[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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
"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."
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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]
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
{138}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.
{139}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.
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.