Then pass before his mind's eye the successive races of different speech, and different garb, and different interests—the Danes, Dano-Celts, and the Anglo Normans, employed in fierce struggles with each other, and each looking on the events of his own times as paramount to all that ever agitated society till then. All now quiet and silent in the dust. The shopkeeper attending to his customers, the tippler stepping into the corner shop for a dram, and the carman smoking his pipe, and giving his beast a mouthful of hay, are as unconscious of any personal connection with the dead generations as if they had sprung full grown and furnished with clothing from the fat glebe of the neighboring Phoenix Park.

So would feel still more intensely an archaeologist on Tower Hill, or by the Fleet Ditch, or on London Bridge, if the ever hurrying and feverish crowd would allow him to concentrate his thoughts on anything.

How it should make the feelings of the most dried up anatomy of an archaeologist glow, when, throwing his thoughts nearly nineteen centuries back, he sees the mighty robber conducting his band, guarded by strong defences of bronze, and leather, and wood, to the bank of the then clear river, and preparing to invest and destroy that ill-armed but heroic body of brave men on the other side, who, in defence of their weak children, and loving and high-souled wives and daughters, will soon send many an armed and ruthless Roman soldier to shiver on the cold banks of Styx.

And what was the profit of all the plotting, and all the unjust warfare, waged by men single or in masses against those they considered their foemen? They shortened the career of their opponents, they shortened their own lives. They preferred a short and turbulent existence to the longer and quieter span intended for them, they passed away, and were either speedily forgotten, or remembered but to be cursed.

It is a bewildering occupation to a stranger to contemplate a map of London in order to acquire some distinct notion of the number and arrangement of the streets (an idea of the inhabitants is out of the question), to ponder how the countless multitude can be fed and clothed, and to reflect that if old mother earth should lose her fruit-bearing qualities for one year, how little would avail the beauty, the bravery, the wit, the ingenuity, the industry, and the intelligence of the three million inhabitants, to prevent the circuit of famed London from becoming a vast charnel-house.

Our earliest historians were the poets, these were succeeded by the romancers. Geoffry of Monmouth, translating the "Chronicle of Kings" brought from Brittany, informed the {837} people of the twelfth century that Brutus, great-grandson of Eneas, after many voyages and adventures, founded a town about where the Tower has long stood, and called it New Troy. This was afterward changed to Trinobantum. Lud, brother to Cassibelan, again gave it his own name—Caer Lud. Hence Ludstown softened to London. Other derivations for the city's name are not at all rare. From the Celtic words Leana, marsh or meadow; Linn, a pool; Lung, or Long, a ship; and Dunn, a fort, it is easy to make out the fort among the meadows, the fort of the pool, or the fort of the ships. The sister city, Dublin, is simply black pool.

As ancient Dublin occupied at first only the hill of which the castle occupies the south-eastern spur, so Tower Hill, Ludgate Hill, Cornhill, and Holborn Hill, formed the site of the original British Dun or Duns. Hence the most interesting portion of London to an antiquary must include those places of strength. But as the more easterly eminences have much longer ceased to be fashionable than our Fishamble and Essex streets, and the traditions of London literary characters from the time of Elizabeth date from regions further west, most writers choose to expatiate on the buildings that lie between Whitehall and Temple Bar, and on the remarkable personages and incidents connected with them. Charles Knight was unable to say his say concerning the modern Babylon in fewer than six royal octavo volumes, and the portly octavo lately put forth by Mr. Thornbury is concerned with a very small area of the city, Temple Bar being at its south-east angle, and the Strand, St. Martin's lane, Holborn, and Chancery lane its boundaries.

THE STRAND.

Temple Bar, that narrow neck through which the struggling sands find their way with difficulty from the Strand and the Fleet portions of the great hour-glass, and which is looked on by shallow readers as a relic of hoar antiquity, dates only from 1670, four years after the great fire. It forms the point of junction between the cities of London and Westminster, and in early times was only provided with posts, rails, and a chain. These were succeeded by a wooden house with a narrow gate-way and a passage on one side. The present structure is incumbered with the statues of Elizabeth, James I., Charles I., and Charles II., all distinguished, according to Mr. Thornbury, by feeble heads, crimped drapery, and feet and hands kept whitish by the rain, the non-projecting portions of the bodies rejoicing in more than a century of dark atmospheric deposits.

Mr. Thornbury's selection includes the long line of palaces that once adorned the Strand or River-bank street, the haunts of artists in St. Martin's lane, the traditions of Long Acre, the reminiscences connected with Drury lane, and the old houses of the nobility in Lincoln's-Inn Fields.

One of the most remarkable of the fine buildings of the Strand is that which bears the name of the ambitious brother of Jane Seymour, the Duke of Somerset, who boasted that he could muster retainers to the number of 10,000. To erect his palace, which, by the way, was unfinished at his death, he demolished the parish church of St. Mary, and pulled down the houses of the bishops of Worcester, Llandaff, and Lichfield. He would also have appropriated St. Margaret's at Westminster, but the mob would not sanction the sacrilege. "Moreover, he destroyed a chapel in St. Paul's Church-yard, with a cloister containing the Dance of Death, and a charnel-house (burying the bones in unconsecrated ground)." To crown his acts of rapine he stole the stone of a church of St. John near Smithfield. It is not worth mentioning the carrying away of the stone of the Strand Inn, it being the property of the lawyers, who could afford to be robbed.

{838}

The Danish consort of our Solomon I. here delighted all who had no objection to spectacles, in which the handsome queen and her ladies masqueraded to their own and their admirers' content. Rare Ben Jonson was surely elated by the lists of royal and noble personages who presented his masques. From this same noble residence Charles I. had some trouble in dislodging the Gallic followers of his sturdy queen, with whom his hard-headed and wooden-shoe-abhorring subjects had come to be at deadly feud. As they were rather too tedious in "shifting the halter, and traversing the cart," the poor king was obliged to write thus to Buckingham:

"STEENIE,—I have received your letter by Dick Greame. This is my answer. I command you to send all the French away to-morrow out of the town, if you can by fair means (but stick not long in disputing), otherwise force them away, driving them away like so many wild beasts until you have shipped them, and the—go with them! Let me hear no answer but of the performance of my command. So I rest, "Your faithful, constant, loving friend, C. R. "Oaking, the seventh of August, 1626."

"The French inventing all sorts of vexatious delays, the yeomen of the guard at last jostled them out, carting them off in nearly forty coaches. They arrived at Dover after four days' tedious travelling, wrangling and bewailing."

Queen Henrietta taking part in a masque at Christmas in 1632-3, and Prynne's Histriomastix happening to be published the next day, the poor man lost his ears for an uncomplimentary remark on women-actors, which was found in the margin, though it could not possibly have been written with any reference to the queen's appearance on that occasion.

To Somerset House returned Henrietta Maria after the restoration, and there the garrulous Pepys paid his respects to her as well as to Madame Castlemaine. "By-and-by, in came the king and Duke and Duchess of York. The conversation was not a very decorous one, and the young queen (Catherine of Braganza) said to Charles, 'you lie,' which made good sport, as the chuckling and delighted Pepys remarks, those being the first English words he had heard her say; and the king then tried to make her reply, 'confess and be hanged.'"

The most striking object in the old days of the Strand was the new Maypole which replaced the old one taken down by Oliver's Parliament. It was of cedar wood, 134 feet high, and stood in front of the church of St. Mary. It was brought in two pieces from below Bridge, the splicing made secure by iron bands, three crowns fastened toward its top, and then the tall article was raised by twelve sailors to a vertical position, and firmly imbedded. The operation was happily accomplished under the superintendence of the Duke of York in four hours. Then sounded trumpets and drums; and morris-dancers in motley attire, and enlivened by the music of pipe and tabor, danced in glee around it, while thousands of throats became hoarse with loyal shouting. James would have found little enjoyment in the general glee, if he could at the moment have had a prophetic glimpse of his wife, with her infant son folded to her breast, pacing along the river bank in doubt and fear, and watching for the friendly boat that was to convey her from the unfriendly city.

When the pole that succeeded this was obliged to abdicate, it was presented to Sir Isaac Newton, who again presented it to the rector of Wanstead, and in Wanstead park it helped to support the largest telescope then known.

From this memorable if unedifying goal, Pope started the racers in the Dunciad:

{839}

  "Amidst the area wide they took their stand,
  Where the tall maypole once o'erlooked the Strand;
  But now, as Anne and piety ordain,
  A church collects the saints of Drury lane."

In the old palace of the Savoy once lived John of Gaunt; John, King of France, the Black Prince's captive, died there; George Wither, the poet, is buried there; and there also was Geoffry Chaucer married. Simon, earl of Montfort, once lived within its precincts; but where kings, archbishops, and high nobles once walked and held high council, pickles are now sold, printing types set up, and glass rolled out and spun.

Wat Tyler's mob being forbidden to plunder, and supposing a couple of barrels to contain money, flung them into a great fire. The money, alas, was gunpowder, as in the Dunleary ballad, and blew up the great hall, shook down the neighboring houses, killed sundry of the social reformers, and reduced the palace to ruins.

Henry VII. instituted within its precincts a house of refuge for every indigent person passing down the River-side-road, and by a natural process of abuse the poor wayfarers derived little advantages from it. Loiterers, sham cripples, and vagabonds of both sexes begged abroad all day, and came in the evening to the Savoy to sup and sleep. Edward VI. transferred a good portion of its revenue to Bridewell Prison and Christ's Hospital. Mary replaced the charity on its old footing, much to the enjoyment of inveterate beggars; but Elizabeth in her turn disagreeably surprised the lazy inmates and the corrupt governor, and they had to look out for victims in other quarters.

The building had not lost its privilege of sheltering imposture and knavery in the last century, having served as an asylum for fraudulent debtors in Queen Anne's time; it became the darling haunt of such chaplains as Mr. Lever's Reverend Paul; and in 1754 we find in the Public Advertiser this precious document put forth by them:

"BY AUTHORITY.—Marriages performed with the utmost privacy, secrecy, and regularity, at the ancient royal chapel of St. John the Baptist in the Savoy, where regular and authentic registers have been kept from the time of the reformation (being two hundred years and upward) to this day, the expense not being more than one guinea, the five-shilling stamp included. There are five private ways to this chapel by land, and two by water."

Wither, the Cromwellian poet, who had a hard time of it after the restoration, lies in the Savoy. Denman, petitioning for his life, used this ingenious device: "As long as Wither lives, I shall not be considered the worst poet in England."

It is not easy to a passenger sauntering or hurrying down the Strand at this day, admiring the facade of Somerset House, glancing into the windows of rich shops, elbowing his way through an eager and bustling crowd, and having his ears stunned by the thundering rumble of cabs, busses, and wagons, to fancy it once a sandy and marshy road, and the footpath very disagreeable to the feet, and interfered with by bushes and thickets. Three water-courses from the northern fields found their way across it to the river, and these were spanned by three bridges. The building of Westminster Abbey encouraged the erection of the first houses along the River-side-way, but the bad state of the road made a subject for a petition so late as the reign of Edward II.

PUBLISHING IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

Of the coffee-houses in the neighborhood of the Strand and Fleet street frequented by the witty and the learned from the restoration to the close of last century, we shall gladly speak if our limits permit. Meanwhile, being on a literary subject, we must not omit to mention that the father of {840} Mudie's and all other circulating libraries in London, was established at 132 Strand, in 1740, by a bookseller named Bathoe.

Had there been such establishments in Pepys' time, they would have saved him some money and some trouble. Witness his disappointment about "Hudibras:"

"26th of September, 1662. To the Wardrobe. Hither come Mr. Battersby, and we falling into discourse of a new book of drollery in use, called 'Hudibras,' I would needs go find it out, and met with it at the Temple; cost me 2s. 6d. But when I come to read it, it is so silly an abuse of the presbyter-knight going to the wars, that I am ashamed at it, and meeting at Mr. Townsend's at dinner, I sold it him for 18d." (The new book of drollery continuing to be the rage), "February 6th, 1663. To a bookseller's in the Strand, and there bought 'Hudibras' again. I am resolved once more to read him, and see whether I can find him an example of wit or no." (Success very doubtful.) "28th November. To Paul's Church-yard, and there looked upon the second part of 'Hudibras,' which I buy not, but borrow to read." (He bought it a few days after, however.) "The world hath mightily cried up this book, though it hath not a good liking in me, though I had tried but (by?) two or three times reading to bring myself to think it witty."

We find him a few days after these researches purchasing "Fuller's Worthies," the "Cabbala, or Collection of Letters of State," "Les Delices de Holland," and "Hudibras" again, "now in great fashion for drollery, though I cannot, I confess, see enough where the wit lies."

Pepys' great acquaintances seem to have discovered this sore spot in his mental configuration, and to have angered it oftentimes by quoting "Hudibras" at him, and chuckling over the fun, which, alas, was the reverse of fun to him.

It was long after the introduction of printing into the country that bookseller's shops became an institution. At and before the time of the great fire, St. Paul's Church-yard was the chief bookselling mart. On the 31st November, 1660, Pepys bought a copy of the play of Henry IV. in that place, "and so went to the new theatre, and saw it acted, but my expectation being too great, it did not please me as otherwise I believe it would, and my having a book did, I believe, spoil it a little."

Poor Pepys! A leaf out of the scandalous chronicle of the court would have interested him more than all the wit and wisdom of Shakespeare. He tells us in his diary how his wife and he laughed a whole evening over a pamphlet written about the queen.

The fire destroyed thousands of fine works in the Church-yard; and so much was the value of books increased, that Ricaut's "Turkey," 8s. before the fire, could not be got under 55s. after it.

Later in time, Little Britain, from Duck-lane to the Pump, became a literary quarter. When Benjamin Franklin first visited London he took lodgings in Little Britain at 3s. 6d, per week, next door to a bookseller's, from whom, as circulating libraries were not in vogue, he purchased volumes, read them, sold them again to the same man, and bought others.

A great deal of information on bookselling and other subjects that interested the people near 200 years since, may be obtained from the perusal of the "Life and Errors of John Dunton," bookseller, an autobiography. The son of a clergyman in Huntingdonshire, he says he learned Latin so as to speak it pretty well extempore, but he could not get on well with the Greek; and this, coupled with an affection entertained for a "virgin in his father's house," such passion carefully concealed from its object, completely unhinged the classical and clerical designs of his father on him. He became a bookseller's apprentice, and in {841} 1685 a bookseller in his own person. He speaks very disparagingly of the mere men of letters of his day. He says, good simple-minded man, that what they got per sheet interested them more than zeal for the advancement of literature. Very little we blame the poor fellows, but they were really inexcusable for pretending to have ransacked the whole Bodleian Library, to have gone through the fathers, and to have read and digested all human and ecclesiastical history, while they had never mastered a single page in "St. Cyprian," nor could tell whether the fathers lived before or after our Saviour.

That was the golden age of sermons and pamphlets, the latter occupying the place of our monthlies. Mr. John Dunton's first essay in the publishing line was "The Sufferings of Christ," by the Rev. Mr. Doolittle. All the trade took copies in exchange for their own books, a feature peculiar to the business 160 years since. John throve and took a helpmate to himself, not Mrs. Mary Saunders, the virgin before mentioned. The beautiful Rachel Seaton, the innocent Sarah Day, the religious Sarah Briscow, had successively paled the image of the preceding lady in the mirror of his rather susceptible heart, and at the end he became the fond husband of Miss Annesley, daughter of a nonconformist divine. The happy pair always called each other by the endearing and poetic names of Iris and Philaret, but this tender attachment did not prevent Philaret from leaving Iris alone, and making excursions to Ireland, to America, and to Holland, and delaying in those regions for long periods. These separations and distant wanderings did not tend to make our bookseller's old age comfortable and independent.

Dunton has left an interesting account of most of the then eminent booksellers in the three kingdoms. He says that in general they were not much better than knaves and atheists. He also gave information of the writers he employed, the licensers of the press, etc. It would appear that the publishing business of the time was in a very vigorous condition. The shoals of pamphlets satisfied the literary hunger of those to whom, if they lived in the nineteenth century, Athenaeums and Examiners, Chambers's Journals and All the Year Rounds, would be as necessary as atmospheric air. The chief booksellers of that day, if not to be compared with continental Alduses or Stephenses or Elzevirs, were men of good literary taste and much information. Of the booksellers amber-preserved in the "Dunciad," Dunton mentions only Lintot and Tonson. The disreputable Curll was not known in his day. This genius, embalmed in the hearts of the rascally paper-men of Holywell street, being once condemned for a vile publication, and promoted to the pillory, cunningly averted the wrath of the mob by a plentiful distribution of handbills, in which he stated his offence to be a pamphlet complimentary to the memory of good Queen Anne. Edward Cave, in starting the Gentleman's Magazine, 31st January, 1731, gave healthy employment to many a pamphleteer, though he diminished the number of separate pamphlets.

BEN JONSON AND LINCOLN'S INN.

Our fancy to speak of books, and their writers and sellers, has led us aside from the area marked out by Mr. Thornbury for his own explorations, so we must return to bounds, within which we find Lincoln's-Inn Fields. These inns were originally established as places of entertainment, where pilgrims and other travellers were hospitably attended by the monks. The town houses of noblemen were also called inns, just as in Paris they were styled hostels. The inn in question derives its name from the Earl of Lincoln, Henry de Lacy, to whom it was granted by Edward I. Many eminent men have used chambers in Lincoln's Inn, since it became the resort {842} of legal students. Sir Thomas More had chambers there, and there Dr. Donne, the poetical divine, attempted to study law in his seventeenth year. Dr. Tillotson preached to the lawyers (with what effect is not told) in 1663, our own Archbishop Ussher in 1647. Sir Mathew Hale was at first a wild student of Lincoln's Inn, till reclaimed by the sight of a drunkard seized by a fit. Shaftesbury; Ashmole, the antiquary; Prynne, of pillory notoriety; Secretary Thurloe; Sir John Denham; George Wither, omitting mention of modern celebrities, all endeavored to penetrate the mysteries of law and equity in this long-enduring institution.

One of the most remarkable, though not the most reputable, of lawyers connected with Lincoln's Inn was Sir Edmund Saunders, who gave his aid to the crown while endeavoring, in 1683, to overthrow the charter of London. The following extract concerning him is taken from Granger: "Sir Edmund Saunders was originally a strolling beggar about the streets, without known parents or relations. He came often to beg scraps at Clement's Inn, where he was taken notice of for his uncommon sprightliness; and as he expressed a strong inclination to learn to write, one of the attorney's clerks taught him, and soon qualified him for a hackney writer. He took all opportunities of improving himself by reading such books as he borrowed from his friends; and in the course of a few years became an able attorney and a very eminent counsel. His practice in the Court of King's Bench was exceeded by none. His art and cunning was equal to his knowledge, and he gained many a cause by laying snares. If he was detected he was never put out of countenance, but evaded the matter with a jest, which he had always at hand. He was much employed by the king (Charles II.) against the city of London in the business of the Quo Warranto. His person was as heavy and ungain as his wit was alert and sprightly. He is said to have been a mere lump of morbid flesh. The smell from him was so offensive that people held their noses when he came into court. One of his jests on such occasions was, 'That none could say he wanted issue, for he had no less than nine on his back.'"

The literary students of the inn, as they sit in their lonely chambers, or converse with their comrades, Arthur Pendennis and Mr. Warrington, in the pleasant grounds, delight to fancy brave old Ben Jonson helping to raise the wall on the Chancery lane side, and reciting a passage from Homer. Whether Sutton or Camden sent him back to college to pursue his studies is not so certain. His fighting single-handed in Flanders in the sight of the two armies, and the subsequent carrying away of the "Spolia Opima" of his foeman, were in strict accordance with the practice of the heroes of his studies. His college life and his deeds in foreign fields were all over in his twenty-third year, 1597, when we find him a player and writer for the stage in London; his critics asserting that he walked the boards as if he were treading mortar. Poor Ben, with a countenance compared to a rotten russet apple, and described by himself as remarkable for a "mountain belly and a rocky face," was equally ragged in temper. Quarreling with a brother actor, he killed him in a duel in Hogsden Fields, and was brought very near the gallows-foot for his non-command of temper. He had not the gentle character nor the expansive intellect of his friend, the "Gentle Shakespeare," nor did his characters embrace entire humanity, nor did he possess the soaring and far-seizing imagination of his brother poet and player, but he more closely pictured the modes of society in which they moved, the social and politic features of the locality and the era; all those outward manifestations, in fact, that distinguish the intercourse, and the morals, and the character of this or that locality or time, from those of {843} its neighbors. Hence a better idea can be had of the scenic features of Old London, and the costumes, the idioms, and usages of its people at the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth century, from the literary remains of Ben Jonson than from those of William Shakespeare. Aubrey remarked that "Shakespeare's comedies would remain wit as long as the English tongue is understood; while our present writers reflect so much upon particular persons and coxcombeties, that twenty years hence they will not be understood."

London was Ben Jonson's world; its people, such as they appeared to him, the whole human race. The humorists that he knew were reproduced with the utmost truth—and the class-modes and manners that came under his observation were sketched from and to the life. There was local truth of costume and character, but little generalization. Illustrative instances abound in all his plays and poems. In Elizabeth's time, Finsbury Fields were covered with trees and windmills. So we find Master Stephen ("Every Man in his Humor"), who dwells at Hogsden (Hoxton), despising the archers of Finsbury and the citizens that come a-ducking to Islington Ponds. "The Strand was the chief road for ladies to pass through in their coaches, and there Lafoole in the 'Silent Woman' has a lodging to watch when ladies are gone to the china houses or the exchange, that he may meet them by chance, and give them presents. The general character of the streets before the fire is not forgotten. In 'The Devil is an Ass' the lady and her lover speak closely and gently from the windows of two contiguous buildings. Such are a few of the examples of the local proprieties which constantly turn up in Jonson's dramas."

To those who accuse rare Ben of intemperate habits it is useless to object that he lashed intemperance and the other vices of his time as severely as the most rigid moralist could; there are too many instances extant of the sons of Satan correcting sin in their speeches and writings. However, the club at the Mermaid in Friday street to which he belonged, consisted of such men as we cannot suppose to be of intemperate habits, nor willing to cherish a noted drunkard. For Sir Walter Raleigh, Shakespeare, Beaumont, Fletcher, Selden, Cotton, Carew, Martin, Donne, flashes of wit, and sallies of imagination, and touches of genial humor, had more charms then beastly wallowing in liquor. Hear what Jonson himself says in his invitation to a friend to supper where canary, his darling liquor, was to flow:

  "Of this we will sup free but moderately,
  Nor shall our cups make any guilty men,
  But at our parting we will be as when
  We innocently met. No simple word
  That shall be uttered at our mirthful board
  Shall make us sad next morning, or affright
  The liberty that we'll enjoy to-night."

It was to the middle aisle of the old cathedral of St. Paul's that Jonson and others like him resorted to obtain such wayward and grotesque characters as would take the attention of an audience. It was the favorite lounge at the time of coxcombs, bullies, adventurers, and cut-purses. Here a new man, wishing to be in the height of fashion, would bring his tailor, and set him to mark the garb of the foremost gallant in vogue. Country squires anxious for a varnishing of courtly polish, would be found there observing the dress and demeanor of the people of fashion, and afterward flinging away the produce of their good lands in entertainments shared with these envied darlings of the courtly goddess. Captain Bobadil, we may be certain, was met among the crowd at Paul's. Here it was that all those niceties of the mode which crop up through his plays were observed. In the "Midas" of Lily, quoted by Charles Knight in his "London," are found collected several of these distinctive marks of the courtier comme il faut:

"How will you be trimmed, sir? Will you have your beard like a spade {844} or a bodkin? A pent-house on your upper lip, or an alley on your chin? A low curl on your head like a bull, or dangling locks like a spaniel? Your mustachioes sharp at the end like shoemakers' awls, or hanging down to your mouth like goat's flakes? Your love-locks wreathed like a silken twist, or shaggy, to fall on your shoulder?"

Few dramatists in his or our days would venture to speak so fearlessly to his audience as honest Ben Jonson:

  "If any here chance to behold himself,
  Let him not dare to challenge me of wrong;
  For if he shame to have his follies known,
  First he should shame to act 'em. My strict hand
  Was made to seize on vice, and with a gripe,
  Squeeze out the humor of such spongy souls
  As lick up every idle vanity."

Our bard was not left to struggle with the hardships of an ordinary theatrical career. He was employed to compose the plots and verses of the stately and splendid masques in which Elizabeth, and Anne of Denmark, and her "Royal Doggie" delighted. Had space permitted, we should gladly have quoted some of the verses and stage directions of these court shows. Among the rest is an Irish masque in which Dennish, Donnell, Dermott, and Patrick come in their long glibbs and shaggy mantles to present their compliments to King Yamish, and congratulate him on the marriage of some lord or other. Having been roughly received by the janitors, they sounded their grievance aloud:

"Don.—Ish it te fashion to beate te imbashaters here? and knock 'hem o' te head phit te phoite stick?"

"Der.—Ant make ter meshage run out a ter mouthsh before tey shpeake vit te king?"

They announce their intention to dance as well as that of their masters, who as yet stand outside:

"Don.—But tey musht eene come, and daunch i' teyr mantles, and show tee how teye can foot te fading and te fadow, and te phip a dunboyne I trow."

"Der.—Tey will fight for tee, King Yamish, and for my mishtress tere." [Footnote: 203]

[Footnote 203: As out of all late or still living writers, not natives of Ireland, there are not three who quote our peasant-pronunciation correctly, so it is more than probable that Jonson, acute as his observation was, mistook the pronunciation of his own day.]

After much soft-sawder about their love and their loyalty to Shamus, six men and boys danced to bagpipes and other rude music. Then the Irish gentlemen danced in their mantles to the sound of harps; and one of them called on a bard to celebrate the fame of him who was to make Erin the world's wonder for peace and plenty:

  "Advance, immortal bard; come up and view
  The gladdening face of that great king, in whom
  So many prophecies of thine are knit.
  This is that James, of which long since thou sungst,
  Should end our country's most unnatural broils."

Would he had done so! Ben was not so blind but that he could spy out some little defects in Solomon and his queen. As he could not apply his talents to their correction, he recompensed himself in unmerciful handling of court vices. Toward the end of James's reign he enjoyed a competent fortune, and owned an extensive library. Distress and illness succeeded; but Charles I. being made aware of his forlorn condition, granted him an additional pension, and that tierce of canary, whose successors have been drained by all poet-laureates since his day. A blue marble stone lies over his remains in the north aisle of Westminster Abbey. The epitaph, RARE BEN JONSON, was cut in the flag at the order and charge of Jack Young (afterward knighted). Eighteen-pence requited the sculptor.

Whether we have improved on the feats of artists of another kind, in Queen Anne's reign, is questionable. At Bartholomew Fair, in the reign of that good-natured sovereign, a girl, of ten years, walked backward up a sloping rope, driving a wheelbarrow behind her. {845} Scaramouch danced on the rope with two children, and a dog, in a wheelbarrow, and a duck on his head. Our authority leaves us in some doubt as to the relative positions of man, children, dog, duck, and wheel-barrow, and whether the duck took position on head of dog or man. The eighteenth century was inaugurated by an intelligent tiger picking the feathers from a fowl in such style as to elicit the hearty applause of a discerning public. Continental sovereigns of our own time prefer the stirring spectacle of men and horses gored by sharp horned bulls. The tiger merely removed the feathers from the skin of the dead fowl; the viscera of the living quadruped follow the thrust of the bull's horn.

Translated from Etudes Religieuses, Historiques, et Littéraires, par des Pères de la Compagnie de Jésus.

THE ORIGIN AND MUTABILITY OF SPECIES.

Origines et Transformations de l'homme et des autres êtres. lre partie. Par TRÉMAUX. Paris: Hachette. 1865.

Anthropology is a recent science, and yet its votaries have produced numerous treatises. The delicate questions which it raises have given birth to various and contradictory opinions. The most important problem of this science is that which relates to the origin of man. At what epoch did man for the first time tread the surface of our globe? How did he appear? What cause produced him? Two first class scholars, Humboldt and Bompland, said, not long ago, "The general question of the origin of the inhabitants of a continent is beyond the limits prescribed to history, perhaps it is not even a philosophical question." Bolder than they, the anthropologists put a question a thousand times more complex, as to the origin of the whole human race, and they do not hesitate to believe that, sooner or later, science will be able to answer it with certainty. As to the present, we may say, Quot capita, tot sensus; the most opposite ideas divide the world, and it is the main discord which pervades science. These last words are those of M. Trémaux. To remedy this confusion, the learned traveller puts forth a new idea, which in his opinion should, in throwing light on all the aspects of the question, cause the discord to vanish; trace the way we ought to follow; and at no very distant day arrive at a complete solution. It remains to be seen whether these happy auguries will be realized, or if, on the contrary, the theory of M. Trémaux, added to the others, will not have the fatal effect of increasing the confusion it would abolish.

The opinions relating to the origin of man may be reduced to three. In the first place, we will state that of the monogenists, who behold in all the human types scattered over the world only races and varieties of the same species, and regard mankind as descending, or at least as capable of descending, from a single couple primitively sprung from the hands of the Creator. This opinion is evidently conformable to the Bible narrative; this reflection will not escape the sincere Christian, and we must make it at the risk of exciting the pity or indignation of certain positivists, who reproach us with bringing into scientific questions prejudices and arguments which are extra-scientific.

{846}

The opinion of the polygenists is diametrically opposed to the preceding. According to them, the typical differences which exist between the races of men are so decided, so profound, that they could not be the result of the conditions of existence; these differences are then original; men, instead of belonging to a single zoological species, form a genera or even a family, the bimanous family; community of origin is then impossible, and the account in Genesis must be considered as legendary.

Lastly, a third school separates itself entirely from the preceding, and considers the question under discussion as a phase of the general question—the stability of the species. The naturalists connected with this school regard the species as something essentially changeable. They deduce this opinion from the examples of the endless varieties of forms which our domestic animals above all others present. It is possible, by known processes, to obtain, after several generations, products so different from the primitive type, that to judge them by the form only we should believe in the existence of a new species; the continued fecundity between the two varieties alone attesting the specific unity of both types. Would it not be possible, by new methods, or by a better employment of the means already known, to arrive at such a complete transformation that the fecundity between the new and the primitive species should cease to exist, or at least cease to be unlimited? We should have thus obtained a novel species by a simple transformation due to the forces of nature. The result which man might obtain at the end of several generations, nature, left to itself, would inevitably arrive at, after a longer or shorter time, according as circumstances should be more or less favorable. This is admitted by Lamark, and the two Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire; it is admitted also by the English naturalist Darwin. The latter regards all animals actually existing as descending from four or five progenitors; an equal number would suffice for plants. He even adds that, guided by analogy, he would willingly admit that, all organized beings, plants and animals, descend from one single primordial type, and that man should constitute no exception to the general laws; he springs from the ape or some extinct type, and thence from the primitive.

It is to this last school that M. Trémaux belongs: the title of his book sufficiently shows it. He concedes the variability and the transformation of the species; but separates himself distinctly from Darwin relative to the causes which produce this variation.

M. Trémaux' book may be summed up entirely in the statement of the great law of the improvement of beings which is printed in large letters on the front page of the first part: "The improvement of creatures is or becomes proportionate to the degree of elaboration of the soil on which they live! And the soil is in general elaborated in proportion as it belongs to a more recent geological formation." To prove this law, and to deduce from it every possible consequence, is the object of the book.

The first requisite in judging a work is to understand its aim or end. Thus we have endeavored to seize the sense and the bearing which the author attaches to the great law he thinks he has discovered. Such a soil gives such a product, we are told. We understand this when the direct fruits of the earth are in question--that is, of the vegetables which draw directly from the earth the principles which should assimilate them. But as to animals, what influence can the soil exercise over them? This is what M. Trémaux should have explained, and what he has forgotten to tell us. Must we understand that the land, by virtue of its chemical and mineralogical composition, possesses a mysterious action of an unknown nature, determining according to the case the improvement or degeneracy of the species of {847} animals? Such is in fact the meaning which many passages seem to attribute to this law. Thus, after having shown that the causes generally assigned cannot explain those typical changes which nature presents, the author adds: "By the action of cross-breeding, food, and climate alone, we shall meet with contradictions at every step. With the action of the sun, the whole globe exhibits the same effects." Since it is neither through food nor by climate that the sun acts, it is by some mysterious agency; and behold us thus, in the nineteenth century, thrown back upon occult causes. May we be permitted to observe that this is not scientific?

Entirely engaged in proving by facts the law which must serve as a oasis to his system, M. Trémaux seems never to have thought of explaining to himself the manner of the earth's action. Thus, beside numerous places which clearly imply an immediate action, others could be quoted which only attribute to the soil an indirect action due to the aliments drawn from it. For example, apropos of cretinism, we read: "This scourge is above all endemical, because in fact those persons who can profit by the products of another soil feel in a lesser degree the unfavorable results of that condition." And further on: "To avoid living permanently on a soil which produces cretinism is the sole remedy, or rather the only palliative, against its pernicious effects on man. It is best to abandon it completely, or at least to make use of products other than those destined to feed its inhabitants." In brief, what is necessary to bring humanity to perfection? "Firstly, To choose carefully those lands whose products are more directly intended for man. Secondly, To have recourse to every proper means of improving the land. Thirdly, Planting with suitable trees those lands which are unfavorable to the growth of human food. Fourthly, To subject to agriculture those forest lands which occupy a favorable soil."

These passages appear clear that it is not of itself, but by its productions, and also doubtless through its climate, the soil acts on man and on the animals. This explanation is more philosophical than novel.

Between the monogenists and the polygenists, the question reduces itself very nearly to this: Can beings differing so much as the Europeans and the Bushmen, the Hottentot and the Australian, descend from the same ancestors? No, reply the polygenists; for the differences are greater than those which characterize certain species. In order to meet this objection, the monogenists have had recourse to what is called the middle theory, and to that of the cross-breeds. The whole of the external circumstances under which the representatives of a species exist, constitute what is called the middle or medium, to which monogenists, supporting themselves on undoubted facts, attribute the power of gradually changing the medium type of a species. The crossing of many types thus modified will give birth to new forms, all, however, belonging to one common kind.

Where do we find the difference between this middle theory and the law of M. Trémaux? In nothing but a greater or less importance attributed to the influence of soil; and even this difference is more apparent than real. The fundamental law so understood—and it appears to us hard to understand it otherwise—constitutes no novel idea or theory; it is nothing more than a variation of the classic theory of the influence of media.

How is this law proved? It is impossible for us to follow the author in the development of his arguments. He gives proof in them of rare learning, and of profound and varied knowledge of ethnography. We observe the marked predilection of M. Trémaux for the soil of Africa, which he has ably described in special works. But when we have finished reading him, and would give an account of his arguments and of their value, we do {848} not find in them all the elements of conviction. We know that many writers have expressed an opinion very different from ours, but even should we be deemed too exacting, we must acknowledge that an attentive perusal has not convinced us. There are no doubt remarkable coincidences in the work; but they are not of a sufficiently trenchant character, and, moreover, most of the facts may be explained otherwise than by the influence of soil. Let us give some examples. "We cannot meet with a single instance of a civilization which has developed itself, nor even been maintained in cases of emigration, under adverse geological conditions." Nothing is more natural, in fact. Why should emigrants on the way of civilization settle preferentially in unfertile countries? For it must not be forgotten that what are here called geological conditions refer simply to the fertility of the soil.

Another argument extensively developed is drawn from the persistence of the same types in the same countries. After having examined Africa and Europe from this point of view, the author concludes thus: "In short, what have the migrations from the East peopling the West produced? They have created Hellenes in Greece, Romans in Rome, Gauls in France, and children of Albion in England." Must we conclude, from this persistence, that the conquering races have in each generation felt the influence of the soil, so as to resemble after some centuries the former populations? Such is the reasoning of M. Trémaux. But the same fact is appealed to by polygenists, who interpret it in a different manner. According to them, this persistence proves that the conquering race has always been absorbed by the indigenous; and they do not fail to conclude from it that between these two races illimitable fecundity, the specific character of unity, is hardly ever realized.

We read at the same page: "If we pass over other continents, the same results strike us on all sides. On certain points of Australia and America, the English type is attached from the very first generation." This fact is stated by some naturalists, but it is denied by others. We can say as much of the pretended transformation of negroes. Messrs. Reiset, Lyell, and E. Reclus tell us that they are transformed in about one hundred and fifty years to approach the white type by one quarter of the distance which separated them from it. But American anthropologists, who are nearly all polygenists, resolutely affirm the contrary.

Thus we see the facts are difficult to ascertain, and still more difficult to interpret. It is one of the grand difficulties of anthropology. We rarely succeed in agreeing about the facts themselves, which only happens in some exceptional cases supported by perfectly exact statistics; and many facts are not of a nature to be consigned to the columns of an official register. Even in a case where the facts are placed beyond doubt, they are generally of a nature to be variously interpreted, and every one with preconceived ideas tortures them at his pleasure, and does not fail to find in them a confirmation of his theories. M. Trémaux is so filled with his idea that he finds proofs in support of it even in politics; and reciprocally, does not hesitate, in the name of geology, to counsel princes on the manner of governing their subjects. For example, we remember the war carried on in 1848 by Hungary against Austria. At that time Transylvania withdrew from the common cause and rallied to the Austrian government. The emperor Francis Joseph rejoiced at this result, hoping to easily propitiate the Croats; but he experienced from them an unexpected resistance, and their assembly of notables declared that Croatia should continue to share the fate of Hungary. Upon this M. Trémaux says: "This would appear paradoxical if we considered only geographical positions, but consult {849} geology and all this will appear perfectly rational, since Transylvania reposes like Austria upon a great surface of old ground; whilst Hungary, Croatia, and Dalmatia stand upon more recent layers." We leave our readers to appreciate this.

The author adds: "As to Venetia, not only is its soil of recent formation, but it possesses a distinct and very different nationality; thus each one recognizes its unalterable tendencies."

What caused the sanguinary war which has just desolated America? Why, because the Southerns, dwelling on virgin soil, fought for their independence and would not be governed by men from old lands. And reflecting that the new lands of the South are more fitted to improve the races which cultivate them, M. Trémaux fears not to predict, notwithstanding the unforeseen victory of the North, that "in the future the South will govern the North, if it be not separated from it."

As to Ireland and Poland, it is again in the name of geology that our author defends their independence. Not hoping to obtain this result, he at least gives the princes who govern them wise counsels for their guidance.

Let us come to the scientific conclusions which the author pretends to draw from his principle in favor of natural history in general and of anthropology in particular. Since the soil acts so energetically in the modification of types, it is evident that the species ought to be essentially variable. Let a race be found isolated on a favorable ground, without any communication with the rest of mankind, and the modifications will be produced, transmitted, and increased in every generation; and, after a longer or shorter time, the new type will be so different from the old one, that illimitable fecundity will no longer exist between them; there will only be one species the more. Transformations in reality are not made as rapidly as might be believed, because the isolation which we have supposed never exists. It thence follows that the crossings with the primitive race, or even with a race on the road to degeneracy on an imperfect soil, constantly check the effect of the superior soil. At length there is an equilibrium between these two causes, and then there appears a medium type, which preserves its identity so long as the circumstances remain the same. This necessarily happens in a period of several thousand years, like our historic period. But if we take in at a glance several thousand ages, we shall understand that the geological changes effected by time on the surface of the world will cause the action of the soil to prevail over the influence of crossings, in such a manner as to modify slowly but progressively the types and the species.

Starting from these principles, what does M. Trémaux require in order to explain the actual state of creation? A simple primordial cell or utricle, the most simply organized being, whether animal or vegetable matters little. If this being so simple existed at the epoch which geologists term the Silurian period, it is many millions of ages past. Since then the surface of the globe has been constantly modified and ameliorated, life has been constantly developed, and form been brought nearer to perfection. It is thus that even in the most elementary beings nature has arrived at the numerous and complicated forms which we know. In this manner man at his appointed hour appeared on earth, where he strove to improve himself and is striving in that direction still. M. Trémaux does not exactly admit that we are descended from apes. No; but he contends that both man and ape sprang from one common source, which has now disappeared; and that whilst the quadruman, placed under unfavorable geological conditions, has suffered from its inevitable influence and been degraded, man has on the contrary, under happier influences, developed himself, and is become able, by {850} his intelligent activity, to combat those external influences. Hence his actual superiority—hence his future progress.

A serious objection here presents itself. Does the influence of the soil perfect the instinct of animals as well as their bodies? Has _it_ given man that intelligence which, better than all zoological characters, especially distinguishes him from the brute creation? M. Trémaux meets this difficulty with a reply which might have been taken from Nysten's dictionary. In his comparison "of man with the ape," he tells us "that M. Gratiolet divides the subject into two sections, the one referring to organization, the other to faculties. He concedes the resemblances of the first, he refuses to acknowledge those of the second, without observing that these differences in faculties are only the consequence of a greater or less degree of organic development." This philosophical heresy does not slip by chance from the writer's pen; we find it repeated in several places, nearly in the same terms. Moreover, in refuting another passage from Gratiolet, he says: "I am astonished that Gratiolet does not recognize in instinct a rudiment of intelligence; in the constructions of the beaver, in the nests of birds, in the cells of bees, elements of sculpture and of design, etc."

M. Trémaux divides the opinions of Gratiolet into two; the first part is serious, and is that of the learned anatomist; the second is that of sentiment, wherein he speaks by the same title as the philosophers who develop the void of their entities. This contempt for philosophy well explains the strange ideas of our author about the intelligence of man and the souls of brutes. To see nothing between both but a difference of organization is not philosophical. A little metaphysics would spoil nothing, and it really does not require a strong dose to behold the abyss which separates human intelligence, capable of seizing the abstract and the absolute as well as the concrete and the continent, from that of brutes, acting by instinct, able only at the most to combine some sensations, without ever having any general ideas.

We think we have now given a pretty exact epitome of M. Trémaux' ideas. The whole work rests upon an ill defined principle, which, in the sense in which we have understood it, the only one which appears to us to be feasible, cannot be considered new. This principle, although true in a certain sense and within certain limits, is not to be proved irrefragable, as the basis of any theory should be. The consequences which are sought to be drawn from the premises are not necessarily contained in them, and many bear not the seal of a wholesome philosophy. We shall perhaps be thought a little too severe upon this work. We think we should be so, especially as the author is in many respects recommendable. Apropos of the question of species, M. Trémaux writes: "M. Kourens has his merits, but they lie elsewhere; it is in his researches on the periosteum and on the vital cord that he acquires them." We may be allowed to use the same expressions and to say: "M. Trémaux deserves well, but not herein; his actual labors on ethnography and archaeology are very good. Read the account of his travels to Soudan and into Asia Minor, and you will acknowledge him a man of talent and undoubted science. But as to his theoretical ideas on the question of the species, he must not reckon upon them to support his reputation." Some journals may waste their incense upon him; the Constitutional may exclaim: "The veil has been lifted.… a new law is about to unite all disputants. … the arguments of M. Trémaux abound, and we feel only an embarrassment in choosing." L'Independance Beige will join the chorus. Even the Moniteur will grant its approval. But all this is no set-off against the opinions of the learned, and M. Trémaux knows very well that our great naturalists do not {851} look upon his ideas as acceptable, or his arguments as conclusive.

It will be observed that we have not spoken of the Bible, although its narrative appears compromised by the transformation theory. We believe it to be useless to mix up theology with scientific debates, at least, when it is not directly attacked. Now, M. Trémaux is far from attacking revelation; he does not believe his ideas reconcileable with Genesis; he never speaks of the Bible narrative but with the greatest respect. Hence we believe it advisable to show great tolerance toward sciences which are still in their infancy, which require their elbows free for development, and which must wander a little in unknown countries, free to make a false step from time to time. It is thus they will progress and arrive at the truth.

We will add one last remark on the address of the anthropologists. The origin of man concerns historians as much as naturalists; for this reason we should not, in works of this character, neglect historic monuments. Of all those monuments, books are the surest. Even in abstracting the special value which the Bible possesses as an inspired volume, it is not the less true that it is a document which must be considered, and which as a written document has an incontestably safer meaning than all the fossils in the world.

For a higher reason we should beware of all theories or hypotheses which do not agree with the sacred text. The Bible no doubt is not intended to instruct us in the secrets of the natural order, and it is perhaps for that that we find in it so little relating to these subjects; but the Holy Ghost, who inspired the sacred writers, could not have dictated to them errors, and every assertion which would be contrary to the clear and certain sense of a passage in it should, for this reason, be rejected as untrue. When the sense is obscure or doubtful, which is nearly always the case in passages relating to physics, we should, we think, be very cautious, and it is prudent for the learned to be on their guard, for fear of falling into very numerous and grave errors.

From The Victoria Magazine.

WISDOM BY EXPERIENCE.

What a shame! What abominable interference! What cruelty! What tyranny! These and many other strong expressions of the same kind proceeded from a collection of rose-stocks planted ready for budding. They were all fiercely angry and indignant, and first one and then another uttered some exclamation of disgust, and then all joined in a chorus of maledictions on the gardener who had done them so much injury. It was in the month of June that their feelings were so much excited, just when the sap was most active, and they were throwing out their most luxuriant shoots. I don't know how they went on when the gardener first dug them up out of the hedges, and cut away all their side branches and left only a single straight stem. If they did not make a fight for it then, it must have been because their sap was all dried up, and their leaves had fallen off, and they were in low spirits, and did not much care what became of them. But even then I don't think they yielded without a struggle, and I have no doubt there was a good deal of scratching and dragging back, {852} and a great show of independence and sullenness. But they had not the spirits to keep up resistance, and the gardener did not give them much chance, for he pruned them close, and planted them in rows just far enough apart to prevent the possibility of their having much intercourse, or of the evil disposed corrupting the more docile. But it was different in June, when, as I said, the sap was active, and their branches began to grow out on all sides, so that they could reach each other and even take a sly pinch at the gardener or any of his friends who happened to come near. And the particular irritation now was because the gardener had discovered how wild they were becoming, and set resolutely about restraining them. First of all he cut off all the suckers that grew from the roots, and the lower shoots, leaving only those that grew at the crown of the stock, and then he put them all straight up, and would not let them loll about or hang over the path—a habit they had got into which was very disagreeable to those who passed by. And if they would not stand upright without, he fastened them to pieces of board let into the ground. This was a great grievance, but I think they most rebelled at having their lower boughs cut off, for if left to themselves they would have spread and puffed themselves out in a most ridiculous way.

Now it so happened that Madame Boll, a stock of a former year which had been budded, but left in its place and not removed with the rest into the flower-garden, heard their exclamations of anger and impatience, and having perhaps gone through some such phase of feeling herself, and thus gained wisdom by experience, she thought she would try if she could put their case to them in a better light; so she took advantage of a little lull in the storm, and said in a gentle, ladylike tone,

"My young friends, I am very sorry to see you so unhappy; but perhaps if you will hear what I have got to say, you might think better of your present position."

"Well," said Miss Strong, who was tossing her long arms about in a very excited way, only luckily she was out of reach, "if you are going to take the gardener's part, and preach patience and submission, and that sort of thing, I can tell you you had better keep your remarks to yourself, or if I can get at you, I'll spoil that neat head-dress of yours, which, let me tell you, is not half as pretty as hundreds in the hedgerows, or as ours would have been, if we had been left to our own devices as we were last year;" which tirade she ended with a scornful laugh in which many of the others joined.

But little Miss Wild-Rose, who was nearer, said quietly,

"Perhaps it would be as well to hear what is said on the other side; particularly as, it is too hot to go on screaming and abusing people who don't seem to care about it;" and as several of the others were of the same opinion, Madame Boll took courage, and said what was in her mind.

"Perhaps it may give you more confidence in me to know, that when I was first placed here I had many of the same thoughts and feelings that you appear to have. I did not know why I was taken out of the hedgerow, and trimmed and restrained, and not allowed to have my own way; and I confess I thought it very hard. Particularly I was indignant, as no doubt you will be when the time comes (for you have still a good deal to undergo which you know nothing about at present),—I was, I say, very indignant when the gardener cut a slit in the only shoot which he had left me, and which was growing very luxuriant, and I was quite proud of it; and introduced a meagre little bud from another tree, and made me nourish and strengthen it, though I knew that my own shoot would suffer by it; and so it turned out; for after a while, when the bud began to grow, he cut away {853} my natural shoot altogether, and left only that which had been inserted."

Here Miss Strong broke in.

"You were very tame to submit to it. I would have banged and twisted about till I had got rid of it some way or other."

"Ah!" said Madame Boll, "we shall see; you are stronger and more resolute than I was. All I know is, I could not help myself."

"Cowardly creature!" muttered Miss Strong, scornfully. But Madame Boll resumed:

"I soon got used to the change, and gradually began to take an interest in the bud I had adopted; and though of course Miss Strong may affect to despise its beauty, I can assure you that most people have a different opinion."

Whereupon, Madame Boll gave herself airs, and coquettishly moved aside a leaf or two, and displayed a most perfect and symmetrical rose.

"But," said Miss Wild-Rose and her party all in a breath, "do you mean that we shall all bear roses like that?"

"Not all, certainly, possibly none of you exactly like, for there are hundreds of varieties, and many of them much more beautiful. It will be just as the gardener fancies, though he is generally guided in his selection by the habit and vigor of the stock, I daresay he will give Miss Strong, who is so energetic, a bud of Gloire de Dijon, or Anna de Diesbach, and you, being weaker, will have Devoniensis, or Niphetos."

Miss Strong gave a scornful toss at this, but did not vouchsafe any remark, though I think she felt rather complimented, and the others began to muse, since it must be so, what rose they would be likely to have, and which would become them best.

A little time after this it turned out just as Madame Boll had said—the gardener came one morning and began to bud the stocks, and just as he was preparing Miss Wild-Rose for the operation, a young lady came by, and asked what bud he intended for that one, for, she said, "I want a Devoniensis, and I think it would just suit it."

"I have got a Devoniensis bud here," he said, "and will put it in."

"And that tall one I think I should like for Gloire de Dijon."

"I will try," he said, "but somehow I am half afraid I shall have some trouble with it, for though vigorous it is rather awkward, and the thorns are very spiteful. To say the truth, I am half afraid of it, and have been leaving it till the last."

"But what," said the lady, "is this in the corner? Surely it is Madame Boll; and such a beauty! What is it doing here?"

"To say the truth, ma'am, I overlooked it when I planted the others out, and now it must remain where it is for another year."

"Well," she said, "I hope the others will take pattern from it and do as well."

"So," said Madame Boll, after they were gone, "that accounts for my being left here: I must confess I was a little mortified, for I thought it was a slight; but I generally find, if we wait awhile, everything comes right in the end, and possibly my being here has done you some good, or given you comfort; and if so, instead of regret, I ought to feel pleasure. But now, my young friends, I will tell you a conversation I overheard one day, between the young lady who was here just now and another, which your foolish behavior a short time ago brought to my mind. They were talking about the children in the school, and how difficult it was to make them feel the advantage of being submissive and conforming to their rules. They said they were so anxious to have their own way, and seemed to think it was a pleasure to their teachers to thwart them, or make them do what they did not wish, and not that it was intended for their good; and if their teachers thought they paid too much attention to their dress, {854} and wished to be smart, and wear flowers and feathers, when they ought rather to be adorning their minds, and beautifying their tempers, and enriching their understanding, they were ready to cry out, as you did just now, 'What tyranny!' 'How interfering!' 'Why can't they let us dress as we like?' But what they were particularly complaining about on that occasion, was that the children would persist in wearing hoops which stuck out their clothes, and made them take up twice as much room as they otherwise would have done. For, it seems, the benches where they sat were only large enough for them if they sat close together, which they could not do with hoops on, so they were obliged to tell them they could not take them into the school if they did not lay aside their hoops, and some of them were foolish enough to say that they would not come to school if they were not allowed to wear hoops. Now, it struck me, this was just like your folly in wishing to keep your wild-growing suckers and lower branches, when you know very well that they would take away all the nourishment which is needed to bring the beautiful rose-buds to perfection; the bud, in your place, answering to the knowledge and other excellences which it is the object of education to impart to their ignorant and lawless natures, and which, in after years, when they are able to appreciate them, they prize highly, and can hardly understand what it was that made them so averse to go through the process necessary for their acquirement."

A year or two afterward I saw the young lady and the gardener looking at a bed of beautiful roses on the lawn, and heard the young lady ask what had become of the Devoniensis she had asked him to bud.

"Don't you see it, ma'am," he said, "growing against the wall? I think it is almost the gem of the whole garden."

"Oh, what a beauty!" she exclaimed; "and how well it has grown!"

"Yes, ma'am," he said; "it has always done well; it seemed to take to it kindly from the very first, and has never gone back at all. But I had a good deal of trouble with this one; perhaps you may remember my saying I thought it likely I should. It is that strong growing one you remarked at the same time when you told me to bud the Devoniensis. It won't make much show this year. It wasted so much energy in putting out side-shoots and suckers. But I think it has got out of its bad ways, and next year I hope it will make quite a grand tree."

"Oh!" she said, "and here is my old friend Madame Boll, I see. I am glad you put it here, it is well worth a good place."

"You hear," said Madame Boll, after they were gone, to her neighbor Gloire de Dijon, "what they say of us, and I hope you have become reconciled to the change, and will let the good that is in you show itself."

Whereupon there seemed to come rather a lachrymose murmur from the dwarfed shoot of Gloire de Dijon. "But am I not to flower at all this year?"

"Well, my dear," said Madame Boll, tenderly, "I do not wish to be severe or say anything to hurt your feelings, but you must know that your present disappointment is the natural result of your past conduct. You were so determined to indulge in perverse and self-willed suckers, and you never let the gardener touch you without trying to prick his fingers or tear his clothes. And now all you want is a little patience. Who knows but you may be allowed to bloom in the autumn, and perhaps win the prize at the last flower show? But if not, why it will be all right next year. Do you think it was no mortification to me to be neglected and almost unnoticed last year, and that, as it appears, entirely owing to the carelessness of others, and not from any fault of mine? Well, you see, I have got over it; and very likely next year {855} you will have the gratification of hearing the lady praise you as she did me just now. Be thankful that experience with you has not come too late."

When Madame Boll ended, I could see on the edge of one of her delicate leaves a drop of dew, and I said to myself, "How very like a tear!"

From The Month.

LABORERS GONE TO THEIR REWARD.

In the days in which we live, more perhaps than at any other time, education, the school, and the college are made the positions of vital importance in the battle-field of contending principles. Services rendered and losses sustained on such points are, therefore, worthy of special notice, of particular gratitude, or of sorrow. In the month of May of this year two souls went to their rest, both of whom had labored long, signally, and successfully in the cause of Catholic education—especially for the higher classes; both of whom have left behind them institutions in which their spirit is enshrined: destined, we trust, to continue through centuries yet to come the work, the beginnings of which were committed to those whose loss we are now lamenting. On the 14th of May Monsignor de Ram, the restorer of Catholic university education in the countries over which the French revolution had swept, died peacefully, but almost without warning; and a few days later, his decease was followed by that of the reverend mother Madeline Sophie Barat, the foundress and first superioress-general of the congregation of the nuns of the Sacred Heart. Let us devote a few lines to each.

Monsignor de Ram was born at Louvain, of parents distinguished for piety and noble descent, September 2, 1804. He early devoted himself to the service of the Church; was ordained priest, March 19,1827; and became at once professor in the ecclesiastical seminary of his native diocese, Mechlin. He had no sooner grown up than he was struck by observing that his native language, the Flemish, which of all European tongues most nearly resembles our own, was almost wholly without books of a good tendency. The reason was evident. The population by which it is spoken is comparatively small, and is hemmed in by others which speak French, Dutch, or German. Hence it has almost sunk into a patois. Men who speak Flemish to their servants and laborers read and write in French. The first labors of Mons. de Ram were devoted to meet this want, by publishing several very useful books in Flemish. He was only thirty when the bishops of Belgium resolved to erect a Catholic university. The attempt could never before have been made; for in Belgium, almost more than anywhere else, education had for two hundred years been seized by the state, and used to an irreligious purpose. The revolution of 1830, though not made by the Church nor in its interests, had given it a freedom which it never possessed before. The first use made of this freedom by the bishops of Belgium was to erect a Catholic university, and the young and zealous priest de Ram was set over it by their deliberate choice. To its service he devoted the rest of his life. Beneath his care were trained during thirty years a continual succession of young men, who are at this day the strength of the Church in Belgium, and to a considerable degree in France. {856} England also has sent students there. Those who have had the happiness of attending the meetings of the Catholic congress in Belgium must, we think, have been struck by the high Catholic tone of a number of young men of the middle and higher classes, and by their intelligence. For those men Belgium and the Church are indebted to the Catholic university of Louvain, and of that university Monsignor de Ram has, until his death, been the soul. On Friday, May 12, he returned from attending a meeting of the academy of Brussels. On the evening of Sunday, 14th, he had entered into the unseen world. His age was only sixty; and as he was willing, so it might have been expected that he would be able, to continue for years to come the labors in which his life had been spent. Such was not the will of his Lord, whose call he was at once ready to obey.

At Paris, on the morning of Monday, May 22, only seven whole days later, the superioress of the Society of the Sacred Heart had attended the mass of the community. She had completed in the preceding December her eighty-fifth year. Her day of labor was at last over. She was seized with apoplexy, and never recovered the power of speech. She gave, however, clear signs of intelligence, and received the viaticum, as well as the last unction. On the 24th the blessing of the Holy Father reached her by a telegraphic message. On the 25th she slept the sleep of the just.

She was born in December, 1779. She had an elder brother, who before 1800 was a priest, and had joined himself to a society which was formed at Vienna in the latter part of the French revolution, under the title of the "Fathers of the Sacred Heart." The first superior of this society, Father Tournely, had been a pupil of the illustrious Father Emery at St. Sulpice. His object seems to have been to continue under another name the spirit and practices of the Society of Jesus, which had been swept away twenty years before by the insane union of the monarchs of Europe with the revolutionary infidels, until times should allow of its re-establishment. This, however, he did not live to see. His successor, Father Varin, joined it at its restoration. He relates that the great desire of Father Tournely was the foundation of a congregation of nuns devoted, under the protection of the Sacred Heart, to the education of young persons of their own sex. At one time he had hoped to see this project carried into execution by the Princess Louisa of Bourbon-Condé, who actually came from Switzerland, where she was in exile, to Vienna, to confer with him on the subject. But God called her to the contemplative life, and she became a Benedictine. Father Tournely, however, never doubted its execution. Walking one day on the fortifications now destroyed, but then surrounding Vienna, he said to Father Varin, alluding to this disappointment, "Dear friend, I thought this had been the work of God, and if it is not, I confess I do not know how to discern between the spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood." Then, after remaining silent awhile in recollection, he turned to his friend, with something of fire more than natural in his expression, and added: "It is the will of God. As to the occasion and the instrument, I may have been deceived; but, sooner or later, this society will be founded." His friend used to say that the impression left by these words, and the manner in which they were spoken, never faded from his mind. They impressed him with the same conviction; and he added, that when he repeated them to his brethren, it took possession of all their minds.

"In truth," said Fr. Varin, "God had not chosen for the commencement of this work instruments great in this world. That the glory might be his alone, he was pleased that the foundation of the building should be simplicity, littleness, nothingness."

Fr. Tournely died soon afterward, {857} in the flower of his age. Fr. Varin succeeded him, and the conclusion of the revolution enabled him and his brethren to return to Paris. To Paris they went in the year 1800. It was exactly the moment when to human eyes the night seemed darkest, but when the morning was ready to spring. Pius VI. died a prisoner in the hands of the infidel French revolutionists, August 29, 1799. "At this moment," says Macaulay, "it is not strange that even sagacious observers should have thought that at length the hour of the Church of Rome was come. An infidel power in the ascendant, the pope dying in captivity, the most illustrious prelates of France living in a foreign country on Protestant alms, the noblest edifices which the munificence of former ages had consecrated to the worship of God turned into temples of victory, or into banqueting-houses for political societies, or into theophilanthropic chapels; such signs might well be supposed to indicate the approaching end of that long domination. But the end was not yet. Again doomed to death, the milk-white hind was still fated not to die. Even before the funeral rites had been performed over the ashes of Pius VI., a great reaction had commenced, which after the lapse of [sixty-five] years appears to be still in progress." As yet, however, no human foresight would have observed the tokens of that reaction. Paris was no longer the city where the eldest son of the Church was enthroned, and where the great of this world were rejoiced to heap their wealth upon any new plan which promised to promote the glory of God. Still, Napoleon Bonaparte had just seized the reins as first consul, and there was at least toleration to priests. The community lived in a single mean room, which served them as dormitory, refectory, kitchen, and study. Here Fr. Varin was sitting upon the edge of a very shabby bed, and by his side sat one of his community, Fr. Barat. "I asked him what relations he had. He said, one little sister. The words made a strong impression upon me. I asked how old she was, and what were her powers. He said she was eighteen or nineteen; that she had learned Latin and Greek, and translated Virgil and Homer with ease; that she had qualities to make a good teacher; but that for the present she had gone to pass some time in her family." Father Barat, good man as he was, was not above human infirmity, and like other elder brothers, however proud he might be of his younger sister, could never fancy that she was really grown up; for when he said she was about eighteen or nineteen, she was one-and-twenty. Two months later she came to Paris. "I went to see her, and found a young person of very delicate appearance, extremely retiring, and very timid. What a foundation-stone! said I to myself, in reply to the feeling I had had within me when her brother had mentioned her to me for the first time. And yet it was upon her that it was the will of God to raise the building of the Society of His Divine Heart. This was the grain of mustard-seed which was to produce the tree whose branches have already spread so wide."

On November 21, 1800, she dedicated herself to the Sacred Heart, under the patronage of the Blessed Virgin, together with an intimate friend, Mlle. Octavia Bailly, who shared her aspirations. It was the first streak on the sky which told of the coming day. The day the society was formed, in 1802, she became superioress of the first house, which was at Amiens. In 1806, a second was founded at Grenoble; that year the first general congregation elected her superioress-general. In 1826 there were seventeen houses, and the rules were approved by Leo XII. Before her death she had under her rule ninety-seven houses and 3,500 nuns. She had been superioress of the congregation for sixty-three years; and it is probable that the majority of the French ladies now living who have received a religious {858} education at all have received it at the hands of herself or of her children in religion.

Her body was taken to Conflans, where is the novitiate in the neighborhood of Paris. During three days her cell was visited by all whom the rules of the community permitted to enter—the nuns of the different houses in Paris, pupils present and former of all ages. Not only these, but many priests were so desirous to have medals, chaplets, etc., touched by her remains, that two sisters, who were continually employed, were hardly able to satisfy the general desire.

At the beginning of this short notice we spoke of sorrow and a sense of loss as feelings natural in those interested in the great works undertaken by such laborers as Mons. de Ram and Madame Barat on the occasion of their removal from the scene of action. We need hardly do more than allude to the other feelings which must at the same time blend with and qualify these; to the joy and exultation that must always hail the close of a noble career long persevered in, from the thought of the rest and the crown that have been so faithfully won; and to the confidence that the works which those who have been removed from us have been allowed, while in the flesh, so happily to found, promote, and guide, will certainly not suffer by the Providence that has now, as we trust, placed them where they are enabled to see, without any intervening shadow, the value of the great end for which these works were undertaken, and where their power to help them on is to be measured, not by the feeble and inconstant energies of a will still subject to failure and perversion, but by the mighty intensity of the intercession of those who are at rest with God.

MISCELLANY.

Mont Cenis Railway.—Pending the completion of the great Mont Cenis tunnel, a temporary railway on inclined planes is to be carried along the present road over the mountain. The French Government, on its portion of the line, will use locomotives with a peculiar mechanism, to produce adhesion, on a middle rail placed between the two ordinary rails. On the Italian side a traction carriage will be employed, which will wind the carriages up by means of a drum acting on a heavy fixed cable laid along the line. The mechanism of the traction wagon will be put in motion by an endless wire rope actuated by water-wheels at the base of the incline.

Homes without Hands.—A new book by Mr. Woods, with the above title, gives an account of the habitations, "which are never marred by incompetence or improved by practice," constructed by various animals, classed according to their principles of construction, and illustrated by some excellent engravings, from drawings made expressly for the work. The author first describes the homes of the burrowing mammalia, and then proceeds to those of the social birds and insects. The mole appears to take the first place in Mr. Wood's list of mammalia. "This extraordinary animal does not merely dig tunnels in the ground and sit at the end of them, but forms a complicated subterranean dwelling-place, with chambers, passages, and other arrangements of wonderful completeness. It has regular roads leading to its feeding grounds; establishes a system of communication as elaborate as that of a modern railway, or, to be more correct, as that of the subterranean network of metropolitan sewers." … "How it manages to form its burrows in such admirably straight lines is not an easy problem, because it is always in {859} black darkness, and we know of nothing which can act as a guide to the animal." The real abode of the mole is most extraordinary. "The central apartment is a nearly spherical chamber, the roof of which is nearly on a level with the earth around the hill; and, therefore, situated at a considerable depth from the apex of the heap. Around this heap are driven two circular passages, or galleries, one just level with the ceiling, and the other at some height above. The upper circle is much smaller than the lower. Five short descending passages connect the galleries with each other, but the only entrance into the keep is from the upper gallery, out of which three passages lead into the ceiling of the keep. Therefore, when the mole enters the house from one of his tunnels, he has first to get into the lower gallery, to ascend thence to the upper gallery, and so descend into the keep." The mole appears unequalled in ferocity, activity, and voracity. The fox prefers to avoid the labor of burrowing, and avails itself of the deserted home of the badger, or even the rabbit; for, though it needs a larger tunnel than the latter, the cunning animal finds its labor considerably decreased by only having to enlarge a ready-made burrow instead of driving a passage through solid earth.

Of the weasel tribe, the badger is the most powerful and industrious excavator; there are several chambers in its domicile, one of which is appropriated as a nursery, and is warmly padded with dry mosses and grass. The rabbit, like the eider duck, lines her nursery with the soft fur from her own breast; but Mr. Wood deprecates this being set forth as an act of self-sacrifice, and held up as an example of such to human beings, and declares it to be as purely instinctive as the act of laying eggs.

The Wealth of Mexico.—M. Laur, the engineer deputed by the French government to explore the mineral wealth of Mexico, and who has already published several reports in the Moniteur, has completed his task. These reports, according to a paragraph in the Moniteur Belge, are shortly to be published in a more extended form, giving the exact situation, extent, and richness of the principal mineral veins of that country. It is hoped that under the new administration many of the old workings, abandoned during the civil wars, will be resumed, and that they will prove as valuable to the empire as they were during the early days of the Spanish occupation.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

DIE HEILIGE ELIZABETH. Ein Buch für Christen, von Alben Stolz. Freiburg im Breisgau. 1865. 8vo, pp. 315.

The Life of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary. A book for Christians, by Alben Stolz.

The author of this new life of Saint Elizabeth is one of the popular Catholic writers of Germany, if not the foremost. He is the Abraham of Sancta Clara of this century.

The principal events of the saint's life are narrated in simple and familiar language. The point treated of in each chapter is concluded with a practical instruction. These are far from being dry. We would suggest the translation of this book into English, were it not that it is, like all this author writes, thoroughly German, and exclusively adapted to the circumstances and difficulties of the Catholics of Germany. What our Catholic English reading public needs, is that some of our writers should take a lesson from this agreeable as well as edifying writer, and do for them what he is doing with so much zeal for the good of his countrymen.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. By His Eminence Cardinal Wiseman. 32mo, pp. 64. Boston: Patrick Donahoe.

This is an American edition of the lecture of the late Cardinal Wiseman on William Shakespeare, which appeared in THE CATHOLIC WORLD for July. It contains, in addition to the lecture, an appendix, in which the eminent author makes suggestions for, and observations on, "a tercentenary memorial of Shakespeare." {860} The cardinal suggested a splendid edition of the great poet's works, illustrated, and printed in the best and most elaborate style possible. His eminence went into the most minute details in regard to the manner in which such an edition should be illustrated, printed, bound, etc. The binding and paper of this little volume are excellent; but the type from which it is printed is too small. We are sorry Mr. Donahoe did not get it out in larger type. Were it not for this slight defect, the book would be faultless.

NATIONAL LYRICS. By John Greenleaf Whittier. Illustrated. 32mo, pp. 104. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.

This is another of the cheap volumes of poetry issued by Ticknor & Fields. It contains several of Mr. Whittier's earlier pieces, as well as many of his late poems. Among the latter are "Barbara Frietchie," and "The Poor Voter on Election Day."

SYBIL: A Tragedy, in Five Acts. By John Savage. 12mo, pp. 105. New York: J. B. Kirker.

This tragedy was written by Mr. Savage—well known in the literary world as the author of several excellent poems, and now editor of the New Orleans Times—some years ago, and met with a good reception in the cities in which it was played. It contains many good passages of high poetical merit, and is, we should think, well adapted for the stage. The scene is laid in Kentucky, in the beginning of the present century, and describes society as it is supposed to have existed at that time.

A GENERAL HISTORY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, FROM THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA UNTIL THE PRESENT TIME. By M. l'Abbé J. E. Darras. With an Introduction and Notes. By the Most Rev. M. J. Spalding, D.D., Archbishop of Baltimore. New York: P. O'Shea.

We have received numbers 9, 10, 11, and 12 of this excellent history. Number 12 brings the work down to the pontificate of Sixtus III., 432.

THE MARTYR'S MONUMENT. Being the patriotism and political wisdom of Abraham Lincoln, as exhibited in his speeches, messages, orders, and proclamations from the presidential canvass of 1860 until his assassination, April 14, 1865. 12mo, pp. 297. New York: The American News Company.

The title of this handsome volume sufficiently explains its purpose. The origin of the work is set forth in the following extract from the preface:

"A few days after the assassination of President Lincoln, the publishers of the present volume received the following letter from the distinguished gentleman whose name it bears:

"Gentlemen: Collect and publish, in the speediest possible manner, the inaugural and other addresses of Abraham Lincoln, his proclamations, messages, and public letters, indeed, all he has written as President, and you will contribute to the mournful celebrations of the American people your share of lasting value, and of far more impressive eloquence than the most fervent orator could utter. You would thus make the martyr rear his own monument, which no years, no centuries, could level and cause to mingle again with the dust.
"Your obedient,
"FRANCIS LIEBER.
"NEW YORK, April 18, 1865."

This book is got out in elegant style, and will be valuable hereafter on account of the many documents it contains which relate to the late civil war.

Received: PASTORAL LETTER OF THE RT. REV. M. DOMENEC, D.D., BISHOP OF PITTSBURG TO THE CLERGY AND LAITY OF THE DIOCESE, PROMULGATING THE JUBILEE: together with the late Encyclical of the Holy Father. Published at the office of the Pittsburg Catholic.

THE STORY OF THE GREAT MARCH, FROM THE DIARY OF A STAFF OFFICER. By Brevet-major George Ward Nichols, aid-de-camp to General Sherman. New York: Harper & Brothers.

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