Hedwige was the youngest daughter of Lewis, nephew and successor to Casimir the Great, who, on account of the preference he evinced for his Hungarian subjects, drew upon himself the continued ill-will of the nation he was called upon to govern. Finding he was unable to cope with the numerous factions everywhere ready to oppose him, he, not without many humiliating concessions to the nobles of Poland, induced them to elect as his successor his daughter Maria, wife of Sigismund, Marquis of Brandenburg (afterward emperor), and having appointed the Duke of Oppelen regent of the kingdom, retired to his native Hungary, unwilling to relinquish the shadow of the sceptre which continually evaded his grasp.
On his death, which happened in 1382, Poland became the theatre of intestine disorders fomented by the turbulent nobles, who, notwithstanding the allegiance they had sworn to the Princess Maria, refused to allow her even to enter the kingdom. Sigismund was not, however, inclined thus easily to forego his wife's claims; and as the Lord of Mazovia at the same time aspired to the vacant throne, many of the provinces became so desolated by civil war that the leaders of the adverse factions threw down their arms, and simultaneously agreed to offer the crown to the Princess Hedwige, then residing in Hungary under the care of her mother Elizabeth. By no means approving of a plan which thus unceremoniously excluded her eldest daughter from the throne, the queen dowager endeavored to oppose injustice by policy. Hedwige was at the time only fourteen years of age, and the deputies were informed that, as the princess was too young to undertake the heavy responsibilities of sovereignty, her brother-in-law Sigismund must act in her stead until such time as she herself should be considered capable of assuming the reins of government. This stratagem did not succeed; the duke was not allowed to cross the frontiers of Poland, and Elizabeth found herself compelled to part with her daughter, if she would not see the crown placed on the brow of whomever the diet might elect.
Now commenced the trials of the young Hedwige, who was thus early called upon to exercise those virtues of heroic fortitude, patient endurance, and self-denial which rendered her life a sort of continual martyrdom, a sacrifice daily offered up at the shrines of religion and patriotism. At the early age of four years she had been affianced to William, Duke of Austria, {146} who, in accordance with the custom of the times, had been educated in Hungary; his affection for his betrothed growing with his growth, and increasing with his years. Ambition had no charms for Hedwige; her fervent piety, shrinking modesty, and feminine timidity sought to conceal, not only her extraordinary beauty, but those rare mental endowments of which she was possessed. Bitter were the tears shed by this gentle girl, when her mother, alarmed at the menaces of the Polish nobles, informed her she must immediately depart for Cracow, under the protection of Cardinal Demetrius, Bishop of Strigonia, who was pledged to deliver her into the hands of those whom she was disposed to regard rather as her masters than as her subjects. There had been one stipulation made, which, had she been aware of its existence, would have added a sharper pang to the already poignant anguish of Hedwige: the Poles required that their young sovereign should marry only with the consent of the diet, and that her husband should not only reside constantly in Poland, but pledge himself never to attempt to render that country dependent on any other power. Although aware of the difficulties thus thrown in the way of her union with Duke William, her mother had subscribed to these conditions; and Hedwige, having been joyfully received by the prelates and nobles of her adopted country, was solemnly crowned in the cathedral at Cracow, October 15, 1385, being the festival of her patron, St. Hedwige. Her youth, loveliness, grace, and intellectual endowments won from the fierce chieftains an enthusiastic affection which had been denied to the too yielding Lewis; their national pride was flattered, their loyalty awakened, by the innocent fascinations of their young sovereign, and they almost sought to defer the time which, in her husband, would necessarily give them a ruler of sterner mould. Nor was Hedwige undeserving of the exalted station she had been compelled to fill: a worthy descendant of the sainted Lewis, her every word and action waa marked by a gravity and maturity which bore witness to the supernatural motives and heavenly wisdom by which it was inspired; and yet, in the silence of her chamber, many were the tears she shed over the memory of ties severed, she feared, for ever. Amongst the earliest candidates for her hand was Ziemovit, Duke of Mazovia, already mentioned as one of the competitors for the crown after the death of her father; but the Poles, still smarting from the effects of his unbridled ambition, dismissed his messengers with a refusal couched in terms of undisguised contempt. The question of her marriage once agitated, the mind of Hedwige naturally turned to him on whom her heart was unalterably fixed, and whom from her childhood she had been taught to consider as her future husband; but an alliance with the house of Austria formed no part of Polish policy, and neither the wishes nor the entreaties of their queen could induce the diet to entertain the idea for a moment; in short, their whole energy was employed in bringing about a union which, however disagreeable to the young sovereign, was likely to be in every way advantageous to the country and favorable to the interests of religion.
Jagello, the pagan Duke of Lithuania, was from his proximity and the extent of his possessions (comprising Samogitia and a large portion of Russia [Footnote 41]) a formidable enemy to Poland. Fame was not slow in wafting to his ears rumors of the beauty and accomplishments of Hedwige, which being more than corroborated by ambassadors employed to ascertain the truth, the impetuous Jagello determined to secure the prize, even at the cost of national independence. The idolatry of the Lithuanians and the early betrothal of Hedwige to Duke William were the chief obstacles with which he had to contend; but, after a brief {147} deliberation, an embassy was despatched, headed by Skirgello, brother to the grand-duke, and bearing the most costly presents; Jagello himself being with difficulty dissuaded from accompanying them in person. The envoys were admitted into the presence of the council, at which the queen herself presided, and the prince proceeded to lay before the astonished nobles the offers of the barbarian suitor, offers too tempting to be weighed in the balance against such a trifle as a girl's happiness, or the violation of what these overbearing politicians were pleased to term a mere childish engagement, contracted before the parties were able to judge for themselves. After a long harangue, in which Skirgello represented how vainly the most illustrious potentates and the most powerful rulers had hitherto endeavored to effect the conversion of Lithuania, he offered as "a tribute to the charms of the queen" that Jagello and his brothers, together with the princes, lords, and people of Lithuania and Samogitia, should at once embrace the Catholic faith; that all the Christian captives should be restored unransomed; and the whole of their extensive dominions be incorporated with Poland; the grand-duke also pledging himself to reconquer for that country Pomerania, Silesia, and whatever other territories had been torn from Poland by neighboring states; and, finally, promising to make good to the Poles the sum of two hundred thousand florins, which had been sent to William of Austria as the dowry forfeited by the non-fulfilment of the engagement entered into by their late king Lewis. A murmur of applause at this unprecedented generosity ran through the assembly; the nobles hailed the prospect of so unlooked-for an augmentation of national power and security; and the bishops could not but rejoice at the prospect of rescuing so many souls from the darkness of heathenism, and securing at one and the same time the propagation of the Catholic faith and the peace of Poland. But the queen herself shared not these feelings of satisfaction: no sooner had Skirgello ceased than she started from her seat, cast a hasty glance round the assembly, and, as if reading her fate in the countenances of the nobles, buried her face in her hands and burst into a flood of tears. All attempts to soothe and pacify her were in vain: in a strain of passionate eloquence, which was not without its effect, she pleaded her affection for Duke William, the sacred nature of the engagement by which she was pledged to become his wife, pointed to the ring on her finger, and reminded an aged prelate who had accompanied her from Hungary that he had himself witnessed their being laid in the same cradle at the ceremony of their betrothal. It was impossible to behold unmoved the anguish of so gentle a creature; not a few of the younger chieftains espoused the cause of their sovereign; and, at the urgent solicitation of Hedwige, it was finally determined that the Lithuanian ambassadors, accompanied by three Polish nobles, should repair to Buda for the purpose of consulting her mother, the Queen of Hungary.
[Footnote 41: The territories of many of the Russian or Ruthenian dukes which were conquered by the Lithuanian pagans.]
But Elizabeth, though inaccessible to the temptations of worldly ambition, was too pious, too self-denying, to allow maternal affection to preponderate over the interests of religion. Aware that the betrothal of her daughter to the Duke of Austria had never been renewed from the time of their infancy, she, without a moment's hesitation, replied that, for her own part, she desired nothing, but that the queen ought to sacrifice every human feeling for the glory of Christianity and the welfare of Poland. To Hedwige herself she wrote affectionately, though firmly, bidding her lay every natural inclination at the foot of the cross, and desiring her to praise that God who had chosen so unworthy an instrument as the means by which the pure splendor of Catholicity should penetrate the darkness of Lithuania and the other pagan nations. Elizabeth was aware {148} of the real power of religion over the mind of her child, and doubted not but that, after the first paroxysm of grief had subsided, she should be able to overcome by its means the violence of her daughter's repugnance to the proposed measure. In order to give a color of impartiality to their proceedings, a diet was convoked at Cracow, immediately on the return of the embassy, to deliberate on the relative claims of Jagello, William of Austria, and the Dukes of Mazovia and Oppelen, all of whom aspired to the hand of Hedwige and the crown of Poland. The discussion was long and stormy, for amongst those nobles more immediately around the queen's person there were many, including a large body of ecclesiastics, who, although convinced that no lawful impediment existed to the marriage, yet shrank from the cruelty of uniting the gentle princess to a barbarian; and these failed not to insist upon the insult which would be implied by such a choice to the native Catholic princes. The majority, however, were of a different opinion, and at the close of the diet it was decided that an ambassador should be despatched to Jagello, inviting him to Cracow for the purpose of continuing the negotiations in his own person. But William of Austria was too secure in the justice of his cause and the affection of his betrothed to resign his pretensions without an effort; and his ardor being by no means diminished by a letter which he received from the queen herself, imploring him to hasten to her assistance, he placed himself at the head of a numerous retinue, and, with a treasure by which he hoped to purchase the good-will of the adverse faction, appeared so suddenly at Cracow as to deprive his opponents of their self-possession. The determination of Hedwige to unite herself to the object of her early and deep affection was loudly expressed, and, as there were many powerful leaders—among others, Gniewosz, Vice-chamberlain of Cracow—who espoused her cause, and rallied round Duke William, the Polish nobles, not daring openly to oppose their sovereign, were on the point of abandoning the cause of Jagello, when Dobeslas, Castellain of Cracow, one of the staunchest supporters of the Lithuanian alliance, resolved at any risk to prevent the meeting of the lovers, and actually went so far as to refuse the young prince admission into the castle, where the queen at the time was residing, not only drawing his sword, but dragging the duke with him over the drawbridge, which he commanded to be immediately lowered. William, thus repulsed, fixed his quarters at the Franciscan monastery; and Hedwige, fired by the insult, rode forth accompanied by a chosen body of knights and her female attendants, determined by the completion of her marriage to place an insuperable bar between her and Jagello.
In the refectory of the monastery, the queen and the prince at length met; and, after several hours spent in considering how best to avert the separation with which they were threatened, it was arranged that William should introduce himself privately into the castle of Cracow, where they were to be united by the queen's confessor. Some time elapsed before this plan could be carried into execution; for although even Dobeslas hesitated to confine his sovereign within her own palace, the castle gates were kept shut against the entrance of the Duke of Austria. Exasperated at this continued opposition, and her affection augmented by the presence of its object, from whom the arrival, daily expected, of Jagello would divide her for ever, Hedwige determined to admit the prince disguised as one of her household, and a day was accordingly fixed for the execution of this romantic project. By some means or other the whole plan came to the knowledge of the vigilant castellain; the adventurous prince was seized in a passage leading to the royal apartments, loaded with insult, and driven from the palace, within the walls of which the queen now found herself a prisoner. {149} It was in vain she wept, and implored to be allowed to see her betrothed once more, if only to bid him farewell; her letters were intercepted, her attendants became spies on her movements, and, on the young prince presenting himself before the gates, his life was threatened by the barons who remained within the fortress. This was too much; alarmed for her lover's safety, indignant at the restraint to which she was subjected, the passion of the girl triumphed over the dignity of the sovereign. Quitting her apartment, she hurried to the great gate, which, as she apprehended, was secured in such a manner as to baffle all her efforts; trembling with fear, and eager only to effect her escape, she called for a hatchet, and, raising it with both hands, repeatedly struck the locks and bolts that prevented her egress. The childish simplicity of the attempt, the agony depicted in the beautiful and innocent countenance of their mistress, so touched the hearts of the rude soldiery, that, but for their dread of the nobles, Hedwige would through their means have effected her purpose. As it was, they offered no opposition, but stood in mournful and respectful silence; when the venerable Demetrius, grand-treasurer of the kingdom, approached, and falling on his knees, implored her to be calm, and to sacrifice her own happiness, if not to the wishes of her subjects and the welfare of her country, at least to the interests of religion. At the sight of that aged man, whose thin white hairs and sorrowful countenance inspired both reverence and affection, the queen paused, and, giving him her hand, burst into an agony of tears; then, hurrying to her oratory, she threw herself on the ground before an image of the Blessed Virgin, where, after a sharp interior conflict, she succeeded in resigning herself to what she now believed to be the will of God—embracing for his sake the heavy cross which she was to bear for the remainder of her life.
Meanwhile Duke William, to escape the vengeance of the wrathful barons, was compelled to quit Poland, leaving his now useless wealth in the charge of the vice-chamberlain, who still apparently continued his friend. Not long after his departure, Jagello, at the head of a numerous army, and attended by his two brothers, crossed the frontiers, determined, as it seemed, to prosecute his suit. At the first rumor of his approach, the most powerful and influential among the nobles repaired to Cracow, where prayers, remonstrances, and even menaces were employed to induce the queen to accept the hand of the barbarian prince. But to all their eloquence Hedwige turned a deaf ear: in vain did agents, despatched for the purpose, represent the duke as handsome in person, princely and dignified in manner; her conscience was troubled, duty had enlisted on the same side as feeling, and the contest again commenced. Setting inclination aside, how dared she break the solemn compact she had made with the Duke of Austria? She persisted in regarding her proposed marriage with Jagello as nothing short of an act of criminal infidelity; and, independently of the affliction of her heart, her soul became a prey to the most violent remorse. To obtain the consent of Duke William to their separation was of course out of the question; and before the puzzled council could arrive at any decision, Jagello entered Cracow, more in the style of a conqueror than a suitor, and repaired at once to the castle, where he found the queen surrounded by a court surpassing in beauty and magnificence all that his imagination had pictured. Pale as she was from the intensity of her sufferings, he was dazzled, almost bewildered, by the childlike innocence and winning loveliness of Hedwige; and his admiration was expressed the following day by the revenues of a province being laid at her feet in the shape of jewels and robes of the most costly description. But the queen was more obdurate than ever. With her knowledge and consent Duke William had returned to Cracow, though compelled {150} to resort to a variety of disguises to escape the fury of the barons, now determined to put an end to his pretensions and his existence together; and it is said that, in order to avoid his indefatigable enemy, Dobeslas, he was once compelled to seek refuge in a large chimney. Forced eventually to quit the capital without seeing Hedwige, he still loitered in the environs; nor did he return to Austria until her marriage with Jagello terminated those hopes which he had cherished from his earliest infancy. In order to quiet the queen's religious scruples, a letter is said to have arrived from Rome, in which, after pronouncing that the early betrothal involved no impediment to the marriage, the Holy Father placed before her the merits of the offering she was called upon to make, reminding her of the torments so cheerfully suffered by the early martyrs for the honor of God, and calling upon her to imitate their example. This statement, however, is not sufficiently authenticated.
After the severest interior trials, days spent in tears, fasting, and the most earnest petitions to the throne of Divine grace, the queen received strength to consummate the sacrifice demanded from her. Naturally ardent and impulsive, and at an age when every sentiment is freshest and most keen, she was called upon to extirpate from her heart an affection not only deep but legitimate, to inflict a wound on the object of her tenderest love, and, finally, to transfer her devotion to one whom she had hitherto regarded with feelings of unqualified aversion. The path of highest, because self-sacrificing duty, once clear before her, she determined to act with generosity toward a God from whom she had received so much: her beauty, talents, the virtues with which she was adorned, were so many precious gifts to be placed at the disposal of him by whom they had been bestowed. Covering herself with a thick black veil, she proceeded on foot to the cathedral of Cracow, and, repairing to one of the side chapels, threw herself on her knees, where for three hours, with clasped hands and streaming eyes, she wrestled with the violent feeling that struggled in her bosom. At length she rose with a detached heart, having laid at the foot of the cross her affections, her will, her hopes of earthly happiness; offering herself, and all that belonged to her, as a perpetual holocaust to her crucified Redeemer, and esteeming herself happy so that by this sacrifice she might purchase the salvation of those precious souls for whom he had shed his blood. Before leaving the chapel she cast her veil over the crucifix, hoping under that pall to bury all of human infirmity that might still linger round her heart, and then hastened to establish a foundation for the perpetual renewal of this type of her "soul's sorrow." This foundation yet exists: within the same chapel the crucifix still stands, covered by its sable drapery, being commonly known as the Crucifix of Hedwige.
The queen's consent to the Lithuanian alliance endeared her still more to the hearts of her subjects, who regarded her as a martyr to the peace of Poland. On the 14th of February, 1386, her marriage was celebrated with becoming solemnity, Jagello having previously received the sacrament of baptism; shortly afterward he was crowned, in the presence of Hedwige, under his Christian name of Wladislas, which he had taken in deference to the wishes of the Poles. The unassuming piety, gentle disposition, and great learning of the young queen commanded at once the respect and admiration of her husband. So great, indeed, was his opinion of her prudence, that, being obliged to march into Upper Poland to crush the rebellion of the Palatine of Posnia, he took her with him in the capacity of mediatrix between himself and the disaffected leaders who had for months desolated that province. This mission of mercy was most acceptable to Hedwige; after the example of the sainted {151} Elizabeth of Hungary, her generosity toward the widows, orphans, and those who had lost their substance in this devastating war, was boundless; whilst ministering to their wants, she failed not, at the same time, to sympathize with their distress; and, like an angel of peace, she would stand between her husband and the objects of his indignation. On one occasion, to supply the necessities of the court, so heavy a contribution had been laid upon the peasants that their cattle did not escape; watching their opportunity, they, with their wives and children, threw themselves in the queen's path, filling the air with their cries, and conjuring her to prevent their utter ruin. Hedwige, deeply affected, dismounted from her palfrey, and, kneeling by their side, besought her husband not to sanction so flagrant an act of oppression; and when the satisfied peasants retired fully indemnified for their loss, she is said to have exclaimed, "Their cattle are restored, but who will recompense them for their tears?" Having reduced the country to obedience, it was time for Wladislas to turn his attention to his Lithuanian territories, more especially Russia Nigra, which, although governed by its own princes, was compelled to do homage to the house of Jagello. Pomerania, which by his marriage articles he was pledged to recover for Poland, had been usurped by the Teutonic Knights, who, sensible with how formidable an opponent they had to contend, endeavored to frustrate his intentions, first by carrying fire and sword into Lithuania, and then by exciting a revolution in favor of Duke Andrew, to whom, as well as to the heathen nobles, the alliance (by which their country was rendered dependent on Poland) was displeasing. Olgerd, the father of Wladislas, was a fierce pagan, and his thirteen sons, if we except the elder, inherited his cruelty, treachery, and rapacity. The promised revolution in religion was offensive to the majority of the people; and, to their shame be it spoken, the Teutonic Knights (whose order was first established to defend the Christian faith against the assaults of infidels) scrupled not to adopt a crooked policy, and, by inciting the Lithuanians against their sovereign, threw every impediment in the way of their conversion. Before the king had any suspicion of his intentions, the grand-master had crossed the frontiers, the duchy was laid waste, and many important fortresses were already in the hands of the order.
Wladislas, then absent in Upper Poland, despatched Skirgello into Lithuania, who, though haughty, licentious, and revengeful, was a brave and skilful general. Duke Andrew fled before the forces of his brother, and the latter attacked the Knights with an impetuosity that compelled them speedily to evacuate their conquests. The arrival of the king, with a number of learned prelates, and a large body of clergy, proved he was quite in earnest regarding the conversion of his subjects, hitherto immersed in the grossest and most degrading idolatry. Trees, serpents, vipers, were the inferior objects of their adoration; gloomy forests and damp caverns their temples; and the most disgusting and venomous reptiles were cherished in every family as household gods. But, as with the eastern Magi, fire was the principal object of the Lithuanian worship; priests were appointed whose office it was to tend the sacred flame, their lives paying the penalty if it were allowed to expire. At Wilna, the capital of the duchy, was a temple of the sun; and should that luminary chance to be eclipsed, or even clouded, the people fled thither in the utmost terror, eager to appease the deity by rivers of human blood, which poured forth at the command of the Ziutz, or high priest, the victims vying with each other in the severity of their self-inflicted torments.
As the most effectual method of at once removing the errors of this infatuated people, Wladislas ordered the forests to be cut down, the serpents to {152} be crushed under the feet of his soldiers, and, after extinguishing with his own hand the sacred fires, he caused the temples to be demolished; thus demonstrating to the Lithuanians the impotency of their gods. With the cowardice ever attendant on ignorance and superstition, the pagans cast themselves with their faces to the earth, expecting to see the sacrilegious strangers blasted by the power of the profaned element; but, no such results following, they gradually lost confidence in their deities, and of their own free will desired to be instructed in the doctrines of Christ. Their theological knowledge was necessarily confined to the Lord's Prayer and the Creed, and a day was fixed for the commencement of the ceremony of baptism. As, on account of the number of catechumens, it was impossible to administer the sacrament to each individual separately, the nobles and their families, after leaving the sacred font, prepared to act as sponsors to the people, who, being divided into groups of either sex, were sprinkled by the bishops and priests, every division receiving the same name.
Hedwige had accompanied her husband to Lithuania, and was gratified by witnessing the zeal with which he assisted the priests in their arduous undertaking; whilst Wladislas, aware of the value of his young auxiliary, was not disappointed by the degree of enthusiastic veneration with which the new Christians regarded the sovereign who, at the age of sixteen, had conferred upon them peace and the light of the true faith. Hedwige was admirably adapted for this task: in her character there was no alloy of passion, pride, or frivolity; an enemy to the luxury and pomp which her sex and rank might have seemed to warrant, her fasts were rigid and her bodily mortifications severe. Neither did her fervor abate during her sojourn in the duchy. By her profuse liberality the cathedral of St. Stanislas of Wilna was completed. Nor did she neglect the other churches and religious foundations which, by her advice, her husband commenced in the principal cities of his kingdom. Before quitting Lithuania, the queen's heart was wrung by the intelligence she received of a domestic tragedy of the deepest dye. Her mother, the holy and virtuous Elizabeth of Hungary, had during a popular insurrection been put to a cruel death; whilst her sister Maria, who had fallen into the power of the rebel nobles, having narrowly escaped the same fate, was confined in an isolated fortress, subject to the most rigorous and ignominious treatment.
Paganism being at length thoroughly rooted out of Lithuania, a bishopric firmly established at Wilna, and the seven parishes in its vicinity amply supplied with ecclesiastics, Wladislas, preparatory to his return to Poland, appointed his brother Skirgello viceroy of the duchy. This was a fatal error. The proud barbarians, little disposed to dependence on a country they had been accustomed to despoil at pleasure, writhed under the yoke of the fierce tyrant, whose rule soon became odious, and whose vices were rendered more apparent by the contrast which his character presented to that of his cousin Vitowda, whom, as a check upon his well-known ferocity, Wladislas had designated as his colleague. Scarcely had the court returned to Poland, when the young prince, amiable, brave, and generous, by opposing his cousin's unjust and cruel actions, drew upon himself the vengeance of the latter, and, in order to save his life, was obliged to seek refuge in Pomerania, from whence, as his honor and patriotism alike forbade his assisting the Teutonic Knights in their designs upon his country, he applied to the king for protection.
Wladislas, of a weak and jealous disposition, was, however, at the time too much occupied in attending to foul calumnies uttered against the spotless virtue of his queen to give heed to the application. Notwithstanding the prudence of her general conduct, and {153} the tender devotion evinced by Hedwige toward her husband, the admiration which her beauty and sweetness of disposition commanded from all who approached her was a continual thorn in his side. Her former love for the Duke of Austria and repugnance to himself haunted him night and day, until he actually conceived suspicions injurious to her fidelity. In the polluted atmosphere of a court there were not wanting those who, for their own aggrandizement, were base enough to resort to falsehood in order to destroy an influence at which the wicked alone had cause to tremble. It was whispered in the ear of the unfortunate monarch that his queen had held frequent, and of course clandestine, interviews with Duke William, until, half frantic, he one day publicly reproached her, and, turning to the assembled bishops, wildly demanded a divorce. The proud nobles indignantly interposed, many a blade rattled in its sheath, eager to vindicate the innocence of one who, in their eyes, was purity itself; but Hedwige calmly arose, and with matronly dignity demanded the name of her accuser, and a solemn trial, according to the custom of her country. There was a dead silence, a pause; and then, trembling and abashed before the virtue he had maligned, the Vice-chamberlain Gniewosz, before mentioned as the friend of Duke William (whose wealth he had not failed to appropriate), stepped reluctantly forward. A murmur of surprise and wrath resounded through the council-chamber: many a sword was drawn, as though eager for the blood of the offender; but the ecclesiastics having at length calmed the tumult, the case was appointed to be judged at the diet of Wislica.
The queen's innocence was affirmed on oath by herself and her whole household, after which the castellain, John Tenczynski, with twelve knights of noble blood and unsullied honor, solemnly swore to the falsehood of the accusation, and, throwing down their gauntlets, defied to mortal combat all who should gainsay their assertion. None, however, appeared to do battle in so bad a cause; and the convicted traitor, silenced and confounded, sank on his knees, confessed his guilt, and implored the mercy of her he had so foully aspersed. The senate, in deference to the wishes of Hedwige, spared his life; but he was compelled to crouch under a bench, imitate the barking of a dog, and declare that, like that animal, he had dared to snarl against his chaste and virtuous sovereign. [Footnote 42] This done, he was deprived of his office, and banished the court; and Wladislas hastened to beg the forgiveness of his injured wife.
[Footnote 42: This was a portion of the punishment specially awarded by the penal code of Poland to the crime of calumny. Like many other punishments of those ages, it was symbolical in its character. (See the valuable work of Albert du Boys, Histoire du Droit Criminel des Peuples Modernes, liv. ii.; chap. vii.) Similar penalties had been common in Poland from early times. Thus we find Boloslas the Great inviting to a banquet and vapor bath nobles who had been guilty of some transgression; after the bath he administered a paternal reproof and castigation. Hence the Polish proverb, "to give a person a bath."]
Meanwhile Prince Vitowda, despairing of assistance and pressed on all sides, after much hesitation joined the Teutonic Knights in an incursion against Lithuania. The country was invaded by a numerous army, the capital taken by storm, abandoned to pillage, and finally destroyed by fire; no less than fourteen thousand of the inhabitants perishing in the flames, beside numbers who were massacred without distinction of sex or age. Fortunately the upper city was garrisoned by Poles, who determined to hold out to the last. The slight fortifications were speedily destroyed; but, being immediately repaired, the siege continued so long that Skirgello had time to assemble an army before which the besiegers were eventually obliged to retreat. Vitowda, now too deeply compromised to draw back, though thwarted in his designs on Upper Wilna, gained possession of many of the frontier towns, and, encouraged by success, aimed at nothing less than the independent sovereignty of Lithuania. He was, however, opposed during {154} two or three campaigns by Wladislas person, until, wearied of the war, the king had the weakness not only to sue for peace, but to invest Vitowda with the government of the duchy. This, as might be expected, gave great umbrage to Skirgello, and to another brother, Swidrigal, so that Lithuania, owing to the ambition of the rival princes, became for some time the theatre of civil discord.
Among her other titles to admiration, we must not omit to mention that Hedwige was a munificent patroness of learning. She hastened to re-establish the college built by Casimir II., founded and endowed a magnificent university at Prague for the education of the Lithuanian youth, and superintended the translation of the Holy Scriptures into Polish, writing with her own hands the greater part of the New Testament. Her work was interrupted during her husband's absence by the attack of the Hungarians on the frontiers of Poland; and it was then that, laying aside the weakness of her sex, she felt herself called upon to supply his place. A powerful army was levied, of which this youthful heroine assumed the command, directing the councils of the generals, and sharing the privations of the meanest soldier. When she appeared on horseback in the midst of the troops, nothing could exceed the enthusiasm of these hardy warriors; and the simplicity with which they obeyed the slightest order of their queen was touching in the extreme. Hedwige led her forces into Russia Nigra, and, partly by force of arms, partly by skilful negotiations, succeeded in reconquering the whole of that vast province, which her father Lewis had detached from the Polish crown in order to unite it to that of his beloved Hungary. This act of injustice was repaired by his daughter, who thus endeared her name to the memory of succeeding generations. The conquering army proceeded to Silesia, then usurped by the Duke of Oppelen, where they were equally successful; so that Wladislas was indebted for the brightest trophies of his reign to the heroism of his wife.
Encouraged by her past success, he determined to reconduct her into Lithuania, in hopes by her means to settle the dissensions of the rival princes. Accordingly, in the spring of 1393, they proceeded thither, when the disputants, subdued by the irresistible charm of her manners, agreed to refer their claims to her arbitration. Of a solid and mature judgment, Hedwige succeeded in pacifying them; and then, by mutual consent, they entered into a solemn compact that in their future differences, instead of resorting to arms, they would submit their cause unreservedly to the arbitration of the young Queen of Poland.
Notwithstanding its restoration to internal tranquillity, this unfortunate duchy was continually laid waste by the Teutonic Knights; and Wladislas, determined to hazard all on one decisive battle, commanded forces to be levied not only in Lithuania, but in Poland. Before the preparations were completed, an interview was arranged to take place between the king and the grand-master, Conrad de Jungen; but the nobility, fearing lest the irritable temper of Wladislas would prove an insurmountable obstacle to all accommodation, implored him to allow the queen to supply his place. On his consent, Hedwige, accompanied by the ecclesiastics, the barons, and a magnificent retinue, proceeded to the place of rendezvous, where she was met by Conrad and the principal knight-commanders of the order. The terms she proposed were equitable, and more lenient than the Teutonic Knights had any reason to expect; but, under one trifling pretext or another, they refused the restitution of the usurped territories on which the king naturally insisted, and the queen was at length obliged to return, prophesying, says the chronicler, that, after her death, their perversity would receive its deserved punishment at the hands of her husband. Her prediction was fulfilled. Some years afterward, on the plains {155} between Grunnervaldt and Tannenberg, the grand-master, with fifty thousand knights, was slain, and by this decisive victory the order was placed at the mercy of Poland, though, from the usual indecision of its king, the fruits of this splendid action were less than might have been expected.
Until her early death, Hedwige continued the guardian angel of that beloved country for which she had made her first and greatest sacrifice; and it is likely that but for her watchfulness, its interests would have been frequently compromised by the Lithuanian union. Acting on this principle, she refused to recognize the investiture of her husband's favorite, the Palatine of Cracow, with the perpetual fief of Podolia; and, undazzled by the apparent advantages offered by an expedition against the Tartars headed by the great Tamerlane, she forbade the Polish generals to take part in a campaign which, owing to the rashness of Vitowda, terminated so fatally.
It was shortly after her unsuccessful interview with the Teutonic Knights that, by the death of her sister Maria, the crown of Hungary (which ought to have devolved on her husband Sigismund) became again an object of contention. The Hungarians, attracted by the report of her moderation, wisdom, and even military skill—not an uncommon accomplishment in females of those times—determined to offer it to Hedwige; but her brother-in-law, trusting to her sense of justice, hastened to Cracow, praying her not to accept the proposal, and earnestly soliciting her alliance. The queen, whom ambition had no power to dazzle, consented, and a treaty advantageous to Poland was at once concluded.
Hedwige was a good theologian, and well read in the fathers and doctors of the Church; the works of St. Bernard and St. Ambrose, the revelations of St. Bridget, and the sermons of holy men, being the works in which she most delighted. In Church music she was an enthusiast; and not long after the completion of the convent of the Visitation, which she had caused to be erected near the gates of Cracow, she founded the Benedictine abbey of the Holy Cross, where office was daily recited in the Selavonian language, after the custom of the order at Prague. She also instituted a college in honor of the Blessed Virgin, where the Psalms were daily chanted, after an improved method, by sixteen canons.
It was toward the close of the year 1398 that, to the great delight of her subjects, it became evident that the union of Wladislas and Hedwige would at length be blessed with offspring. To see the throne filled by a descendant of their beloved sovereign had been the dearest wish of the Polish people, and fervent had been the prayers offered for this inestimable blessing. The enraptured Wladislas hastened to impart his expected happiness to most of the Christian kings and princes, not forgetting the Supreme Pontiff, Boniface IX., by whom the merits of the young queen were so well appreciated that, six years after her accession, he had addressed to her a letter, written with his own hand, in which he thanked her for her affectionate devotion to the Catholic Church, and informed her that, although it was impossible he could accede to all the applications which might be transmitted to the Holy See on behalf of her subjects, yet, by her adopting a confidential sign-manual, those requests to which she individually attached importance should be immediately granted. The Holy Father hastened to reply in the warmest terms to the king's communication, promising to act as sponsor to the child, who, if a boy, he desired might be named after himself.
Unfortunately, some time before the queen's delivery, it became necessary for her husband to quit Cracow, in order to direct an expedition against his old enemies the Teutonic Knights. During his absence, he wrote a long letter, in which, after desiring that the happy event might be attended with all possible magnificence, he entered {156} into a minute detail of the devices and embroidery to be used in the adornment of the bed and chamber, particularly requesting that the draperies and hangings might not lack gold, pearls, or precious stones. This ostentatious display, though excusable in a fond husband and a powerful monarch about to behold the completion of his dearest wishes, was by no means in consonance with Hedwige's intense love of Christian simplicity and poverty. We find her addressing to her husband these few touching words, expressing, as the result proved, that presentiment of her approaching end which has often been accorded to saintly souls: "Seeing that I have so long renounced the pomps of this world, it is not on that treacherous couch—to so many the bed of death—that I would willingly be surrounded by their glitter. It is not by the help of gold or gems that I hope to render myself acceptable to that Almighty Father who has mercifully removed from me the reproach of barrenness, but rather by resignation to his will, and a sense of my own nothingness." It was remarked after this that the queen became more recollected than ever, spending whole hours in meditation, bestowing large alms, not only on the distressed of her own country, but on such pilgrims as presented themselves, and increasing her exterior mortifications; wearing a hair shirt during Lent, and using the discipline in a manner which, considering her condition, might have been deemed injudicious. She had ever made a point of spending the vigil of the anniversary of her early sacrifice at the foot of the veiled crucifix, but on this occasion, not returning at her usual hour, one of her Hungarian attendants sought her in the cathedral, then but dimly lighted by the massy silver lamp suspended before the tabernacle. It was bitterly cold, the wind was moaning through the long aisles, but there, on the marble pavement, in an ecstacy which rendered her insensible to bodily sufferings, lay Hedwige, she having continued in this state of abstraction from the termination of complin, at which she invariably assisted.
At length, on the 12th of June, 1399, this holy queen gave birth to a daughter, who was immediately baptized in the cathedral of Cracow, receiving from the Pope's legate, at the sacred font, the name of Elizabeth Bonifacia. The babe was weak and sickly, and the condition of the mother so precarious that a messenger was despatched to the army urging the immediate return of Wladislas. He arrived in time to witness the last sigh of his so ardently desired child, though his disappointment was completely merged in his anxiety for his wife. By the advice of the physicians it had been determined to conceal the death of the infant, but their precautions were vain. At the very moment it occurred, Hedwige herself announced it to her astonished attendants, and then humbly asked for the last sacraments of the Church, which she received with the greatest fervor. She, however, lingered until the 17th of July, when, the measure of her merits and good works being full, she went to appear before the tribunal of that God whom she had sought to glorify on earth. She died before completing her twenty-ninth year.
A few days previously she had taken a tender leave of her distracted husband; and, mindful to the last of the interests of Poland, she begged him to espouse her cousin Anne, by whose claim to the throne of the Piasts his own would be strengthened. She then drew off her nuptial ring, as if to detach herself from all human ties, and placed it upon his finger, and although, from motives of policy, Wladislas successively espoused three wives, he religiously preserved this memorial of her he had valued the most; bequeathing it as a precious relic (and a memento to be faithful to the land which Hedwige had so truly loved) to the Bishop of Cracow, who had saved his life in battle. Immediately after her funeral, he retired to his Russian {157} province, nor could he for some time be prevailed upon to return and assume the duties of sovereignty.
There was another mourner for her loss, William of Austria, who, notwithstanding the entreaties of his subjects, had remained single for her sake. He was at length prevailed upon to espouse the Princess Jane of Naples, but did not long survive the union.
The obsequies of Hedwige were celebrated by the Pope's legate with becoming magnificence. All that honor and respect from which she had sensitively shrunk during life was lavished on her remains; she was interred in the cathedral of Cracow on the left of the high altar; her memory was embalmed by her people's love, and was sanctified in their eyes. Numerous miracles are said to have been performed at her tomb: thither the afflicted in mind and body flocked to obtain through her intercession that consolation which during her life she had so cheerfully bestowed. Contrary to the general expectation, she was never canonized; [Footnote 43] her name, however, continued to be fondly cherished by the Poles, and by the people who under God were indebted to her for their first knowledge of Christianity, and of whom she might justly be styled the apostle. On her monument was graven a Latin inscription styling her the "Star of Poland," enumerating her virtues, lamenting her loss, and imploring the King of Glory to receive her into his heavenly kingdom.
[Footnote 43: Polish writers give her the title of saint, though her name is not inserted in the Martyrologies.—Butler's Lives of the Saints, October 17th.]
The life of Hedwige is her best eulogium. As it has been seen, she combined all the qualities not only of her own, but of a more advanced age. The leisure which she could snatch from the affairs of government she employed in study, devotion, and works of charity. True to her principles, she at her death bequeathed her jewels and other personal property in trust to the bishop and castellain of Cracow, for the foundation of a college in that city. Two years afterward her wishes were carried into effect, and the first stone was laid of the since celebrated university.
Wladislas survived his wife thirty-five years. In his old age he was troubled by a return of his former jealousy, thereby continually embittering the life of his queen, a Lithuanian princess, who, although exculpated by oath, as Hedwige had formerly been, was less fortunate, inasmuch as she was the continual victim of fresh suspicions. The latter years of his reign were much disturbed by the hostilities of the Emperor Sigismund, and by the troubles occasioned in Lithuania by the rebels, who had again combined with the Teutonic Knights.
Wladislas died in 1434, at the age of eighty years. It is said that he contracted his mortal sickness by being tempted to remain exposed too long to the night air, captivated by the sweet notes of a nightingale. Notwithstanding his faults, this monarch had many virtues; his piety was great, and he practised severe abstinences; and although he at times gave way to a suspicious temper, his general character was trusting, frank, and generous even to imprudence. His suspicions, in fact, did not originate with himself. They sprang, in the case of both his wives, from the tongues of calumniators, to whom he listened with a hasty credulity. He raised the glory and extended and consolidated the dominion of Poland. He was succeeded by his son, a child of eleven years, who had previously been, elected to the throne, but not until Jagello had confirmed and even enlarged the privileges of the nobles. His tardy consent, at the diet of Jedlin, roused their pride, so that it was not until four years later that they solemnly gave their adhesion.
It has not been our purpose to give more than a page out of the Polish annals illustrative of the patriotic and Christian spirit of sacrifice for which Poland's daughters have, down to the {158} present day, been no less noted than her sons. The mind naturally reverts to the late cruel struggle in which this generous people has once more succumbed to the overwhelming power of Russia, and her unscrupulous employment of the gigantic forces at her command. Europe has looked on apathetically, and, after a few feeble diplomatic remonstrances, has allowed the sacrifice to be completed. But the cause of Poland is essentially the cause of Catholicism and of the Church; and this, perhaps, may account for the small degree of sympathy it has awakened in European governments. Russia's repression of her insurgent subjects became from the first a religious persecution. Her aim is not to Russify, but to decatholicize Poland. The insurrection, quenched in blood, has been followed by a wholesale deportation of Poles into the eastern Russian provinces, where, with their country, it is hoped they will, ere long, lose also their faith. These are replaced by Russian colonists transplanted into Poland. To crush, extirpate, and deport the nobility—to leave the lower class alone upon the soil, who, deprived of their clergy—martyred, exiled, or in bonds—may become an easy conquest to the dominant schism—such is the plan of the autocrat, as we have beheld it actively carried out with all its accompanying horrors of sacrilege and ruthless barbarity. One voice alone—that of the Father of Christendom—has been raised to stigmatize these revolting excesses, and to reprove the iniquity of "persecuting Catholicism in order to put down rebellion." [Footnote 44] The same voice has exhorted us to pray for our Polish brethren, and has encouraged that suffering people to seek their deliverance from the just and compassionate Lord of all.
[Footnote 44: The terms of the Holy Father's address have been strangely exaggerated in many continental journals, where he is made to refer to the subject politically, and loudly to proclaim the justice of the Polish insurrection in that regard. The Pope entirely restricted his animadversions on the Czar to his persecution of the faith of his subjects.]
In tracing the progress of the various branches of science during the Middle Ages, there is nothing more striking than the slow stages by which a knowledge of the truth was reached on the subject of the earth's form, and the relative positions of the various countries which compose it. Though from the very earliest period the subject necessarily occupied a considerable amount of attention, and though facts began to be observed bearing upon it in the first ages after the diffusion of mankind, and were largely multiplied in proportion as the formation of colonies and intercommunication for purposes of commerce or war became more frequent, yet we find very little advance made in geographical knowledge from the days of Ptolemy, when the observations of the ancients were most systematically collected and arranged, till some centuries after, when the maritime enterprise of the Portuguese impelled them to the series of discoveries which led to the doubling of the Cape of Good Hope, and incited the genius of Columbus to the discovery of a new world.
The cause of this slow advance of geographical, in comparison with other branches of knowledge, was owing in some measure to the absence of any exact records of the discoveries made, by which they might have been communicated to others, and become the {159} starting-point for further investigations; but still more to the imperfect means of navigation in existence, and to those barbarian uprisings and migrations which for centuries, at least, were perpetually changing the state of Europe and Asia, and, by removing the landmarks of nations, obliging geography to begin as it were anew. During the whole of this period, however, we find evidences of the patient cultivation of this, as of all other branches of human knowledge, within the walls of those monastic institutions which ignorant prejudice still regards as the haunts of idleness, but to which the learned of all creeds and countries acknowledge their deep debt of obligation. Formal accounts of some distant land, either written by the traveller himself or recorded from the oral information he communicated; historical chronicles, in which not alone the events, but all that was known of the country is recorded, and maps in which the position of various places is attempted to be laid down, were to be found in every monastery both on the continent and in our own island. The holy men, too, who preached the gospel to pagan nations were usually careful also to enlarge their contemporaries' knowledge concerning the places and the people among whom they labored. Thus the great St. Boniface not only converted the Sclavonic nations to Catholic truth, but, at the special injunction of the Pope, wrote an account of them and of their country. St. Otho, bishop of Bamberg, did the same for the countries upon the shores of the Baltic; the holy monk Anscaire for Scandinavia, where he carried on his apostolic labors; and many others might be mentioned.
Among the most valuable of the contributions to the geography of the Middle Ages were those furnished by some monks of the order of St. Francis, who in the middle of the thirteenth century penetrated into the remote east, on special missions to the barbarian hordes that then threatened the very existence of religion and civilization, and whose enterprises, embarked in at the call of duty, are in many respects interesting.
History, whether ancient or modern, has few chapters so remarkable as that which records the rise of the Mongol power. A great chief, who had ruled over an immense horde of this hitherto pastoral people, died, leaving his eldest son an infant, and unable to command the adhesion of his rude subjects. The young chief, as he grew to man's estate, found his horde dispersed, and only a few families willing to acknowledge his sway. Determined, however, to regain his power and carry out the ambitious design which he had formed of conquering the world, he caused an assembly of the whole people to be summoned on the banks of the Selinga. At this assembly one of the wise men of the tribes announced that he had had a vision, in which he saw the great God, the disposer of kingdoms, sitting upon his throne in council, and heard him decree that the young chief should be "Zingis Khan," or "Greatest Chief" of the earth. The shouts of the Mongols testified their readiness to accept the decree; Zingis Khan was raised to supreme power over the whole Mongol race. He soon subdued the petty opposition of his neighbors, and, establishing the seat of his empire at Karakorum, spread his conquests in every direction with extraordinary rapidity, and died the ruler of many nations, bequeathing his power to sons and grandsons as warlike and ambitious as himself. One of these, Batoo Khan, invaded Europe with an immense army. He overran Russia, taking Moscow and its other principal places; subdued Poland and burnt Cracow; defeated the king of Hungary in a great battle; penetrated to Breslau, which he burned; and defeated, near Liegnitz, an army composed of Christian volunteers from all lands;—one of the bloodiest battles ever fought against the eastern hordes.
It was four years after this great battle, namely, in 1246, and when all {160} Europe was trembling at the expectation of another invasion of the Mongols (who, having devastated the country with fire and sword, had retired loaded with spoils), that two embassies were despatched by the Pope, Innocent IV., to endeavor to induce them to stop their progress into Europe, and to embrace Christianity. These important missions were intrusted to monks of the Franciscan order; Jean du Plan Carpini being despatched toward the north-east, where the camp of Batoo was fixed, and Nicholas Ascelin, the year after, sent into Syria and Persia.
Ascelin's mission, which comprised three other monks of the same order beside himself, was the most rapidly terminated. Following the south of the Caspian Sea, the party traversed Syria, Mesopotamia, and Persia, and at length reached the Mongol or Tatar encampment of Baiothnoy Khan. Being asked their object as they approached, the holy men boldly but undiplomatically declared that they were ambassadors from the head of the Christian world, and that their mission was to exhort the Tatars to repent of their wicked and barbarous attacks upon God's people. Being asked what presents they brought to the khan, according to eastern custom, they further replied that the Pope, as the vicar of God, was not accustomed to purchase a hearing or favor by such means, especially from infidels. The Mongols were astonished at this bold language used toward a race accustomed to strike terror into all who came into contact with them. They were still more astonished when the holy men refused, as a reprehensible act of idolatry, to make the usual genuflexions on being admitted to the presence of the khan, unless he first became a Catholic and acknowledged the Pope's supremacy, when they offered to do so for the honor of God and the Church. Hitherto the barbarians had borne patiently the display of what they doubtless regarded as the idiosyncrasies of the good friars, but this last refusal incited their rage; the ambassadors and their master the Pope were insulted and threatened, and it was debated in council whether they should not be flayed alive, their skins stuffed with hay, and sent back to the Pope. The interposition of the khan's mother saved their lives, however; but the Mongols could never understand how the Holy Father, who they found from Ascelin kept no army and had gained no battles, could have dared to send such a message to their victorious master, whom they styled the Son of Heaven. Ascelin and his companions were treated during their stay with scant courtesy, and were dismissed with a letter to the Pope from Baiothnoy Khan, commanding him, if he wished to remain in possession of his land and heritage, to come in his own person and do homage to him who held just sway over the whole earth. They reached as speedily as possible the nearest Syrian port, and embarked for France. They brought back to Europe some valuable information respecting the country of the Mongols, though small compared with that of the other ambassadors whom we have to mention.
Carpini was a man better fitted the office of ambassador, and able, without sacrificing his principles or his dignity, to become "all things to all men." He travelled with a numerous suite through Bohemia and Poland to Kiow, then the Russian capital. A quantity of skins and furs was given him in the northern capitals, as presents to the Tatar chiefs, and all Europe watched with interest the result of the embassy. On the banks of the Dnieper they first encountered the barbarians. The purpose of their journey being demanded, they replied that they were messengers from the Pope to the chief of the Tatar people, to desire peace and friendship between them, and request that they would embrace the faith of Christ, and desist from the slaughter of the Pope's subjects, who had never injured or attempted to injure them. Their {161} bearing made a very favorable impression. They were conducted to the tent of the chief, where they did not hesitate to make the usual salutations; and by his command post-horses and a Mongol escort were given them to conduct them to Batoo Khan. They found him at a place on the borders of the Black Sea; and, before being admitted to an audience, had to pass between two fires, as a charm to nullify any witchcraft or evil intention on their parts. They found Batoo seated on a raised throne with one of his wives, and surrounded by his court. They again made the usual genuflexions, and then delivered their letters, which Batoo Khan read attentively, but without giving them any reply. For some months they were "trotted about," with a view to show them the wealth, power, and magnificence of the people they were among; and in order that they might communicate at home what they saw. The holy men passed Lent among the Mongols; and, notwithstanding the fatigues they had passed through, observed a strict fast, taking, as their only food for the forty days, millet boiled in water, and drinking only melted snow. They witnessed the imposing ceremony of the investiture of a Tatar chief, at which a large number of feudatory princes were present, with no less than four thousand messengers bearing tribute or presents from subdued or submitted states. After the investiture, they also were ushered into the presence; but, alas, the gifts intrusted to them and their whole substance were already consumed. The Tatars, however, considerately dispensed with this usual part of the proceedings; for the coarse garb of the monks, contrasting as it did with the rich silks and garments of gold and silver which they describe as being worn generally during the ceremonies, must have marked them as men who possessed little of this world's goods.
The ceremonials of investiture over, Carpini was at length called upon to deliver his message to the newly-appointed khan; and a reply was given, which he was desired to translate into Latin, and convey to the Pope. It contained only meaningless expressions of good-will; but the fact was, that the khan intended to carry the war into Europe, though he did not desire to give notice of his intent. He offered to send with them an ambassador to the Pope; but Carpini seems to have surmised his purpose, and that this ambassador would really be only a spy; and he therefore found means to evade the offer. They returned homeward through the rigors of a Siberian winter, accompanied by several Genoese, Pisan, and Venetian traders, who, following the papal envoys, had found their way, in pursuit of commerce, to the Tatar encampment. The hardships the good men endured on the return journey were of the most fearful kind. Often, in crossing the extensive steppes of that country, they were forced to sleep all night upon the snow, and found themselves almost buried in snow-drifts in the morning. Kiow was at length reached; and its people, who had given up the adventurous travellers as lost, turned out to welcome them, as men returned from the grave. The rest of Carpini's life was spent in similar hardships, while preaching the gospel to the savage peoples of Bohemia, Hungary, Denmark, and Norway; and death came to him with his reward, at an advanced age, in the midst of his apostolic labors.
A few years after the missions of Ascelin and Carpini, another Franciscan, named William Van Ruysbroeck, better known as Rubriquis, a native of Brabant, was sent by Saint Louis of France on a similar errand to the Mongols, one of whose khans, it was reported, had embraced Christianity. He found the rumor void of foundation; and, though received courteously, as Carpini had been, could perceive not the slightest disposition among the barbarians to receive or even hear the truth. At the camp of Sartach Khan, Rubriquis was commanded to appear before the chief in his priestly vestments, and did so, carrying a missal {162} and crucifix in his hands, an attendant preceding him with a censer, and singing the Salve Regina. Everything he had with him was examined very attentively by the khan and his wives, especially the crucifix; but nothing came of this curiosity. Like Carpini, the party were frequently exposed to great privations, both at the encampments and on their journeys; and on one occasion Rubriquis piously records: "If it had not been for the grace of God, and the biscuit which we had brought with us, we had surely perished." On one journey from camp to camp, they travelled for five weeks along the banks of the Volga, nearly always on foot, and often without food. Rubriquis' companion Barthelemi broke down under the fatigues of the return journey; but Rubriquis persevered alone, and traversed an immense extent of country, passing through the Caucasus, Armenia, and Syria, before he took ship for France, to report the failure of his mission to the pious king.
Bootless as these journeys proved, so far as their main object was concerned, there is no doubt that in many ways they effected a large amount of good. The religious creed of the Mongols appears to have been confined to a belief in one God, and in a place of future rewards and punishments. For other doctrines, or for ceremonies of religion, they appear to have cared little. They trampled the Caliph of Bagdad, the "successor of the Prophet," beneath their horses' hoofs at the capture of that city; and they tolerated at their camps our Christian monks, as well as a number of professors of the Nestorian heresy. It was only on becoming Mohammedans that they, and the kindred but rival race of Ottomans, became intolerant. But it is to be observed that Islamism, which allowed polygamy, and avoided interference with their other national habits and customs, would be likely to attract them, in consequence of their religious indifference, as naturally as Christianity, which sought to impose restraints upon their ferocity and sensualism, would repel them. It is no wonder, therefore, that the efforts of the zealous Franciscans were unsuccessful. But their zeal and disinterestedness, their irreproachable lives and simple manners, were not without producing an effect upon the savage men with whom their embassies brought them into contact; and by their intercourse, and that mercantile communication for which their travels pioneered the way, the conduct of the Mongols toward the Christian races was sensibly affected beneficially, while on the other side they taught Europe to regard the Mongols as a people to be feared indeed, and guarded against, but not as the demons incarnate they had been pictured by the popular imagination. The benefit these devoted monks conferred upon the progress of science and civilization is scarcely to be over-estimated; as not only did they acquaint Europe with a number of minute, and in the main accurate, details respecting a vast tract of country previously unknown, and the peoples by whom it was inhabited, but they opened up new realms to commerce, in the exploring of which Marco Polo, Clavijo, and subsequent travellers, pushed onward to China, Japan, and India, and prepared the way for the great maritime discoveries of the succeeding century.
As I entered the library, which my father used for purposes of business as well as of study, I saw a gentleman who had often been at our house before, and whom I knew to be a priest, though he was dressed as a working-man of the better sort and had on a riding coat of coarse materials. He beckoned me to him, and I, kneeling, received his blessing.
"What, up yet, little one?" he said; "and yet thou must bestir thyself betimes to-morrow for prayers. These are not days in which priests may play the sluggard and be found abed when the sun rises."
"At what hour must you be on foot, reverend father?" my mother asked, as sitting down at a table by his side she filled his plate with whatever might tempt him to eat, the which he seemed little inclined to.
"Before dawn, good Mrs. Sherwood," he answered; "and across the fields into the forest before ever the laboring men are astir; and you know best when that is."
"An if it be so, which I fear it must," my father said, "we must e'en have the chapel ready by two o'clock. And, goodwife, you should presently get that wench to bed."
"Nay, good mother," I cried, and threw my arms round her waist, "prithee let me sit up to-night; I can lie abed all to-morrow." So wistfully and urgently did I plead, that she, who had grown of late somewhat loth to deny any request of mine, yielded to my entreaties, and only willed that I should lie down on a settle betwixt her chair and the chimney, in which a fagot was blazing, though it was summer-time, but the weather was chilly. I gazed by turns on my mother's pale face and my father's, which was thoughtful, and on the good priest's, who was in an easy-chair, wherein they had compelled him to sit, opposite to me on the other side of the chimney. He looked, as I remember him then, as if in body and in mind he had suffered more than he could almost bear.
After some discourse had been ministered betwixt him and my father of the journey he had been taking, and the friends he had seen since last he had visited our house, my mother said, in a tremulous voice, "And now, good Mr. Mush, an if it would not pain you too sorely, tell us if it be true that your dear daughter in Christ, Mrs. Clitherow, as indeed won the martyr's crown, as some letters from York reported to us a short time back?"
Upon this Mr. Mush raised his head, which had sunk on his breast, and said, "She that was my spiritual daughter in times past, and now, as I humbly hope, my glorious mother in heaven, the gracious martyr Mrs. Clitherow, has overcome all her enemies, and passed from this mortal life with rare and marvellous triumph into the peaceable city of God, there to receive a worthy crown of endless immortality and joy." His eye, that had been before heavy and dim, now shone with sudden light, and it seemed as if the cord about his heart was loosed, and his spirit found vent at last in words after a long and painful silence. More eloquent still was his countenance than his words as he exclaimed, "Torments overcame her not, nor the sweetness of life, nor her vehement affection for {164} husband and children, nor the flattering allurements and deceitful promises of the persecutors. Finally, the world, the flesh, and the devil overcame her not. She, a woman, with invincible courage entered combat against them all, to defend the ancient faith, wherein both she and her enemies were baptized and gave their promise to God to keep the same until death. O sacred martyr!" and, with clasped hands and streaming eyes, the good father went on, "remember me, I beseech thee humbly, in thy perfect charity, whom thou hast left miserable behind thee, in time past thy unworthy father and now most unworthy servant, made ever joyful by thy virtuous life, and now lamenting thy death and thy absence, and yet rejoicing in thy glory."
A sob burst from my mother's breast, and she hid her face against my father's shoulder. There was a brief silence, during which many quickly-rising thoughts passed through my mind. Of Daniel in the lions' den, and the Machabees and the early Christians; and of the great store of blood which had been shed of late in this our country, and of which amongst the slain were truly martyrs, and which were not; of the vision in the sky which had been seen at Lichfield; and chiefly of that blessed woman Mrs. Clitherow, whose virtue and good works I had often before heard of, such as serving the poor and harboring priests, and loving God's Church with a wonderful affection greater than can be thought of. Then I heard my father say, "How was it at the last, good Mr. Mush?" I oped my eyes, and hung on the lips of the good priest even as if to devour his words as he gave utterance to them.
"She refused to be tried by the country," he answered, in a tremulous voice; "and so they murthered her."
"How so?" my mother asked, shading her eyes with her hand, as if to exclude the mental sight of that which she yet sought to know.
"They pressed her to death," he slowly uttered; "and the last words she was heard to say were 'Jesu, Jesu, Jesu! have mercy on me!' She was in dying about a quarter of an hour, and then her blessed spirit was released and took its flight to heaven. May we die the death of the righteous, and may our last end be like hers!"
Again my mother hid her face in my father's bosom, and methought she said not "Amen" to that prayer; but turning to Mr. Mush with a flushed cheek and troubled eye, she asked, "And why did the blessed Mrs. Clitherow refuse to be tried by the country, reverend father, and thereby subject herself to that lingering death?"
"These were her words when questioned and urged on that point," he answered, "which sufficiently clear her from all accusation of obstinacy or desperation, and combine the rare discretion and charity which were in her at all times: 'Alas!' quoth she, 'if I should have put myself on the country, evidence must needs have come against me touching my harboring of priests and the holy sacrifice of the mass in my house, which I know none could give but only my children and servants; and it would have been to me more grievous than a thousand deaths if I should have seen any of them brought forth before me, to give evidence against me in so good a cause and be guilty of my blood; and, secondly,' quoth she, 'I know well the country must needs have found me guilty to please the council, who so earnestly seek my blood, and then all they had been accessory to my death and damnably offended God. I therefore think, in the way of charity, for my part to hinder the country from such a sin; and seeing it must needs be done, to cause as few to do it as might be; and that was the judge himself.' So she thought, and thereupon she acted, with that single view to God's glory and the good of men's souls that was ever the passion of her fervent spirit."
"Her children?" my mother murmured in a faint voice, still hiding her face from him. "That little Agnes {165} you used to tell us of, that was so dear to her poor mother, how has it fared with her?"
Mr. Mush answered, "Her happy mother sent her hose and shoes to her daughter at the last, signifying that she should serve God and follow her steps of virtue. She was committed to ward because she would not betray her mother, and there whipped and extremely used for that she would not go to the church and hear a sermon. When her mother was murthered, the heretics came to her and said that unless she would go to the church, her mother should be put to death. The child, thinking to save the life of her who had given her birth, went to a sermon, and thus they deceived her."
"God forgive them!" my father ejaculated; and I, creeping to my mother's side, threw my arms about her neck, upon which she, caressing me, said:
"Now thou wilt be up to their deceits, Conny, if they should practice the same arts on thee."
"Mother," I cried, clinging to her, "I will go with thee to prison and to death; but to their church I will not go who love not our Blessed Lady."
"So help thee God!" my father cried, and laid his hand on my head.
"Take heart, good Mrs. Sherwood," Mr. Mush said to my mother, who was weeping; "God may spare you such trials as those which that sweet saint rejoiced in, or he can give you a like strength to hers. We have need in these times to bear in mind that comfortable saying of holy writ, 'As your day shall your strength be.'"
"'Tis strange," my father observed, "how these present troubles seem to awake the readiness, nay the wish, to suffer for truth's sake. It is like a new sense in a soul heretofore but too prone to eschew suffering of any sort: 'tis even as the keen breezes of our own Cannock Chase stimulate the frame to exertions which it would shrink from in the duller air of the Trent Valley."
"Ah! and is it even so with you, my friend?" exclaimed Mr. Mush. "From my heart I rejoice at it: such thoughts are oftentimes forerunners of God's call to a soul marked out for his special service."
My mother, against whom I was leaning since mention had been made of Mrs. Clitherow's daughter, began to tremble; and rising said she would go to the chapel to prepare for confession. Taking me by the hand, she mounted the stairs to the room which was used as such since the ancient faith had been proscribed. One by one that night we knelt at the feet of the good shepherd, who, like his Lord, was ready to lay down his life for his sheep, and were shriven. Then, at two of the clock, mass was said, and my parents and most of our servants received, and likewise some neighbors to whom notice had been sent in secret of Mr. Mush's coming. When my mother returned from the altar to her seat, I marvelled at the change in her countenance. She who had been so troubled before the coming of the Heavenly Guest into her breast, wore now so serene and joyful an aspect, that the looking upon her at that time wrought in me a new and comfortable sense of the greatness of that divine sacrament. I found not the thought of death frighten me then; for albeit on that night I for the first time fully arrived at the knowledge of the peril and jeopardy in which the Catholics of this land do live; nevertheless this knowledge awoke in me more exultation than fear. I had seen precautions used, and reserves maintained, of which I now perceived the cause. For some time past my parents had prepared the way for this no-longer-to-be-deferred enlightenment. The small account they had taught me to make of the wealth and comforts of this perishable world, and the histories they had recounted to me of the sufferings of Christians in the early times of the Church, had been directed unto this end. They had, as it were, laid the wood on the altar of my heart, which they prayed might one day burn into {166} a flame. And now when, by reason of the discourse I had heard touching Mrs. Clitherow's blessed but painful end for harboring of priests in her house, and the presence of one under our roof, I took heed that the danger had come nigh unto our own doors, my heart seemed to beat with a singular joy. Childhood sets no great store on life: the passage from this world to the next is not terrible to such as have had no shadows cast on their paths by their own or others' sins. Heaven is not a far-off region to the pure in heart; but rather a home, where God, as St. Thomas sings,
"Vitam sine termino
Nobis donet in patria."
But, ah me! how transient are the lights and shades which flit across the childish mind! and how mutable the temper of youth, never long impressed by any event, however grave! Not many days after Mr. Mush's visit to our house, another letter from the Countess of Surrey came into my hand, and drove from my thoughts for the time all but the matters therein disclosed.
"SWEET MISTRESS CONSTANCE"
(my lady wrote),—"In my last letter I made mention, in an obscure
fashion, of a secret which my lord had told me touching a matter of
great weight which Higford, his grace's steward, had let out to him;
and now that the whole world is speaking of what was then in hand,
and that troubles have come of it, I must needs relieve my mind by
writing thereof to her who is the best friend I have in the world,
if I may judge by the virtuous counsel and loving words her letters
do contain. 'Tis like you have heard somewhat of that same matter,
Mistress Constance; for much talk has been ministered anent it since
I wrote, amongst people of all sorts, and with various intents to
the hindering or the promoting thereof. I mean touching the marriage
of his grace the Duke of Norfolk with the Queen of Scots, which is
much desired by some, and very little wished for by others. My lord,
as is reasonable in one of his years and of so noble a spirit, and
his sister, who is in all things the counterpart of her brother,
have set their hearts thereon since the first inkling they had of
it; for this queen had so noted a fame for her excellent beauty and
sweet disposition that it has wrought in them an extraordinary
passionate desire to title her mother, and to see their father so
nobly mated, though not more than he deserves; for, as my lord says,
his grace's estate in England is worth little less than the whole
realm of Scotland, in the ill state to which the wars have reduced
it; and when he is in his own tennis-court at Norwich, he thinks
himself as great as a king.
"As a good wife, I should wish as my lord does; and indeed this
marriage, Mistress Constance, would please me well; for the Queen of
Scots is Catholic, and methinks if his grace were to wed her, there
might arise some good out of it to such as are dependent on his
grace touching matters of religion; and since Mr. Martin has gone
beyond seas, 'tis very little I hear in this house but what is
contrary to the teaching I had at my grandmother's. My lord saith
this queen's troubles will be ended if she doth marry his grace, for
so Higford has told him; but when I spoke thereof to my Lady Lumley,
she prayed God his grace's might not then begin, but charged me to
be silent thereon before my Lord Arundel, who has greatly set his
heart on this match. She said words were in every one's mouth
concerning this marriage which should never have been spoken of but
amongst a few. 'Nan,' quoth she, 'if Phil and thou do let your
children's tongues wag anent a matter which may well be one of life
and death, more harm may come of it than can well be thought of.' So
prithee, Mistress Constance, do you be silent as the grave on what I
have herein written, if so be you have not heard {167} of it but
from me. My lord had a quarrel with my Lord Essex, who is about his
own age, anent the Queen of Scots, a few days since, when he came to
spend his birthday with him; for my lord was twelve years old last
week, and I gave him a fair jewel to set in his cap, for a
love-token and for remembrance. My lord said that the Queen of Scots
was a lady of so great virtue and beauty that none else could be
compared with her; upon which my lord of Essex cried it was high
treason to the queen's majesty to say so, and that if her grace held
so long a time in prison one who was her near kinswoman, it was by
reason of her having murthered her husband and fomented rebellion in
this kingdom of England, for the which she did deserve to be
extremely used. My lord was very wroth at this, and swore he was no
traitor, and that the Queen of Scots was no murtheress, and he would
lay down his head on the block rather than suffer any should style
her such; upon which my lord of Essex asked, 'Prithee, my Lord
Surrey, were you at Thornham last week when the queen's majesty was
on a visit to your grandfather, my Lord Arundel?' 'No,' cried my
lord, 'your lordship being there yourself in my Lord Leicester's
suite, must needs have noticed I was absent; for if I had been
present, methinks 'tis I and not your lordship would have waited
behind her majesty's chair at table and held a napkin to her.' 'And
if you had, my lord,' quoth my Lord Essex, waxing hot in his speech,
'you would have noticed how her grace's majesty gave a nip to his
grace your father, who was sitting by her side, and said she would
have him take heed on what pillow he rested his head.' 'And I would
have you take heed,' cries my lord, 'how you suffer your tongue to
wag in an unseemly manner anent her grace's majesty and his grace my
father and the Queen of Scots, who is kinswoman to both, and even
now a prisoner, which should make men careful how they speak of her
who cannot speak in her own cause; for it is a very inhuman part, my
lord, to tread on such as misfortune has cast down.' There was a
nobleness in these words such as I have often taken note of in my
lord, though so young, and which his playmate yielded to; so that
nothing more was said at that time anent those matters, which indeed
do seem too weighty to be discoursed upon by young folks. But I have
thought since on the lines which 'tis said the queen's majesty wrote
when she was herself a prisoner, which begin,
'O Fortune! how thy restless, wavering state
Hath fraught with cares my troubled wit;
Witness this present prison, whither fate
Could bear me, and the joys I quit'—
and wondered she should have no greater pity on those in the same
plight, as so many be at this time. Ah me! I would not keep a bird
in a cage an I could help it, and 'tis sad men are not more tender
of such as are of a like nature with themselves!
"My lord was away some days after this at Oxford, whither he had
been carried to be present at the queen's visit, and at the play of
Palamon and Arcite, which her majesty heard in the common hall of
Christ's Church. One evening, as my lady Margaret and I (like two
twin cherries on one stalk, my lord would say, for he is mightily
taken with the stage-plays he doth hear, and hath a trick of framing
his speech from them) were sitting at the window near unto the
garden practising our lutes and singing madrigals, he surprised us
with his sweet company, in which I find an ever increasing content,
and cried out as he approached, 'Ladies, I hold this sentence of the
poet as a canon of my creed, that whom God loveth not, they love not
music.' And then he said that albeit Italian was a very harmonious
and sweet language which pleasantly tickleth the ear, he for his
part loved English best, even in singing. Upon which, finding him in
the humor for discreet {168} and sensible conversation, which,
albeit he hath good parts and a ready wit, is not always the case,
by reason of his being, as boys mostly are, prone to wagging, I took
occasion to relate what I had heard my Lord of Arundel say touching
his visit to the court of Brussels, when the Duchess of Parma
invited him to a banquet to meet the Prince of Orange and most of
the chief courtiers. The discourse was carried on in French; but my
lord, albeit he could speak well in that language, nevertheless made
use of an interpreter. At the which the Prince of Orange expressed
his surprise to Sir John Wilson, who was present, that an English
nobleman of so great birth and breeding should be ignorant of the
French tongue, which the earl presently hearing, said, 'Tell the
prince that I like to speak in that language in which I can best
utter my mind and not mistake.' And I perceive, my lord,' I said,
'that you are of a like mind with his lordship, and no lover of
new-fangled and curious terms.'
"Upon which my dear earl laughed, and related unto us how the queen
had been pleased to take notice of him at Oxford, and spoke merrily
to him of his marriage. 'And prithee, Phil, what were her highness's
words?' quoth his prying sister, like a true daughter of Eve. At
which my lord stroked his chin, as if to smooth his beard which is
still to come, and said her majesty had cried, 'God's pity, child,
thou wilt tire of thy wife afore you have both left the nursery.'
'Alack,' cried Meg, 'if any but her highness had said it, thy hand
would have been on thy sword, brother, and I'll warrant thou didst
turn as red as a turkey-cock, when her majesty thus titled thee a
baby. Nay, do not frown, but be a good lord to us, and tell Nan and
me if the queen said aught else.' Then my lord cleared his brow, and
related how in the hunting scene in the play, when the cry of the
hounds was heard outside the stage, which was excellently well
imitated, some scholars who were seated near him, and he must
confess himself also, did shout, 'There, there—he's caught, he's
caught!' upon which her grace's majesty laughed, and merrily cried
out from her box, 'Those boys in very troth are ready to leap out of
the windows!' 'And had you such pleasant sports each day, brother?'
quoth our Meg. 'No, by my troth,' my lord answered; 'the more's the
pity; for the next day there was a disputation held in physic and
divinity from two to seven; and Dr. Westphaling held forth at so
great length that her majesty sent word to him to end his discourse
without delay, to the great relief and comfort of all present. But
he would not give over, lest, having committed all to memory, he
should forget the rest if he omitted any part of it, and be brought
to shame before the university and the court.' 'What said her
highness when she saw he heeded not her commands?' Meg asked. 'She
was angered at first,' quoth my lord, 'that he durst go on with his
discourse when she had sent him word presently to stop, whereby she
had herself been prevented from speaking, which the Spanish
Ambassador had asked her to do; but when she heard the reason it
moved her to laughter, and she titled him a parrot.'
"'And spoke not her majesty at all?' I asked; and my lord said, 'She
would not have been a woman, Nan, an she had held her tongue after
being once resolved to use it. She made the next day an oration in
Latin, and stopped in the midst to bid my Lord Burleigh be seated,
and not to stand painfully on his gouty feet. Beshrew me, but I
think she did it to show the poor dean how much better her memory
served her than his had done, for she looked round to where he was
standing ere she resumed her discourse. And now, Meg, clear thy
throat and tune thy pipe, for not another word will I speak till
thou hast sung that ditty good Mr. Martin set to music for thee.' I
have set it down here, Mistress Constance, with the notes as {169}
she sung it, that you may sing it also; and not like it the less that
my quaint fancy pictures the maiden the poet sings of, in her 'frock
of frolic green,' like unto my sweet friend who dwells not far from
one of the fair rivers therein named.
A knight, as antique stories tell,
A daughter had named Dawsabel,
A maiden fair and free;
She wore a frock of frolic green,
Might well become a maiden queen,
Which seemly was to see.
The silk well could she twist and twine,
And make the fine March pine,
And with the needle work;
And she could help the priest to say
His matins on a holy day,
And sing a psalm in kirk.
Her features all as fresh above
As is the grass that grows by Dove,
And lythe as lass of Kent;
Her skin as soft as Leinster wool,
And white as snow on Penhisk Hull,
Or swan that swims on Trent.
This maiden on a morn betime
Goes forth when May is in its prime,
To get sweet setywall,
The honeysuckle, the hurlock,
The lily and the lady-smock,
To deck her father's hall.
"'Ah,' cried my lord, when Meg had ended her song, beshrew me, if
Monsieur Sebastian's madrigals are one-half so dainty as this
English piece of harmony.' And then,—for his lordship's head is at
present running on pageants such as he witnessed at Nonsuch and at
Oxford,—he would have me call into the garden Madge and Bess,
whilst he fetched his brothers to take part in a May game, not
indeed in season now, but which, he says, is too good sport not to
be followed all the year round. So he must needs dress himself as
Robin Hood, with a wreath on his head and a sheaf of arrows in his
girdle, and me as Maid Marian; and Meg, for that she is taller by an
inch than any of us, though younger than him and me, he said should
play Little John, and Bess Friar Tuck, for that she looks so
gleesome and has a face so red and round. 'And Tom,' he cried, 'thou
needst not be at pains to change thy name, for we will dub thee Tom
the piper.' 'And what is Will to be?' asked my Lady Bess, who, since
I be titled Countess of Surrey, must needs be styled My Lady William
Howard.' 'Why, there's only the fool left,' quoth my lord, 'for thy
sweetheart to play, Bess.' At the which her ladyship and his
lordship too began to stamp and cry, and would have sobbed outright,
but sweet Madge, whose face waxes so white and her eyes so large and
blue that methinks she is more like to an angel than a child, put
out her little thin hands with a pretty gesture, and said, 'I'll be
the fool, brother Surrey, and Will shall be the dragon, and Bess
ride the hobby-horse, an it will please her.' 'Nay, but she is Friar
Tuck,' quoth my lord, 'and should not ride.' 'And prithee wherefore
no?' cried the forward imp, who, now she no more fears her grandam's
rod, has grown very saucy and bold; 'why should not the good friar
ride, an it doth pleasure him?'
"At the which we laughed and fell to acting our parts with no little
merriment and noise, and sundry reprehensions from my lord when we
mistook our postures or the lines he would have us to recite. And at
the end he set up a pole on the grass-plat for the Maying, and we
danced and sung around it to a merry tune, which set our feet flying
in time with the music:
Now in the month of maying,
When the merry lads are playing,
Fa, la, la.
Each with his bonny lasse,
Upon the greeny grasse,
Fa, la, la.
Madge was not strong enough to dance, but she stole away to gather
white and blue violets, and made a fair garland to set on my head,
to my lord's great content, and would have me unloose my hair on my
shoulders, which fell nearly to my feet, and waved in the wind in a
wild fashion; which he said was beseeming for a bold outlaw's bride,
and what he had seen in the Maid Marian, who had played in the
pageant at Nonsuch. Mrs. Fawcett misdoubted that this sport of ours
should be approved by Mr. Charke, who calls all {170} stage-playing
Satan's recreations, and a sure road unto hell; and that we shall
hear on it in his next preachment; for he has held forth to her at
length on that same point, and upbraided her for that she did suffer
such foolish and profane pastimes to be carried on in his grace's
house. Ah me! I see no harm in it; and if, when my lord visits me, I
play not with him as he chooses, 'tis not a thing to be expected
that he will come only to sing psalms or play chess, which Mr.
Charke holds to be the only game it befits Christians to entertain
themselves with. 'Tis hard to know what is right and wrong when
persons be of such different minds, and no ghostly adviser to be
had, such as I was used to at my grandmother's house.
"All, Mistress Constance! when I last wrote unto you I said troubles
was the word in every one's mouth, and ere I had finished this
letter—which I was then writing, and have kept by me ever
since—what, think you, has befallen us? 'Tis anent the marriage of
his grace with the Queen of Scots; which I now do wish it had
pleased God none had ever thought of. Some weeks since my lord had
told me, with great glee, that the Spanish ambassador was about to
petition her majesty the queen for the release of her highness's
cousin; and Higford and Bannister, and the rest of his grace's
household—whom, since Mr. Martin went beyond seas, my lord spends
much of his time with, and more of it methinks than is beseeming or
to the profit of his manners and advancement of his behavior—have
told him that this would prepare the way for the
greatly-to-be-desired end of his grace's marriage with that queen;
and my lord was reckoning up all the fine sports and pageants and
noble entertainments would be enacted at Kenninghall and Thetford
when that right princely wedding should take place; and how he
should himself carry the train of the queen-duchess when she went
into church; who was the fairest woman, he said, in the whole world,
and none ever seen to be compared with her since the days of Grecian
Helen. But when, some days ago, I questioned my lord touching the
success of the ambassador's suits, and the queen's answer thereto,
he said: 'By my troth, Nan, I understand that her highness sent away
the gooseman, for so she entitled Senor Guzman, with a flea in his
ear; for she said he had come on a fool's errand, and gave him for
her answer that she would advise the Queen of Scots to bear her
condition with less impatience, or she might chance to find some of
those on whom she relied shorter by a head.' Oh, my lord,' I cried;
'my dear Phil! God send she was not speaking of his grace your
father!' 'Nan,' quoth he, 'she looked at his grace the next day with
looks of so great anger and disdain, that my lord of Leicester—that
false and villainous knave—gave signs of so great triumph as if his
grace was even on his way to the Tower. Beshrew me, if I would not
run my rapier through his body if I could!' 'And where is his grace
at present?' I asked. 'He came to town night,' quoth my lord, 'with
my Arundel, and this morning went Kenninghall.' After this for some
days I heard no more, for a new tutor came to my lord, who suffers
him not to stay in the waiting-room with his grace's gentlemen, and
keeps so strict a hand over him touching his studies, that in his
brief hours of recreation he would rather play at quoits, and other
active pastimes, than converse with his lady. Alack! I wish he were
a few years older, and I should have more comfort of him than now,
when I must needs put up with his humors, which be as changeful, by
reason of his great youth, as the lights and shades on the grass
'neath an aspen-tree. I must be throwing a ball for hours, or
learning a stage-part, when I would fain speak of the weighty
matters which be on hand, such as I have told you of. Howsoever, as
good luck would have it, my Lady Lumley sent for me to spend {171}
the day with her; and from her ladyship I learnt that his grace had
written to the queen that he had withdrawn from the court because of
the pain he felt at her displeasure, and his mortification at the
treatment he had been subjected to by the insolence of his foes, by
whom he has been made a common table talk; and that her majesty had
laid upon him her commands straightway to return to court. That was
all was known that day; but at the very time that I was writing the
first of these woeful tidings to you, Mistress Constance, his grace—
whom I now know that I do love dearly, and with a true daughter's
heart, by the dreadful fear and pain I am in—was arrested at
Burnham, where he had stopped on his road to Windsor, and committed
to the Tower. Alack! alack! what will follow? I will leave this my
letter open until I have further news to send.
"His grace was examined this day before my Lord-keeper Bacon, and my
Lords Northampton, Sadler, Bedford, and Cecil; and they have
reported to her majesty that the duke had not put himself under
penalty of the law by any overt act of treason, and that it would be
difficult to convict him without this. My Lord of Arundel, at whose
house I was when these tidings came, said her majesty was so angered
at this judgment, that she cried out in a passion, 'Away! what the
law fails to do my authority shall effect;' and straightway fell
into a fit, her passion was so great; and they were forced to apply
vinegar to restore her. I had a wicked thought come into my mind,
Mistress Constance, that I should not have been concerned if the
queen's majesty had died in that fit, which I befear me was high
treason, and a mortal sin, to wish for one to die in a state of sin.
But, alack! since I have left going to shrift I find it hard to
fight against bad thoughts and naughty tempers; and when I say my
prayers, and the old words come to my lips, which the preachments I
hear do contradict, I am sometimes well-nigh tempted to give over
praying at all. But I pray to God I may never be so wicked; and
though I may not have my beads (which were taken from me), that the
good Bishop of Durham gave me when I was confirmed, I use my fingers
in their stead; and whilst his grace was at the Tower I did say as
many 'Hail Maries' in one day as I ever did in my life before; and
promised him, who is God's own dear Son and hers, if his grace came
out of prison, never to be a day of my life without saying a prayer,
or giving an alms, or doing a good turn to those which be in the
same case, near at hand or throughout the world; and I ween there
are many such of all sorts at this time.
"Your loving servant to command, whose heart is at present heavier
than her pen,
"ANN SURREY."
"P. S. My Lord of Westmoreland has left London, and his lady is in a
sad plight. I hear such things said on all sides touching Papists as
I can scarce credit, and I pray to God they be not true. But an if
they be so bad as some do say, why does his grace run his head into
danger for the sake of the Popish queen, as men do style her? They
have arrested Higford and Bannister last night, and they are to
taste of the rack to-day, to satisfy the queen, who is so urgent on
it. My lord is greatly concerned thereat, and cried when he spoke of
it, albeit he tried to hide his tears. I asked him to show me what
sort of pain it was; whereupon he twisted my arm till I cried out
and bade him desist. God help me! I could not have endured the pain
an instant longer; and if they have naught to tell anent these plots
and against his grace, they needs must speak what is false when
under the rack. Oh, 'tis terrible to think what men do suffer and
cause others to suffer!"
This letter came into my hand on a day when my father had gone into Lichfield touching some business; and {172} he brought with it the news of a rising in the north, and that his Grace of Northumberland and my Lord of Westmoreland had taken arms on hearing of the Duke of Norfolk's arrest; and the Catholics, under Mr. Richard Norton and Lord Latimer, had joined their standard, and were bearing the cross before the insurgents. My father was sore cast down at these tidings; for he looked for no good from what was rebellion against a lawful sovereign, and a consorting with troublesome spirits, swayed by no love of our holy religion but rather contrary to it, as my Lord of Westmoreland and some others of those leading lords. And he hence foreboded fresh trials to all such as were of the ancient faith all over England; which was not long in accruing even in our own case; for a short time after, we were for the first time visited by pursuivants, on a day and in such a manner as I will now briefly relate.
On the Sunday morning which followed the day on which the news had reached us of the rising in Northumberland, I went, as was my wont, into my mother's dressing-room, to crave her blessing, and I asked of her if the priest who came to say mass for us most Sundays had arrived. She said he had been, and had gone away again, and that she greatly feared we should have no prayers that day, saving such as we might offer up for ourselves; "together," she added after a pause, "with a bitter sacrifice of tears and of such sufferings as we have heard of, but as yet not known the taste of ourselves."
Again I felt in my heart a throbbing feeling, which had in it an admixture of pain and joy—made up, I ween, of conflicting passions—such as curiosity feeding on the presentment of an approaching change; of the motions of grace in a soul which faintly discerns the happiness of suffering for conscience sake; and the fear of suffering natural to the human heart.
"Why are we to have no mass, sweet mother?" I asked, encircling her waist in my arms; "and wherefore has good Mr. Bryan gone away?"
"We received advice late last evening," she answered, "that the queen's pursuivants have orders to search this day the houses of the most noted recusants in this neighborhood; and 'tis likely they may begin with us, who have never made a secret of our faith, and never will."
"And will they kill us if they come?" I asked, with that same trembling eagerness I have so often known since when danger was at hand.
"Not now, not to-day, Conny," she answered; "but I pray to God they do not carry us away to prison; for since this rising in the north, to be a Catholic and a traitor is one and the same in their eyes who have to judge us. We must needs hide our books and church furniture; so give me thy beads, sweet one, and the cross from thy neck."
I waxed red when my mother bade me unloose the string, and tightly clasped the cross in both my hands "Let them kill me, mother," I cried; "but take not off my cross."
"Maybe," she said, "the queen's officers would trample on it, and injure their own souls in dishonoring a holy symbol." And as she spoke she took it from me, and hid it in a recess behind the chimney; which no sooner was done, than we heard a sound of horses' feet in the approach; and going to the window, I cried out, "Here is a store of armed men on horseback!" Ere I had uttered the words, one of them had dismounted and loudly knocked at the door with his truncheon; upon which my mother, taking me by the hand, went down stairs into the parlor where my father was. It seemed as if those knocks had struck on her heart, so great a trembling came over her. My father bade the servants throw {173} open the door; and the sheriff came in, with two pursuivants and some more men with him, and produced a warrant to search the house; which my father having read, he bowed his head, and gave orders not to hinder them in their duty. He stood himself the while in the hall, his face as white as a smock, and his teeth almost running through his lips.
One of the men came into the library, and pulling down the books, scattered them on the floor, and cried:
"Look ye here, sirs, what Popish stuff is this, fit for the hangman's burning!" At the which another answered:
"By my troth, Sam, I misdoubt that thou canst read. Methinks thou dost hunt Popery as dogs do game, by the scent. Prithee spell me the title of this volume."
"I will have none of thy gibing, Master Sevenoaks," returned the other. "Whether I be a scholar or not, I'll warrant no honest gospeller wrote on those yellow musty leaves, which be two hundred years old, if they be a day."
"And I'll warrant thee in that credence, Master Samuel, by the same token that the volume in thy hand is a treatise on field-sports, writ in the days of Master Caxton; a code of the laws to be observed in the hunting and killing of deer, which I take to be no Popish sport, for our most gracious queen—God save her majesty!—slew a fat buck not long ago in Windsor Forest with her own hand, and remembered his grace of Canterbury with half her prey;" and so saying, he drew his comrade from the room; I ween with the intent to save the books from his rough handling, for he seemed of a more gentle nature than the rest and of a more moderate disposition.
When they had ransacked all the rooms below, they went upstairs, and my father followed. Breaking from my mother's side, who sat pale and still as a statute, unable to move from her seat, I ran after him, and on the landing-place I heard the sheriff say somewhat touching the harboring of priests; to the which he made answer that he was ready to swear there was no priest in the house. "Nor has been?" quoth the sheriff; upon which my father said:
"Good sir, this house was built in the days of Her majesty's grandfather, King Henry VII.; and on one occasion his majesty was pleased to rest under my grandfather's roof, and to hear mass in that room," he said, pointing to what was now the chapel, "the church being too distant for his majesty's convenience: so priests have been within these walls many times ere I was born."
The sheriff said no more at that time, but went into the room, where there were only a few chairs, for that in the night the altar and all that appertained to it had been removed. He and his men were going out again, when a loud knocking was heard against the wall on one side of the chamber; at the sound of which my father's face, which was white before, became of an ashy paleness.
"Ah!" cried one of the pursuivants, "the lying Papist! The egregious Roman! an oath is in his mouth that he has no priest in his house, and here is one hidden in his cupboard."
"Mr. Sherwood!" the sheriff shouted, greatly moved, "lead the way to the hiding-place wherein a traitor is concealed, or I order the house to be pulled down about your ears."
My father was standing like one stunned by a sudden blow, and I heard him murmur, "'Tis the devil's own doing, or else I am stark, staring mad."
The men ran to the wall, and knocked against it with their sticks, crying out in an outrageous manner to the priest to come out of his hole. "We'll unearth the Jesuit fox," cried one; "we'll give him a better lodging in Lichfield gaol," shouted another; and the sheriff kept threatening to set fire to the house. Still the knocking from within went on, as if {174} answering that outside, and then a voice cried out, "I cannot open: I am shut in."
"'Tis Edmund!" I exclaimed; "'tis Edmund is in the hiding-place." And then the words were distinctly heard, "'Tis I; 'tis Edmund Genings. For God's sake, open; I am shut in." Upon which my father drew a deep breath, and hastening forward, pressed his finger on a place in the wall, the panel slipped, and Edmund came out of the recess, looking scared and confused. The pursuivants seized him; but the sheriff cried out, surprised, "God's death, sirs! but 'tis the son of the worshipful Mr. Genings, whose lady is a mother in Israel, and M. Jean de Luc's first cousin! And how came ye, Mr. Edmund, to be concealed in this Popish den? Have these recusants imprisoned you with some foul intent, or perverted you by their vile cunning?" Edmund was addressing my father in an agitated voice.
"I fear me, sir," he cried, clasping his hands, "I befear me much I have affrighted you, and I have been myself sorely affrighted. I was passing through this room, which I have never before seen, and the door of which was open this morn. By chance I drew my hand along the wall, where there was no apparent mark, when the panel slipped and disclosed this recess, into which I stepped, and straightway the opening closed and I remained in darkness. I was afraid no one might hear me, and I should die of hunger."
My father tried to smile, but could not. "Thank God," he said, "'tis no worse;" and sinking down on a chair he remained silent, whilst the sheriff and the pursuivants examined the recess, which was deep and narrow, and in which they brandished their swords in all directions. Then they went round the room, feeling the walls; but though there was another recess with a similar mode of aperture, they hit not on it, doubtless through God's mercy; for in it were concealed the altar furniture and our books, with many other things besides, which they would have seized on.
Before going away, the sheriff questioned Edmund concerning his faith, and for what reason he abode in a Popish house and consorted with recusants. Edmund answered he was no Papist, but a kinsman of Mrs. Sherwood, unto whose house his father had oftentimes sent him. Upon which he was counselled to take heed unto himself and to eschew evil company, which leads to horrible defections, and into the straight road to perdition. Whereupon they departed; and the officer who had enticed his companion from the library smiled as he passed me, and said:
"And wherefore not at prayers, little mistress, on the Lord's day, as all Christian folks should be?"
I ween he was curious to see how I should answer, albeit not moved thereunto by any malicious intent. But at the time I did not bethink myself that he spoke of Protestant service; and being angered at what passed, I said:
"Because we be kept from prayers by the least welcome visit ever made to Christian folks on a Lord's morning." He laughed and cried:
"Thou hast a ready tongue, young mistress; and when tried for recusancy I warrant thou'lt give the judge a piece of thy mind."
"And if I ever be in such a presence, and for such a cause," I answered, "I pray to God I may say to my lord on the bench what the blessed apostle St. Peter spoke to his judges: 'If it be just in the sight of God to hear you rather than God, judge ye.'" At which he cried:
"Why, here is a marvel indeed—a Papist to quote Scripture!" And laughing again, he went his way; and the house was for that time rid of these troublesome guests.
Then Edmund again sued for pardon to my father, that through his rash conduct he had been the occasion of so great fear and trouble to him.
{175}"I warrant thee, my good boy," quoth my father, "thou didst cause me the most keen anguish, and the most sudden relief from it, which can well be thought of; and so no more need be said thereon. And as thou must needs be going to the public church, 'tis time that thou bestir thyself; for 'tis a long walk there and back, and the sun waxing hot."
When Edmund was gone, and I alone with him, my father clasped me in his arms, and cried:
"God send, my wench, thou mayest justify thy sponsors who gave thee thy name in baptism; for 'tis a rare constancy these times do call for, and such as is not often seen, saving in such as be of a noble and religious spirit; which I pray to God may be the case with thee."
My mother did not speak, but went away with her hand pressed against her heart; which was what of late I had often seen her to do, as if the pain was more than she could bear.
One hour later, as I was crossing the court, a man met me suited as a farmer; who, when I passed him, laid his hand on my shoulder; at the which I started, and turning round saw it was Father Bryan; who, smiling as I caught his hand, cried out:
"Dost know the shepherd in his wolf's clothing, little mistress?" and hastening on to the chapel he said mass, at the which only a few assisted, as my parents durst not send to the Catholics so late in the day. As soon as mass was over, Mr. Bryan said he must leave, for there was a warrant issued for his apprehension; and our house famed for recusancy, so as he might not stay in it but with great peril to himself and to its owners. We stood at the door as he was mounting his horse, and my father said, patting its neck:
"Tis a faithful servant this, reverend father; many a mile he has carried thee to the homes of the sick and dying since our troubles began."
"Ah! good Mr. Sherwood," Mr. Bryan replied, as he gathered up the bridle, "thou hast indeed warrant to style the poor beast faithful. If I were to shut my eyes and let him go, no doubt but he would find his way to the doors of such as cleave to the ancient faith, in city or in hamlet, across moor or through thick wood. If a pursuivant bestrode him, he might discover through his means who be recusants a hundred miles around. But I bethink me he would not budge with such a burthen on his back; and that he who made the prophet's ass to speak, would, give the good beast more sense than to turn informer, and to carry the wolf to the folds of the lambs. And prithee, Mistress Constance," said the good priest, turning to me, "canst keep a secret and be silent, when men's lives are in jeopardy?"
"Aye," cried my father quickly, "'tis as much as worthy Mr. Bryan's life is worth that none should know he was here to-day."
"More than my poor life is worth," he rejoined; "that were little to think of, my good friends. For five years I have made it my prayer that the day may soon come—and I care not how soon—when I may lay it down for his sake who gave it. But we must e'en have a care for those who are so rash as to harbor priests in these evil times. So Mistress Constance must e'en study the virtue of silence, and con the meaning of the proverb which teacheth discretion to be the best part of valor."
"If Edmund Genings asketh me, reverend father, if I have heard mass to-day, what must I answer?"
"Say the queen's majesty has forbidden mass to be said in this her kingdom; and if he presseth thee more closely thereon, why then tell him the last news from the poultry-yard, and that the hares have eat thy mignonette; which they be doing even now, if my eyes deceive me not," said the good father, pointing with his whip to the flower-garden.
So, smiling, he gave us a last blessing, and rode on toward the Chase, and I went to drive the hares away {176} from the flower-beds, and then to set the chapel in fair order. And ever and anon, that day and the next, I took out of my pocket my sweet Lady Surrey's last letter, and pictured to myself all the scenes therein related; so that I seemed to live one-half of my life with her in thought, so greatly was my fancy set upon her, and my heart concerned in her troubles.
Not many days after the sheriff and the pursuivants had been at our house, and Mr. Bryan, by reason of the bloody laws which had been enacted against Papists and such as harbor priests, had left us,— though intending to return at such times as might serve our commodity, and yet not affect our safety,—I was one morning assisting my mother in the store-room, wherein she was setting aside such provisions as were to be distributed to the poor that week, together with salves, medicines, and the like, which she also gave out of charity, when a spasm came over her, so vehement and painful, that for the moment she lost the use of speech, and made signs to me to call for help. I ran affrighted into the library for my father, and brought him to her, upon which, in a little time, she did somewhat recover, but desired he would assist her to her own chamber, whither she went leaning on his arm. When laid on her bed she seemed easier; and smiling, bade me leave them for awhile, for that she desired to have speech with my father alone.
For the space of an hour I walked in the garden, with so oppressive a grief at my heart as I had never before experienced. Methinks the great stillness in the air added thereunto some sort of physical disorder; for the weather was very close and heavy; and if a leaf did but stir, I started as if danger was at hand; and the noise of the chattering pies over my head worked in me an apprehensive melancholy, foreboding, I doubt not, what was to follow. At about eleven o'clock, hearing the sound of a horse's feet in the avenue, I turned round, and saw Edmund riding from the house; upon which I ran across the grass to a turning of the road where he would pass, and called to him to stop, which he did; and told me he was going to Lichfield for his father, whom my mother desired presently to see. "Then thou shouldst not tarry," I said; and he pushed on and left me standing where I was; but the bell then ringing for dinner, I went back to the house, and, in so doing, took notice of a bay-tree on the lawn which was withered and dried-up, though the gardener had been at pains to preserve it by sundry appliances and frequent watering of it. Then it came to my remembrance what my nurse used to say, that the dying of that sort of tree is a sure omen of a death in a family; which thought sorely disturbed me at that time. I sat down with my father to a brief and silent meal; and soon after the physician he had sent for came, whom he conducted to my mother's chamber, whereunto I did follow, and slipped in unperceived. Sitting on one side of the bed, behind the curtains, I heard her say, in a voice which sounded hollow and weak, "Good Master Lawrenson, my dear husband was fain to send for you, and I cared not to withstand him, albeit persuaded that I am hastening to my journey's end, and that naught that you or any other man may prescribe may stay what is God's will. And if this be visible to you as it is to me, I pray you keep it not from me, for it will be to my much comfort to be assured of it."
When she had done speaking, he did feel her pulse; and the while my heart beat so quick and, as it seemed to me, so loud as if it must needs impede my hearing; but in a moment I heard him say: "God defend, good madam, I should deceive you. While there is life, there is hope. Greater {177} comfort I dare not urge. If there be any temporal matter on your mind, 'twere better settled now, and likewise of your soul's health, by such pious exercises as are used by those of your way of thinking."
At the hearing of these his words, my father fetched a deep sigh; but she, as one greatly relieved, clasped her hands together, and cried, "My God, I thank thee!"
Then, stealing from behind the curtain, I laid my head on the pillow nigh unto hers, and whispered, "Sweet mother, prithee do not die, or else take me with thee."
But she, as one not heeding, exclaimed, with her hands uplifted, "O faithless heart! O selfish heart! to be so glad of death!"
The physician was directing the maids what they should do for her relief when the pain came on, and he himself stood compounding some medicine for her to take. My father asked of him when he next would come; and he answered, "On the morrow;" but methinks 'twas even then his belief that there would be no morrow for her who was dying before her time, like the bay-tree in our garden. She bade him farewell in a kindly fashion; and when we were alone, I lying on the bed by her side, and my father sitting at its head, she said, in a low voice, "How wonderful be God's dealings with us, and how fatherly his care; in that he takes the weak unto himself, and leaves behind the strong to fight the battle now at hand! My dear master, I had a dream yesternight which had somewhat of horror in it, but more methinks of comfort." My father breaking out then in sighs and tears as if his heart would break, she said, "Oh, but thou must hear and acknowledge, my loved master, how gracious is God's providence to thy poor wife. When thou knowest what I have suffered—not in body, though that has been sharp too, but in my soul—it will reconcile thine own to a parting which has in it so much of mercy. Thou dost remember the night when Mr. Mush was here, and what his discourse did run on?"
"Surely do I, sweet wife," he answered; "for it was such as the mind doth not easily lose the memory of; the sufferings and glorious end of the blessed martyr Mrs. Clitherow. I perceived what sorrowful heed thou didst lend to his recital; but has it painfully dwelt in thy mind since?"
"By day and by night it hath not left me; ever recurring to my thoughts, ever haunting my dreams, and working in me a fearful apprehension lest in a like trial I should be found wanting, and prove a traitor to God and his Church, and a disgrace and heartbreak to thee who hast so truly loved me far beyond my deserts. I have bragged of the dangers of the times, even as cowards are wont to speak loud in the dark to still by the sound of their own voices the terrors they do feel. I have had before my eyes the picture of that cruel death, and of the children extremely used for answering as their mother had taught them, till cold drops of sweat have stood on my brow, and I have knelt in my chamber wringing my hands and praying to be spared a like trial. And then, maybe an hour later, sitting at the table, I spake merrily of the gallows, mocking my own fears, as when Mr. Bryan was last here; and I said that priests should be more welcome to me than ever they were, now that virtue and the Catholic cause were made felony; and the same would be in God's sight more meritorious than ever before: upon which, 'Then you must prepare your neck for the rope,' quoth he, in a pleasant but withal serious manner; at the which a cold chill overcame me, and I very well-nigh faulted, though constraining my tongue to say, 'God's will be done; but I am far unworthy of so great an honor.' The cowardly heart belied the confident tongue, and fear of my own weakness affrighted me, by the which I must needs have offended God, who helps such as trust {178} in him. But I hope to be forgiven, inasmuch as it has ever been the wont of my poor thoughts to picture evils beforehand in such a form as to scare the soul, which, when it came to meet with them, was not shaken from its constancy. When Conny was an infant I have stood nigh unto a window with her in my arms, and of a sudden a terror would seize me lest I should let her fall out of my hands, which yet clasped her; and methinks 'twas somewhat of alike feeling which worked in me touching the denying of my faith, which, God is my witness, is dearer to me than aught upon earth."
"'Tis even so, sweet wife," quoth my father; "the edge of a too keen conscience and a sensitive apprehension of defects visible to thine own eyes and God's—never to mine, who was ever made happy by thy love and virtue—have worn out the frame which enclosed them, and will rob me of the dearest comfort of my life, if I must lose thee."
She looked upon him with so much sweetness, as if the approach of death had brought her greater peace and joy than life had ever done, and she replied: "Death comes to me as a compassionate angel, and I fain would have thee welcome with me the kindly messenger who brings so great relief to the poor heart thou hast so long cherished. Now, thou art called to another task; and when the bruised, broken reed is removed from thy side, thou wilt follow the summons which even now sounds in thine ears."
"Ah," cried my father, clasping her hand, "art thou then already a saint, sweet wife, that thou hast read the vow slowly registered as yet in the depths of a riven heart?" Then his eyes turned on me; and she, who seemed to know his thoughts, that sweet soul who had been so silent in life, but was now spending her last breath in never-to-be-forgotten words, answered the question contained in that glance as if it had been framed in a set speech.
"Fear not for her," she said, laying her cheek close unto mine. "As her days, so shall her strength be. Methinks Almighty God has given her a spirit meet for the age in which her lot is cast. The early training thou hast had, my wench; the lack of such memories as make the present twofold bitter; the familiar mention round thy cradle of such trials as do beset Catholics in these days, have nurtured thee a stoutness of heart which will stand thee in good stead amidst the rough waves of this troublesome world. The iron will not enter into thy soul as it hath done into mine." Upon which she fell back exhausted and for a while no sound was heard in or about the house save the barking of our great dog.
My father had sent a messenger to a house where we had had notice days before Father Ford was staying but with no certain knowledge he still there, or any other priest in neighborhood, which occasioned him no small disquietude, for my mother's strength seemed to be visibly sinking which was what the doctor's words had led him to expect. The man he sent returned not till the evening; in the afternoon Mr. Genings and son came from Lichfield, which, when my mother heard, she said God was gracious to permit her once more to see John, which was Mr. Genings' name. They had been reared in the same house; and a kindness had always continued betwixt them. For some time past he had conformed to the times; and since his marriage with the daughter of a French Huguenot who lived in London, and who was a lady of very commendable character and manners, and strenuous in her own way of thinking, he had left off practising his own religion in secret, which for a while he used to do. When he came in, and saw death plainly writ in his cousin's face, he was greatly moved, and knelt down by her side with a very sorrowful countenance; upon which she straightly looked at him, and said: "Cousin John, my {179} breath is very short, as my time is also like to be. But one word I would fain say to thee before I die. I was always well pleased with my religion, which was once thine and that of all Christian people one hundred years ago; but I have never been so well pleased with it as now, when I be about to meet my Judge."
Mr. Genings' features worked with a strange passion, in which was more of grief than displeasure, and grasping his son's shoulder, who was likewise kneeling and weeping, he said: "You have wrought with this boy, cousin, to make him a Catholic."
"As heaven is my witness," she answered, "not otherwise but by my prayers."
"Hast thou seen a priest, cousin Constance?" he then asked: upon which my mother not answering, the poor man burst into tears, and cried: "Oh, cousin—cousin Constance, dost count me a spy, and at thy death-bed?"
He seemed cut to the heart; whereupon she gave him her hand, and said she hoped God would send her such ghostly assistance as she stood in need of; and praying God to bless him and his wife and children, and make them his faithful servants, so she might meet them all in perpetual happiness, she spoke with such good cheer, and then bade him and Edmund farewell with so pleasant a smile, as deceived them into thinking her end not so near. And so, after a while, they took their leave; upon which she composed herself for a while in silence, occupying her thoughts in prayer; and toward evening, through God's mercy, albeit the messenger had returned with the heavy news that Father Ford had left the county some days back, it happened that Mr. Watson, a secular priest who had lately arrived in England, and was on his way to Chester, stopped at our house, whereunto Mr. Orton, whom he had seen in prison at London, had directed him for his own convenience on the road, and likewise our commodity, albeit little thinking how great our need would be at that time of so opportune a guest, through whose means that dear departing soul had the benefit of the last sacraments with none to trouble or molest her, and such ghostly aid as served to smooth her passage to what has proved, I doubt not, the beginning of a happy eternity, if we may judge by such tokens as the fervent acts of contrition she made both before and after shrift, such as might have served to wash away ten thousand sins through his blood who cleansed her, and her great and peaceable joy at receiving him into her heart whom she soon trusted to behold. Her last words were expressions of wonder and gratitude at God's singular mercy shown unto her in the quiet manner of her death in the midst of such troublesome times. And methinks, when the silver cord was loosed, and naught was left of her on earth save the fair corpse which retained in death the semblance it had had in life, that together with the natural grief which found vent in tears, there remained in the hearts of such as loved her a comfortable sense of the Divine goodness manifested in this her peaceable removal.
How great the change which that day wrought in me may be judged of by such who, at the age I had then reached to, have met with a like affliction, coupled with a sense of duties to be fulfilled, such as then fell to my lot, both as touching household cares, and in respect to the cheering of my father in his solitary hours during the time we did yet continue at Sherwood Hall, which was about a year. It waxed very hard then for priests to make their way to the houses of Catholics, as many now found it to their interest to inform against them and such as harbored them; and mostly in our neighborhood, wherein there were at that time no recusants of so great rank and note that the sheriff would not be lief to meddle with them. We had oftentimes had secret advices to beware of such and such of our servants who might betray our hidden conveyances of safety; and my father scarcely durst {180} be sharp with them when they offended by slacking their duties, lest they might bring us into danger if they revealed, upon any displeasure, priests having abided with us. Edmund we saw no more since my mother's death; and after a while the news did reach us that Mr. Genings had died of the small-pox, and left his wife in so distressed a condition, against all expectation, owing to debts he had incurred, that she had been constrained to sell her house and furniture, and was living in a small lodging near unto the school where Edmund continued his studies.
I noticed, as time went by, how heavily it weighed on my father's heart to see so many Catholics die without the sacraments, or fall away from their faith, for lack of priests to instruct them, like so many sheep without a shepherd; and I guessed by words he let fall on divers occasions, that the intent obscurely shadowed forth in his discourse to my mother on her deathbed was ripening to a settled purpose, and tending to a change in his state of life, which only his love and care for me caused him to defer. What I did apprehend must one day needs occur, was hastened about this time by a warning he did receive that on an approaching day he would be apprehended and carried by the sheriff before the council at Lichfield, to be examined touching recusancy and harboring of priests; which was what he had long expected. This message was, as it were, the signal he had been waiting for, and an indication of God's will in his regard. He made instant provision for the placing of his estate in the hands of a friend of such singular honesty and so faithful a friendship toward himself, though a Protestant, that he could wholly trust him. And next he set himself to dispose of her whom he did term his most dear earthly treasure, and his sole tie to this perishable world, which he resolved to do by straightway sending her to London, unto his sister Mistress Congleton, who had oftentimes offered, since his wife's death, to take charge of this daughter, and to whom he now despatched a messenger with a letter, wherein he wrote that the times were now so troublesome, he must needs leave his home, and take advantage of the sisterly favor she had willed to show him in the care of his sole child, whom he now would forthwith send to London, commending her to her good keeping, touching her safety and religious and virtuous training, and that he should be more beholden to her than ever brother was to sister, and, as long as he lived, as he was bound to do, pray for her and her good husband. When this letter was gone, and order had been taken for my journey, which was to be on horseback, and in the charge of a maiden gentlewoman who had been staying some months in our neighborhood, and was now about in two days to travel to London, it seemed to me as if that which I had long expected and pictured unto myself had now come upon me of a sudden, and in such wise as for the first time to taste its bitterness. For I saw, without a doubt, that this parting was but the forerunner of a change in my father's condition as great and weighty as could well be thought of. But of this howbeit our thoughts were full of it, no talk was ministered between us. He said I should hear from him in London; and that he should now travel into Lancashire and Cheshire, changing his name, and often shifting his quarters whilst the present danger lasted. The day which was to be the last to see us in the house wherein himself and his fathers for many centuries back, and I his unworthy child, had been born, was spent in such fashion as becometh those who suffer for conscience sake, and that is with so much sorrow as must needs be felt by a loving father and a dutiful child in a first and doubtful parting, with so much regret as is natural in the abandonment of a peaceful earthly home, wherein God had been served in a Catholic manner for many generations and up to that time without discontinuance, only of late years as it were by {181} night and stealth, which was linked in their memories with sundry innocent joys and pleasures, and such griefs as do hallow and endear the visible scenes wherewith they be connected, but withal with a stoutness of heart in him, and a youthful steadiness in her whom he had infected with a like courage unto his own, which wrought in them so as to be of good cheer and shed no more tears on so moving an occasion than the debility of her nature and the tenderness of his paternal care extorted from their eyes when he placed her on her horse, and the bridle in the hand of the servant who was to accompany her to London. Their last parting was a brief one, and such as I care not to be minute in describing; for thinking upon it even now 'tis like to make me weep; which I would not do whilst writing this history, in the recital of which there should be more of constancy and thankful rejoicing in God's great mercies, than of womanish softness in looking back to past trials. So I will even break off at this point; and in the next chapter relate the course of the journey which was begun on that day.
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In the bleak region of Upper Burgundy, not far from the domain of Vauban, stands the old manor of Chastellux, famous since the fifteenth century as the birth-place of two brothers, one of whom became an admiral, the other a marshal of France. From this feudal stronghold came forth one of the most amiable of the courtiers of Louis XVI.—a disciple of Voltaire and Hume, a rival of Turgot and Adam Smith, a friend of Washington and Jefferson, a forerunner of the revolutionists of 1789, a philosopher, an historian, a political economist, something of a poet, something of a naturalist, something of an artist, a man of taste, an enthusiastic student, a brilliant talker, and an elegant writer. The rude Sieurs de Chastellux would have been not a little astonished could they have foreseen what character of man was destined to inherit their title.
François Jean de Beauvoir, first known as Chevalier and afterward Marquis de Chastellux, was born at Paris in 1734. He was a son of the Count de Chastellux, lieutenant-general of the armies of the king, by Mlle. d'Aguesseau, daughter of the chancellor. His mother, being left a widow at an early period, withdrew thereupon into the privacy of domestic life, and the young marquis had the good fortune to be brought up under the eyes of the Chancellor d'Aguesseau himself. He entered the army at sixteen, and was hardly twenty-one before he had risen to be colonel. He distinguished himself highly during the campaigns of the Seven Years' War, and it was as a reward of his gallantry no less than out of compliment to his hereditary rank that he was selected on one occasion to present to the king the flags of a conquered city. It is hard to understand how, in the midst of such an active life, he could find time for study; but for all that he knew Greek, Latin, English, and Italian, and had some acquaintance with every branch of science cultivated in his time. From boyhood he showed a zealous interest in every sort of invention or discovery which promised to be of practical use {182} to mankind. When the principle of inoculation for small-pox was first broached in Europe, everybody shrank in alarm from the experiment. The young marquis had himself inoculated without his mother's knowledge, and then, running to Buffon, who knew his family, exclaimed joyfully, "I am saved, and my example will be the means of saving many others."
When peace was declared in 1763, he was not yet thirty. With his eminent gifts of mind and person, a brilliant career in society lay open to him, but he aimed to be something more than a mere man of fashion. His first literary productions were biographical sketches of two of his brother officers, MM. de Closen and de. Belsunce, which appeared in the Mercure, in 1765. He wrote a lively and graceful little essay on the "Union of Poetry and Music,"—the same subject which Marmontel afterward treated in his poem of Polymnie. The great quarrel between the schools of Gluck and Piccini did not break out until ten years later; but mutterings of the coming tempest were heard already. Italian music had its enthusiastic admirers and its implacable foes, and in the midst of their disputes Monsigny and Grétry had just given to France a lyric school of her own by creating the comic opera. M. de Chastellux, like everybody else in those days, was passionately fond of the theatre, and he espoused the cause of Italian music with the ardor that characterized everything he did. About the same time he fell into the society of the Encyclopoedists, and allied himself with Helvétius, d'Alembert, Turgot, and the rest of the philosophical party, who received the illustrious recruit with open arms.
About the same time that M. de Chastellux left the army, and made his debut in civil life, the Scottish historian and philosopher, David Hume, arrived in Paris, with the British ambassador, Lord Hertford. He became the lion of the day. Courtiers and philosophers fell down and worshipped him; his skeptical opinions were eagerly imbibed, and the three years that he spent in the French capital became, owing to his extraordinary influence, one of the most important epochs in the literary history of the eighteenth century. M. de Chastellux shared in the general enthusiasm; and the "Essays" and "Political Discourses" of Hume, together with the Essai sur les moeurs et l'esprit des nations of Voltaire, which had appeared a few years before, wrought upon his mind a deep and lasting impression. The united influence of these two authors led him to a course of study which resulted in a work upon which his reputation was finally established. This was his celebrated treatise, "On Public Felicity; or, Considerations on the Condition of Man at different Periods of his History," in two volumes. It bears a resemblance to both its parents. It is historical, like the Essai sur les moeurs, and dogmatic, like the "Essays" and "Discourses." And that is one of its defects. The "Considerations" on the condition of man at various periods serve by way of introduction to the author's theory of public felicity; but the second part is inferior to the first. The body of the book is sacrificed to the introduction.
This was four years before the appearance of Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations." The Marquis de Mirabeau and others of his school had begun to write; but their notions of political economy were still unfamiliar to the public. M. de Chastellux may therefore be regarded as one of the first supporters of that doctrine of human perfectibility which lies at the bottom of all the prevailing opinions of the eighteenth century. To this he added another theory, that the only end of government ought to be "the greatest happiness of the greatest possible number." Nearly one hundred years ago, therefore, he discovered and developed the principle which is now one of the most popular epitomes of social science. His style is good, {183} but neither very concise nor very brilliant. It is now and then obscure, sometimes digressive, sometimes declamatory; but for the most part clear, lively, and abounding in those happy touches which show the writer to be a man of the world as well as an author.
It is said that the immediate occasion of his writing the book was a conversation with Mably, the author of "Observations on the History of France," who maintained that the world was constantly degenerating, and that the men of to-day were not half so good as their grandfathers. The young philosopher, his head full of the new ideas, resolved to demonstrate the superiority of the present over the past. The first edition of his work appeared in 1772, two years before the death of Louis XV. It was printed anonymously in Holland. Everywhere it was read with avidity, abroad as well as in France. It was translated into English, German, and Italian. Voltaire read it at Ferney, and was so much struck by it that he covered his copy with marginal notes—not always of approbation—which were reproduced in a new edition of the work by the author's son, in 1822.
Despite great merits, which cannot be denied it, the essay "On Public Felicity" is now almost forgotten. In the historical portion, M. de Chastellux passes in review all the nations of ancient and modern times, for the purpose of showing that the general condition of man has never before been so good as it is now. The fundamental principle of his work is disclosed in the following profession of faith: "To say that man is born to be free, that his first care is to preserve his liberty when he enjoys it, and to recover it when he has lost it, is to attribute to him a sentiment which he shares with the whole animal kingdom, and which cannot be called in question. And if we add that this liberty is by its very nature indefinite, and that the liberty of one individual can only be limited by that of another, we do but express a truth which few in this enlightened age will be found to contradict. Look at society from this point of view, and you will see nothing but a series of encroachments and resistances; and if you want to form a just idea of government, you must consider it as the equilibrium which ought to result from these opposing struggles.… Government and legislation are only secondary and subordinate objects. They ought to be regarded merely as means through which men may preserve in the social state the greatest possible portion of natural liberty."
It is melancholy to see how, in a work that has so much to recommend it, the chapter which treats of the establishment of Christianity is disfigured by the skeptical philosophy of the age. Our regret at this is perhaps the more keen because the fault was altogether without excuse. Turgot had argued before the Sorbonne, only a few years previously, that a belief in the progress of the human race, so far from being incompatible with the doctrine of redemption, is its necessary consequence. De Chastellux might have shown that, if the coming of our Lord did not immediately effect a sensible reformation throughout the civilized world, it was because the vices and bad passions of the old pagan society long survived the overthrow of the old pagan gods. But there is this to be said for him: if he does not evince an adequate appreciation of the great moral revolution effected by Christianity, he at least does not speak of it in the same insolent tone that was fashionable in his day. When he comes down to modern times, and treats of density of population in its relation to national prosperity, he repeats the popular fallacy that the multiplication of religious orders exerts a pernicious influence upon the progress of population. But when from general views he descends to statistics, he refutes his own arguments. "The number of monks in France," he says, "according to a careful enumeration {184} made by order of government, a few years ago, was 26,674, and it certainly is not less now." In point of fact, the real number when the property of the clergy was confiscated in 1790 was only 17,000; and what is that in a population of 24,000,000 or 26,000,000? The army withdraws from the marriage state twenty times that number of men, in the vigor of their age; whereas the greater part of the monks are men in the decline of life.
It is a matter of astonishment that a work which professes to treat of "public felicity" should devote itself entirely to the material well-being of society, and have nothing to say of the moral condition of mankind, which is the more important element of the two in making up the sum of human happiness. Every author, of course, has a right to fix the limits of his subject; but then he must not promise on the title-page more than he means to perform.
The authorship of the essay on "Public Felicity" was not long a secret; but de Chastellux received perhaps as much annoyance as glory from the discovery. His ideas did not please everybody, and among those who fell foul of him for his philosophical errors were some of his own family. He made little account of their opposition, and in 1774 came out boldly with an eulogy on Helvétius, with whom he had lived for a long time on the most intimate terms. Two years later, he published a second edition of his previous treatise, with the addition of a chapter of "Ulterior Views," in which he points out the danger of some of the revolutionary opinions which were then coming more and more into vogue, and the futility of trying to realize in actual life that form of government which might be theoretically the best. If he had been alive in 1789, he would have belonged to the monarchical party in the Constituent Assembly; and, after having done his part in paving the way for the revolution, he would have perished as one of its victims. Among political and social reformers, he must be classed with the school of Montesquieu rather than with that of Rousseau.
The attention of France, however, was now fixed more and more firmly upon the contest going on in America between Great Britain and her rebellious colonies. Louis XVI., after some resistance, yielded to the demand of public opinion, and, in 1778, not only recognized the independence of the United States, but sent a fleet under Count d'Estaing to help them. A second expedition was despatched under Count de Rochambeau. M. de Chastellux, who then held the grade of maréchal de camp [equivalent to something between brigadier and major-general in the present United States army—ED.], obtained permission to join it, and was appointed major-general. The expeditionary corps arrived at Newport, capital of the state of Rhode Island, July 10, 1780. It consisted of eight ships of the line, two frigates, two gunboats, and over 5,000 troops. The next year came a reenforcement of 3,000 men. Lord Cornwallis, who commanded the English force was shut up in Yorktown, Va., and, being closely besieged by the allies and invested by land and sea, was compelled to surrender in October, 1781. This forced England to conclude a peace, and the auxiliary corps re-embarked at Boston on their return to France at the close of 1782. It had been two years and a half in America, and during this time the republic had achieved its independence.
During his visit to America, M. de Chastellux employed the brief periods of leisure left him from military occupations in making three tours through the interior. He wrote down as he travelled a journal of his observations, and printed at a little press on board the fleet some twenty copies of it, ten or twelve of which found their way to Europe. So great was the eagerness {185} with which people there seized upon every book relating to America, that a number of copies were surreptitiously printed, and a publisher at Cassel brought out an imperfect edition. The author then published the book himself in 1786 (2 vols., 12mo, Paris), under the title, Voyages de M. le Marquis de Chastellux dans l'Amérique septentrionale en 1780, 1781, et 1782. Though written originally only for his friends, it has a general interest, and presents a curious picture of the condition of North America at the period of which it treats.
The author set out from Newport, where the troops had landed and gone into winter-quarters, in order to visit Pennsylvania. Accompanied by two aides-de-camp, one of whom was the Baron de Montesquieu, grandson of the author of the Esprit des lois, and by five mounted servants, he started, November 11, 1780, on horseback, for that was the only means of travelling that the country afforded. The ground was frozen hard, and already covered with snow. The little party directed their steps first toward Windham, where Lauzun's hussars, forming the advance-guard of the army, were encamped. They found the Duke de Lauzun at the head of his troops, and this meeting between the grandsons of d'Aguesseau and Montesquieu, and a descendant of the Lauzuns and Birons, all three fighting for the cause of liberty in the wilds of America, was a curious beginning of their adventures. It was this same Duke de Lauzun, a friend of Mirabeau and Talleyrand, who became Duke de Biron after the death of his uncle, was chosen a member of the States General in 1789, commanded the republican army of La Vendée, and finished his career on the scaffold.
The travellers crossed the mountains which separated them from the Hudson, and, after passing through a wild and almost desert country, arrived at West Point, a place celebrated at that time for the most dramatic incidents of the war of independence (the treason of General Arnold and the execution of Major André), and now famous as the seat of the great military school of the United States. The American army occupying the forts of West Point, which Arnold's treachery had so nearly given over to the enemy, saluted the French major-general with thirteen guns—one for each state in the confederation. "Never," says he, "was honor more imposing or majestic. Every gun was, after a long interval, echoed back from the opposite bank with a noise nearly equal to that of the discharge itself. Two years ago, West Point was an almost inaccessible desert. This desert has been covered with fortresses and artillery by a people who, six years before, had never seen a cannon. The well-filled magazines, and the great number of guns in the different forts, the prodigious labor which must have been expended in transporting and piling up on the steep rocks such huge trunks of trees and blocks of hewn stone, give one a very different idea of the Americans from that which the English ministry have labored to convey to Parliament. A Frenchman might well be surprised that a nation hardly born should have spent in two years more than 12,000,000 francs in this wilderness; but how much greater must be his surprise when he learns that these fortifications have cost the state nothing, having been constructed by the soldiers, who not only received no extra allowance for the labor, but have not even touched their regular pay! It will be gratifying for him to know that these magnificent works were planned by two French engineers, M. du Portail and M. Gouvion, [Footnote 45] who have been no better paid than their workmen."
[Footnote 45: MM. du Portail and Gouvion went to America with Lafayette, and returned with him. Each rose afterward to the rank of lieutenant-general in the French army. The former, through the influence of Lafayette, was appointed minister-of-war in 1790; he fled to the United States during the Reign of Terror. The other was created major-general of the National Guard of Paris in 1769; he fell in battle in 1792.]
West Point stands on the bank of {186} the Hudson, in a situation which may well be compared with the most beautiful scenery of the Rhine. M. de Chastellux describes it with the liveliest admiration; but he remained there only a short time, because he was in haste to reach the head-quarters of Washington.
"After passing thick woods, I found myself in a small plain, where I saw a handsome farm. A small camp which seemed to cover it, a large tent pitched in the yard, and several wagons around it, convinced me that I was at the head-quarters of His Excellency, for so Mr. Washington is called, in the army and throughout America. M. de Lafayette was conversing in the yard with a tall man about five feet nine inches high, of a noble and mild aspect: it was the general himself. I was soon off my horse and in his presence. The compliments were short; the sentiments which animated me and the good-will which he testified for me were not equivocal. He led me into his house, where I found the company still at table, although dinner had long been over. He presented me to the generals and the aides-de-camp, adjutants, and other officers attached to his person, who form what is called in England and America the family of the general. A few glasses of claret and madeira accelerated the acquaintances I had to make, and I soon felt at my ease in the presence of the greatest and best of men. The goodness and benevolence which characterize him are evident from everything about him; but the confidence he inspires never gives occasion to familiarity, for it originates in a profound esteem for his virtues and a high opinion of his talents."
The next day Washington offered to conduct his guest to the camp of the marquis: this was the appellation universally bestowed in America upon Lafayette, who commanded the advance of the army.
"We found his troops in order of battle, and himself at their head, expressing by his air and countenance that he was better pleased to receive me there than he would be at his estate in Auvergne. [Footnote 46] The confidence and attachment of his troops are invaluable possessions for him, well-earned riches of which nobody can deprive him; but what, in my opinion, is still more flattering for a young man of his age (he was not more than twenty-three) is the influence and consideration he has acquired in political as well as military matters. I do not exaggerate when I say that private letters from him have often produced more effect upon some of the states than the most urgent recommendations of the Congress. On seeing him, one is at a loss to decide which is the stranger circumstance—that a man so young should have given such extraordinary proofs of ability, or that one who has been so much tried should still give promise of such a long career of glory. Happy his country, should she know how to make use of his talents! happier still, should she never stand in need of them!"
[Footnote 46: M. de Chastellux was cousin-german by the mother's side to the Duchess of Ayen, the mother of Madame de Lafayette.]
This last remark shows that M. de Chastellux, with all his enthusiasm for the present, was not without anxiety for the future. He spent three days at head-quarters, nearly all the while at table, after the American fashion. At the end of each meal nuts were served, and General Washington sat for several hours, eating them, "toasting," and conversing. These long conversations only increased his companion's admiration.
"The most striking characteristic of this respected man is the perfect accord which exists between his physical and moral qualities. This idea of a perfect whole cannot be produced by enthusiasm, which would rather reject it, since the effect of proportion is to diminish the idea of greatness. Brave without rashness, laborious without ambition, generous without prodigality, noble without pride, virtuous without severity, he seems always to have {187} confined himself within those limits where the virtues, by clothing themselves in more lively but more changeable and doubtful colors, may be mistaken for faults."
The city of Philadelphia was the capital of the confederation and the seat of the Congress. M. de Chastellux did not fail to visit it. He enjoyed there the hospitality of the Chevalier de la Luzerne, French minister to the United States, and had the pleasure of meeting several young French officers, some in the service of the United States, others belonging to the expeditionary corps, whom the interruption of military operations had left at liberty, like himself. Among them were M. de Lafayette, the Viscount de Noailles, the Count de Damas, the Count de Custine, the Chevalier de Mauduit, and the Marquis de la Rouérie. Let us give a few particulars about these "Gallo-Americans," as our author calls them. The Viscount de Noailles, brother-in-law of Lafayette, and colonel of the chasseurs of Alsace, was afterward a member of the States General, and principal author of the famous deliberations of the 4th of August. The Count Charles de Damas, an aide-de-camp of Rochambeau, in after years took part, on the contrary, against the revolutionists, and, attempting to rescue Louis XVI. at Varennes, was arrested with him. The Count de Custine, colonel of the regiment of Saintonge infantry, is the same who was general-in-chief of the republican armies in 1792, and who died by the guillotine the next year, like Lauzun. The Chevalier de Mauduit commanded the American artillery. At the age of fifteen, with his head full of dreams of classical antiquity, he ran away from college, walked to Marseilles, and shipped as cabin-boy on board a vessel bound for Greece, in order to visit the battle-fields of Plataea and Thermopylae. The same spirit of enthusiasm carried him, at the age of twenty, to America. Appointed, after the war, commandant at Port au Prince, he was assassinated there by his own soldiers in 1791. The history of the Marquis de la Rouérie, or Rouarie, is still more romantic. In his youth he fell violently in love with an actress, and wanted to marry her. Compelled by his family to break off this attachment, he determined to become a Trappist; but he soon threw aside the monastic habit and went to America, where he commanded a legion armed and equipped at his own cost. He abandoned his surname and title, and would only be known as Colonel Armand. After his return to France, he was concerned, with others of the nobility of Brittany, in the troubles which preceded the revolution. He was one of the twelve deputies sent in 1787 to demand of the king the restoration of the privileges of that province, and as such was committed to the Bastile. The next year he had occasion to claim the same privileges, not from the king, but from the Third Estate. In 1791 he placed himself at the head of the disaffected, and organized the royalist insurrection in the west. Denounced and pursued, he saved himself by taking to the forest, lay hid in one chateau after another, fell sick in the middle of winter, and died in a fit of despair on hearing of the execution of Louis XVI.
The Chevalier de la Luzerne, brother of the Bishop of Langres, afterward cardinal, so distinguished for his noble conduct in 1789, was a man of more coolness and deliberation, but not less devoted to the cause of the United States. He had given abundant proof of his friendship by contracting a loan on his own responsibility for the payment of the American troops.
"M. de la Luzerne," says de Chastellux, "is so formed for the station he occupies, that one would be tempted to imagine no other could fill it but himself. Noble in his expenditure, like the minister of a great monarchy, but plain in his manners, like a republican, he is equally fit to represent the king with the Congress, or the Congress with the king. He loves the {188} Americans, and his own inclination attaches him to the duties of his administration. He has accordingly obtained their confidence, both as a private and a public man; but in both these respects he is inaccessible to the spirit of party which reigns but too much around him. He is anxiously courted by all parties, and, espousing none, he manages all." In acknowledgment of his services in America, the Chevalier was appointed, after the peace, minister at London;—rather an audacious action on the part of the government of Louis XVI. to choose as their representative in England the very man who had contributed most of all to the independence of the United States. The state of Pennsylvania, in gratitude for his acts of good-will, gave the name of Luzerne to one of her counties.
The principal occupation of these officers, during their stay at Philadelphia, was to visit, notwithstanding the inclemency of the weather, the scenes of the recent conflicts near that city, or to discuss the causes which had turned the fortune of war, now in favor of the Americans, and now against them. Our author here shows himself in a new light, as a tactician who, with a thorough knowledge of the art of war, points out the circumstances which have led to the success or failure of this or that manoeuvre. Those affairs in which the French figured especially attracted his attention. Bravery, generosity, disinterestedness, all the national virtues were conspicuous in these volunteers who had crossed the ocean to make war at their own expense, and who softened the asperity of military operations by the charm of their elegant manners and chivalric bearing.
Among the battle-fields which these young enthusiasts, while a waiting something better to do, loved to trace out was that of Brandywine, where M. de Lafayette, almost immediately after his landing in America, received the wound in the leg of which he speaks so gaily in a letter to his wife. Lafayette himself acted as their guide, and recounted to his friends, on the very scene of action, the incidents of this day, which was not a fortunate one for the Americans. He did the honors of another expedition to the heights of Barren Hill, where he had gained an advantage under rather curious circumstances. He had with him there about two thousand infantry with fifty dragoons and an equal number of Indians, when the English, who occupied Philadelphia, endeavored to surround and capture him.
"General Howe [Sir Henry Clinton—ED.] thought he had now fairly caught the marquis, and even carried his gasconade so far as to invite ladies to meet Lafayette at supper the next day; and, whilst the principal part of the officers were at the play, he put in motion the main body of his forces, which he marched in three columns. The first was not long in reaching the advanced posts of M. de Lafayette, which gave rise to a laughable adventure. The fifty savages he had with him were placed in ambuscade in the woods, after their own manner; that is to say, lying as close as rabbits. Fifty English dragoons, who had never seen any Indians, entered the wood where they were hid. The Indians on their part, had never seen dragoon. Up they start, raising a horrible cry, throw down their arms, and escape by swimming across the Schuylkill. The dragoons, on the other hand, as much terrified as they were, turned tail, and fled in such a panic that they did not stop until they reached Philadelphia. M. de Lafayette, finding himself in danger of being surrounded, made such skilful dispositions that he effected his retreat, as if by enchantment, and crossed the river without losing a man. The English army, finding the bird flown, returned to Philadelphia, spent with fatigue, and ashamed of having done nothing. The ladies did not see M. de Lafayette, and General Howe [Clinton] himself arrived too late for supper." By the side of these admirable military sketches, we have an account of a ball at the Chevalier de la Luzerne's. "There were near twenty women, {189} twelve or fifteen of whom danced, each having her 'partner,' as the custom is in America. Dancing is said to be at once the emblem of gaiety and of love; here it seems to be the emblem of legislation and of marriage: of legislation, inasmuch as places are marked out, the country-dances named, and every proceeding provided for, calculated, and submitted to regulation; of marriage, as it furnishes each lady with a partner, with whom she must dance the whole evening, without being permitted to take another. Strangers have generally the privilege of being complimented with the handsomest women; that is to say, out of politeness, the prettiest partners are given to them. The Count de Damas led forth Mrs. Bingham, and the Viscount de Noailles, Miss Shippen. Both of them, like true philosophers, testified a great respect for the custom of the country by not quitting their partners the whole evening; in other respects they were the admiration of the whole assembly from the grace and dignity with which they danced. To the honor of my country, I can affirm that they surpassed that evening a chief justice of Carolina, and two members of Congress, one of whom (Mr. Duane) passed for being by ten per cent. more lively than all the other dancers."
At Philadelphia, as in camp, a great part of the day was passed at table. The Congress having met, M. de Chastellux was invited to dinner successively by the representatives from the North and the representatives from the South; for the political body was even then divided by a geographical line, each side having separate reunions at a certain tavern which they used to frequent: so we see the differences between North and South are as old as the confederation itself. He made the acquaintance of all the leading members, and especially of Samuel Adams, one of the framers of the Declaration of Independence. [Footnote 47] He saw also the celebrated pamphleteer, Thomas Paine, who ten years afterward came to France, and was chosen a member of the National Convention. Together with Lafayette, our author was elected a member of the Academy of Philadelphia. Despite so many circumstances to prepossess him in favor of the Americans, he appears not a very ardent admirer of what he witnesses about him. He shows but little sympathy with the Quakers, whose "smooth and wheedling tone" disgusts him, and whom he represents as wholly given up to making money. Philadelphia he calls "the great sink in which all the speculations of the United States meet and mingle." The city then had 40,000 inhabitants; it now contains 600,000.
[Footnote 47: A mistake of the reviewer's. Samuel Adams had no hand in writing the Declaration, nor does de Chastellux say that he had.——ED. C. W. ]
We can easily conceive that, in contrasting the appearance of this republican government with the great French monarchy, he should have found abundant food for study and reflection. He speaks with great reserve, but what little he says is enough to show that he was not so much enamored of republican ideas as Lafayette and most of his friends. The disciple of Montesquieu loses much of his admiration for the American constitutions when he sees them in operation, and seems especially loath to introduce them into his own country. The constitution of Pennsylvania strikes him as particularly defective.
"The state of Pennsylvania is far from being one of the best governed of the members of the confederation. The government is without force; nor can it be otherwise. A popular government can never have any whilst the people are uncertain and vacillating in their opinions; for then the leaders seek rather to please than to serve them, and end by becoming the slaves of the multitude whom they pretended to govern."
This constitution had one capital defect: it provided only for a single legislative chamber. After a disastrous trial, Pennsylvania was {190} compelled to change her laws, and adopt the system of two chambers, like the other states of the Union.
Our author betrays his misgivings most clearly in his narrative of an interview with Samuel Adams. His report of the conversation is especially curious, as it shows how entirely the two speakers were preoccupied by different ideas. Samuel Adams, who has been called "the American Cato," bent himself to prove the revolution justifiable, by arguments drawn not only from natural right but from historical precedent. The thoroughly English character of mind of these innovators led them to make it a sort of point of honor to find a sanction for their conduct in tradition. M. de Chastellux, like a true Frenchman, made no account of such reasonings.
"I am clearly of opinion that the parliament of England had no right to tax America without her consent; but I am still more clearly convinced that, when a whole people say, 'We will be free!' it is difficult to demonstrate that they are in the wrong. Be that as it may, Mr. Adams very satisfactorily proved to me that New England was peopled with no view to commerce and aggrandizement, but wholly by individuals who fled from persecution, and sought an asylum at the extremity of the world, where they might be free to live and follow their own opinions; that it was of their own accord that these colonists placed themselves under the protection of England; that the mutual relationship springing from this connection was expressed in their charters, and that the right of imposing or exacting a revenue of any kind was not comprised in them." There was no question between the two speakers of the Federal Constitution, for it did not yet exist. The states at that time formed merely a confederation of sovereign states, with a general congress, like the German confederation. They had no president or central administration. The constitutions spoken of in this conversation were simply the separate constitutions of the individual states, and Samuel Adams, being from Massachusetts, referred particularly to that state. M. de Chastellux, accustomed to the complex social systems of Europe, was surprised that no property qualification should be required of voters; the Americans, on the contrary, who had always lived in a democratic community, both before and since the declaration of independence, could not comprehend the necessity of such a restriction. Both were doubtless right; for it is equally difficult to establish political inequality where it does not already exist, and to suddenly abolish it where it does exist. The constitution of Massachusetts, superior in this respect to that of Pennsylvania, provided for a moderating power by creation of a governor's council, elected by property-holders.
Our author's first journey terminates in the north, near the Canada frontier. He crosses the frozen rivers in a sleigh, in order to visit the battle-field of Saratoga, the scene, three years before, the capitulation of General Burgoyne, the most important success which the Americans had achieved previous to the arrival of the French. Returning to Newport in the early part of 1781, after having travelled, in the course of two months, more than three hundred leagues, on horseback or in sleighs, he passed the rest of the year solely occupied in the duties of the glorious campaign which put an end to the war. He wrote a journal of this campaign, but it has not been published. He speaks of it in the narrative of his travels. From the Memoires of Rochambeau, however, we learn something of his gallant behavior at the siege of Yorktown, where, at the head of the reserve, he repulsed a sortie of the enemy.
His second journey was made immediately after the surrender of Cornwallis, and was directed toward Virginia, the most important of the southern, as Pennsylvania was of the northern, states. It was the birth-place of Washington, of Jefferson, of Madison, and {191} of Monroe; the state which shared most actively in the war of independence, and which is now the principal battle-field of the bloody struggle between North and South. This second journey did not partake of the military and political character of the first. Now that the destiny of America seemed settled, the author gave his attention, principally, to natural history. In every phrase we recognize the pupil and admirer of Buffon. His chief purpose was to visit a natural bridge of rock across one of the affluents of the James river, in the Appalachian mountains. He describes this stupendous arch with great care, and illustrates his narrative with several drawings which he caused to be made by an officer of engineers.
À propos of this subject, he indulges in speculations upon the geological formation of the New World, quite after the manner of the author of Époques de la nature. On the road he amused himself by hunting. He describes the animals that he kills, and gives an account of the mocking-bird, which almost equals Buffon's in vivacity, and excels it in accuracy. He gives several details respecting the opossum, that singular animal which almost seems to belong to a different creation. All natural objects interest him, and he studies them with the zeal of a first discoverer. His description of the mocking-bird is well worth reproducing:
"I rose with the sun, and, while breakfast was preparing, took a walk around the house. The birds were heard on every side, but my attention was chiefly attracted by a very agreeable song, which appeared to proceed from a neighboring tree. I approached softly, and perceived it to be a mocking-bird, saluting the rising sun. At first I was afraid of frightening it, but my presence, on the contrary, gave it pleasure; for, apparently delighted at having an auditor, it sang better than before, and its emulation seemed to increase when it saw a couple of dogs, which followed me, draw near to the tree on which it was perched. It kept hopping incessantly from branch to branch, still continuing its song; for this extraordinary bird is not less remarkable for its agility than its charming notes. It keeps perpetually rising and sinking, so as to appear not less the favorite of Terpsichore than Polyhymnia. This bird cannot certainly be reproached with fatiguing its auditors, for nothing can be more varied than its song, of which it is impossible to give an imitation, or even to furnish any adequate idea. As it had every reason to be satisfied with my attention, it concealed from me none of its talents; and one would have thought that, after having delighted me with a concert, it was desirous of entertaining me with a comedy. It began to counterfeit different birds; those which it imitated the most naturally, at least to a stranger, were the jay, the raven, the cardinal, and the lapwing. It appeared desirous of detaining me near it; for, after I had listened for a quarter of an hour, it followed me on my return to the house, flying from tree to tree, always singing, sometimes its natural song, at others those which it had learned in Virginia and in its travels; for this bird is one of those which change climate, although it sometimes appears here during the winter."
Continuing his journey, the traveller visited Jefferson at his country-home, situated deep in the wilderness, on the skirts of the Blue Ridge. This visit gives him opportunity for a new historical portrait:
"It was Jefferson himself who built his house and chose the situation. He calls it Monticello ['little mountain'], a modest title, for it is built upon a very high mountain; but the name indicates the owner's attachment to the language of Italy, and above all to the fine arts, of which that country was the cradle. He is a man not yet forty, of tall stature and a mild and pleasant countenance; but his mind and understanding are ample substitutes for every external grace. {192} An American who, without having ever quitted his own country, is skilled in music and drawing; a geometrician, an astronomer, a natural philosopher, a jurist and a statesman; a senator who sat for two years in the congress which brought about the revolution, and which is never mentioned without respect, though unhappily not without regret; [Footnote 48] a governor of Virginia, who filled this difficult station during the invasions of Arnold, of Phillips, and of Cornwallis; in fine, a philosopher in voluntary retirement from the world and public affairs, because he only loves the world so long as he can flatter himself with the conviction that he is of some use to mankind. A mild and amiable wife, charming children, of whose education he himself takes charge, a house to embellish, great possessions to improve, and the arts and sciences to cultivate—these are what remain to Mr. Jefferson after having played a distinguished part on the theatre of the New World. Before I had been two hours in his company, we were as ultimate as if we had passed our whole lives together. Walking, books, but above all a conversation always varied and interesting, sustained by that sweet satisfaction experienced by two persons whose sentiments are always in unison, and who understand each other at the first hint, made four days seem to me only so many minutes. No object had escaped Mr. Jefferson's attention; and it seemed as if from his youth he had placed his mind, as he has done his house, on an elevation from which he might contemplate the universe."
[Footnote 48: The United States were then passing through a crisis of anarchy, which lasted until the adoption of the Federal Constitution in 1788, and the elevation of Washington to the presidency.]
At the period of this visit, Mr. Jefferson thought only of retirement; but when M. de Chastellux's Voyages en Amérique appeared, three years afterward, he was minister-plenipotentiary of the United States in Paris. The death of his wife had determined him to return to public life. He formed a solid friendship for M. de Chastellux, of which his correspondence contains abundant proof. The brilliant French soldier introduced the solitary of Monticello, the "American wild-man of the mountains," to the salons of Paris; and the republican statesman, with the manners of an aristocrat, entered, nothing loath, into the society of the gay and polished capital, where he received the same welcome and honors that were accorded to Franklin.
This portion of the Journal closes with some general remarks upon Virginia, which possess a new interest now that the people of that state reappear upon the scene in the same bellicose and indomitable character which they bore of old.
"The Virginians differ essentially from the people of the North, not only in the nature of their climate, soil, and agriculture, but in that indelible character which is imprinted on every nation at the moment of its origin, and which, by perpetuating itself from generation to generation, justifies the great principle that 'everything which is partakes of that which has been.' The settlement of Virginia took place at the commencement of the seventeenth century. The republican and democratic spirit was not then common in England; that of commerce and navigation was scarcely in its infancy. The long wars with France and Spain had perpetuated the military spirit, and the first colonists of Virginia were composed in great part of gentlemen who had no other profession than that of arms. It was natural, therefore, for these colonists, who were filled with military principles and the prejudices of nobility, to carry them even into the midst of the savages whose lands they came to occupy. Another cause which operated in forming their character was the institution of slavery. It may be asked how these prejudices have been brought to coincide with a revolution founded on such different principles? I answer {193} that they have perhaps contributed to produce it. While the insurrection in New England was the result of reason and calculation, Virginia revolted through pride."
The third and last journey of M. de Chastellux led him through New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and northern Pennsylvania. This was during the months of November and December, 1782, on the eve of his return to France. He started from Hartford, the capital of Connecticut, and, after visiting several other places, went to Boston, for he could not leave America without seeing this city, the cradle of the revolution. He found at this port the French fleet, under command of M. de Vaudreuil, which was to carry back the expeditionary corps to France. He closes his Journal with an interesting account of the university at Cambridge, which Ampère, who was, like him, a member of the French Academy, visited and described seventy years afterward. In the appendix to his book he gives a letter written by himself on board the frigate l'Émeraude, just before sailing, to Mr. Madison, professor of philosophy in William and Mary College. It is upon a subject which has not yet lost its appropriateness—the future of the arts and sciences in America. A democratic and commercial society, always in a ferment, seemed to him hardly compatible with scientific, and still less with artistic, progress. But, in his solicitude for the welfare of the country he had been defending, he would not allow that the difficulty was insuperable. Some of his remarks upon this subject are extremely delicate and ingenious.
The question which troubled him is not yet fully answered, but it is in a fair way of being settled. The United States have really made but little progress in the arts, though they have produced a few pictures and statues which have elicited admiration even in Europe at recent industrial exhibitions. They are beginning, however, to have a literature. Even in the days of the revolution they could boast of the writings of Franklin, which combined the-most charming originality with refinement and solid good sense. Now they can show, among novelists, Fenimore Cooper and the celebrated Mrs. Beecher Stowe, whose book gave the signal for another revolution; among story-tellers, Washington Irving and Hawthorne; among critics, Ticknor; among historians, Prescott and Bancroft; among economists, Carey; among political writers, Everett; among moralists, Emerson and Channing; among poets, Bryant and Longfellow. In science they have done still more. They have adopted and naturalized one of the first of modern geologists, Agassiz; and the hydrographical labors of Maury, [late] director of the Washington Observatory, are the admiration of the whole world. Their immense development in industrial pursuits implies a corresponding progress in practical science. It was Fulton, an American, who invented the steamboat, and carried out in his own country the idea which he could not persuade Europe to listen to; and only lately the reaping-machine has come to us from the shores of the great lakes and the vast prairies of the Far West.
When the Voyages en Amérique appeared, the revolutionary party in France were still more dissatisfied with the book than they had been with the Félicité publique. They were angry at the wise and unprejudiced judgments which the author passed upon men and things in the New World; they were angry that he found some things not quite perfect in republican society, that his praises of democracy were not louder, his denunciations of the past not more sweeping. Brissot de Warville, whose caustic pen was already in full exercise, published a bitter review of the book. Some of the hostile criticisms found their way to the United States, and M. de Chastellux, in sending a copy of his work to General Washington, took occasion to {194} defend himself. He received from the general a long and affectionate reply, written at Mount Vernon, in April, 1786.
M. de Chastellux also wrote a "Discourse on the Advantages and Disadvantages which have resulted to Europe from the Discovery of America," and edited the comedies of the Marchioness de Gléon. This lady, celebrated for her wit and beauty, was the daughter of a rich financier. At her house, La Chevrette, near Montmorency, she entertained all the literary world, and gave representations of her own plays. Her friend, M. de Chastellux, was himself the author of a few dramatic pieces, performed either at La Chevrette or at the Prince de Condé's, at Chantilly; but they have never been published. We shall respect his reserve, and refrain from giving our readers a taste either of these compositions or of his "Plan for a general Reform of the French Infantry," and other unpublished writings.
After his return from America, de Chastellux was appointed governor of Longwy. He had reached the age of nearly fifty and was still unmarried, when he met at the baths of Spa, which were still the resort of all the good company in Europe, a young, beautiful, and accomplished Irish girl, named Miss Plunkett, with whom he fell over head and ears in love. He married her in 1787, but did not long enjoy his happiness, for he died the next year. Like most men who devote themselves to the public welfare, he had sadly neglected his private affairs. Being the youngest of five children, his fortune was not large, and it gave him little trouble to run through it. General officers in those days took a pride in their profuse expenditures in the field: he ruined himself by his American campaign. His widow was attached in the capacity of maid of honor to the person of the estimable daughter of the Duke de Penthièvre, the Duchess of Orléans, mother of King Louis Philippe. This princess adopted, after a certain fashion, his posthumous son, who became one of the chevaliers d'honneur of Madame Adelaide, the daughter of his patroness. He was successively a deputy and peer of France after the revolution 1830. He published a short memoir of his father, prefixed to an edition of the Félicité publique.
There is a convent on the Alban hill,
Round whose stone roots the gnarlèd olives grow;
Above are murmurs of the mountain rill,
And all the broad Campagna lies below;
Where faint gray buildings and a shadowy dome
Suggest the splendor of eternal Rome.
Hundreds of years ago, these convent-walls
Were reared by masons of the Gothic age:
The date is carved upon the lofty halls,
The story written on the illumined page.
What pains they took to make it strong and fair
The tall bell-tower and sculptured porch declare.
When all the stones were placed, the windows stained,
And the tall bell-tower finished to the crown,
Only one want in this fair pile remained,
Whereat a cunning workman of the town
(The little town upon the Alban hill)
Toiled day and night his purpose to fulfil.
Seven bells he made, of very rare devise,
With graven lilies twisted up and down;
Seven bells proportionate in differing size,
And full of melody from rim to crown;
So that, when shaken by the wind alone,
They murmured with a soft AEolian tone.
These being placed within the great bell-tower,
And duly rung by pious skilful hand,
Marked the due prayers of each recurring hour,
And sweetly mixed persuasion with command.
Through the gnarled olive-trees the music wound,
And miles of broad Campagna heard the sound.
And then the cunning workman put aside
His forge, his hammer, and the tools he used
To chase those lilies; his keen furnace died;
And all who asked for bells were hence refused.
With these his best, his last were also wrought,
And refuge in the convent-walls he sought.
There did he live, and there he hoped to die,
Hearing the wind among the cypress-trees
Hint unimagined music, and the sky
Throb full of chimes borne downward by the breeze;
Whose undulations, sweeping through the air,
His art might claim as an embodied prayer.
{196}
But those were stormy days in Italy:
Down came the spoiler from the uneasy North,
Swept the Campagna to the bounding sea,
Sacked pious homes, and drove the inmates forth;
Whether a Norman or a German foe,
History is silent, and we do not know.
Brothers in faith were they; yet did not deem
The sacred precincts barred destroying hand.
Through those rich windows poured the whitened beam,
Forlorn the church and ruined altar stand.
As the sad monks went forth, that self-same hour
Saw empty silence in the great bell-tower.
The outcast brethren scattered far and wide;
Some by the Danube rested, some in Spain:
On the green Loire the aged abbot died,
By whose loved feet one brother did remain
Faithful in all his wanderings: it was he
Who cast and chased those bells in Italy.
He, dwelling at Marmontier, by the tomb
Of his dear father, where the shining Loire
Flows down from Tours amidst the purple bloom
Of meadow-flowers, some years of patience saw.
Those fringèd isles (where poplars tremble still)
Swayed like the olives of the Alban hill.
The man was old, and reverend in his age;
And the "Great Monastery" held him dear.
Stalwart and stern, as some old Roman sage
Subdued to Christ, he lived from year to year,
Till his beard silvered, and the fiery glow
Of his dark eye was overhung with snow.
And being trusted, as of prudent way,
They chose him for a message of import,
Which the "Great Monastery" would convey
To a good patron in an Irish court;
Who, by the Shannon, sought the means to found
St. Martin's off-shoot on that distant ground.
The old Italian took his staff in hand,
And journeyed slowly from the green Touraine
Over the heather and salt-shining sand,
Until he saw the leaping crested main,
Which, dashing round the Cape of Brittany,
Sweeps to the confines of the Irish Sea.
{197}
There he took ship, and thence with laboring sail
He crossed the waters, till a faint gray line
Rose in the northern sky; so faint, so pale,
Only the heart that loves her would divine,
In her dim welcome, all that fancy paints
Of the green glory of the Isle of Saints.
Through the low banks, where Shannon meets the sea,
Up the broad waters of the River King
(Then populous with a nation), journeyed he,
Through that old Ireland which her poets sing;
And the white vessel, breasting up the stream,
Moved slowly, like a ship within a dream.
When Limerick towers uprose before his gaze,
A sound of music floated in the air—
Music which held him in a fixed amaze,
Whose silver tenderness was alien there;
Notes full of murmurs of the southern seas,
And dusky olives swaying in the breeze.
His chimes! the children of the great bell-tower,
Empty and silent now for many a year,
He hears them ringing out the vesper hour,
Owned in an instant by his loving ear.
Kind angels stayed the spoiler's hasty hand,
And watched their journeying over sea and land.
The white-sailed boat moved slowly up the stream;
The old man lay with folded hands at rest;
The Shannon glistened in the sunset beam;
The bells rang gently o'er its shining breast,
Shaking out music from each lilied rim:
It was a requiem which they rang for him.
For when the boat was moored beside the quay,
He lay as children lie when lulled by song;
But never more to waken. Tenderly
They buried him wild-flowers and grass among,
Where on the cross alights the wandering bird,
And hour by hour the bells he loved are heard.
There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune—
So says the sage, and it is not to be gainsayed by any man whom forty winters have chilled into wisdom. Ability and opportunity are fortune. Opportunity is not fortune; otherwise all were fortunate. Ability is not fortune, else why does genius slave? Why? But because it missed the opportunity that fitted it?
What I have—wife, position, independence—I owe to an opportunity for exercising the very simple and unpretending combination of qualities that goes by the name of ability. But to my story.
My father was a wealthy country gentleman, of somewhat more than the average of intelligence, and somewhat more than the average of generosity and extravagance. His younger brother, a solicitor in large practice in London, would in vain remonstrate as to the imprudence of his course. Giving freely, spending freely, must come to an end. It did; and at twenty I was a well educated, gentlemanly pauper. The investigation of my father's affairs showed that there was one shilling and sixpence in the pound for the whole of his creditors, and of course nothing for me.
The position was painful. I was half engaged—to that is, I had gloves, flowers, a ringlet, a carte de visite of Alice Morton. That, of course, must be stopped.
Mr. Silas Morton was not ill-pleased at the prospect of an alliance with his neighbor Westwood's son while there was an expectation of a provision for the young couple in the union of estates as well as persons; but now, when the estate was gone, when I, Guy Westwood, was shillingless in the world, it would be folly indeed. Nevertheless I must take my leave.
"Well, Guy, my lad, bad job this; very bad job; thought he was as safe as the Bank. Would not have believed it from any one—not from any one. Of course all that nonsense about you and Alice must be stopped now; I'm not a hard man, but I can't allow Alice to throw away her life in the poverty she would have to bear as your wife; can't do it; wouldn't be the part of a father if I did."
I suggested I might in time.
"Time, sir! time! How much? She's nineteen now. You're brought up to nothing; know nothing that will earn you a sixpence for the next six months; and you talk about time. Time, indeed! Keep her waiting till she's thirty, and then break her heart by finding it a folly to marry at all.'
"Ah! Alice, my dear, Guy's come to say 'Good by:' he sees, with me, that his altered position compels him, as an honorable man, to give up any hopes he may have formed as to the future."
He left us alone to say 'Farewell!'—a word too hard to say at our ages. Of course we consulted what should be done. To give each other up, to bury the delicious past, that was not to be thought of. We would be constant, spite of all. I must gain a position, and papa would then help us.
Two ways were open; a commission in India, a place in my uncle's office. Which? I was for the commission, Alice for the office. A respectable influential solicitor; a position not to be despised; nothing but cleverness wanted; and my uncle's name, and no one to wait for; no liver {199} complaints; no sepoys; no sea voyages; and no long separation.
"Oh, I'm sure it is the best thing."
I agreed, not unnaturally then, that it was the best.
"Now, you young people, you've had time enough to say 'Good by,' so be off, Guy. Here, my lad, you'll need something to start with," and the old gentleman put into my hands a note for fifty pounds.
"I must beg, sir, that you will not insult—"
"God bless the boy! 'Insult!' Why I've danced you on my knee hundreds of times. Look you, Guy,"—and the old fellow came and put his hand on my shoulder,—"it gives me pain to do what I am doing. I believe, for both your sakes, it is best you should part. Let us part friends. Come now, Guy, you'll need this; and if you need a little more, let me know."
"But, sir, you cut me off from all hope; you render my life a burden to me. Give me some definite task; say how much you think we ought to have; I mean how much I ought to have to keep Alice—I mean Miss Morton—in such a position as you would wish."
Alice added her entreaties, and the result of the conference was an understanding that if, within five years from that date, I could show I was worth £500 a year, the old gentleman would add another £500; and on that he thought we might live for a few years comfortably.
There was to be no correspondence whatever; no meetings, no messages. We protested and pleaded, and finally he said—
"Well, well, Guy; I always liked you, and liked your father before you. Come to us on Christmas day, and you shall find a vacant chair beside Alice. There, now; say 'Good by,' and be off."
I went off. I came to London to one of the little lanes leading out of Cannon street. Five hundred a year in five years! I must work hard.
My uncle took little notice of me; I fancied worked me harder than the rest, and paid me the same. Seventy-five pounds a year is not a large sum. I had spent it in a month before now, after the fashion of my father: now, I hoarded; made clothes last; ate in musty, cheap, little cook-shops; and kept my enjoying faculties from absolute rust by a weekly half-price to the theatres—the pit.
The year passed. I went down on Christmas, and for twenty-four hours was alive; came back, and had a rise of twenty pounds in salary for the next year. I waited for opportunity, and it came not.
This jog-trot routine of office-work continued for two years more, and at the end of that time I was worth but my salary of £135 per year—£135! a long way from £500. Oh, for opportunity? I must quit the desk, and become a merchant; all successful men have been merchants; money begets money. But, to oppose all these thoughts of change, came the memory of Alice's last words at Christmas, "Wait and hope, Guy, dear; wait and hope." Certainly; it's so easy to.
"Governor wants you, Westwood. He's sharp this morning; very sharp; so look out, my dear nephy."
"You understand a little Italian, I think?" said my uncle.
"A little, sir."
"You will start to-night for Florence, in the mail train. Get there as rapidly as possible, and find whether a Colonel Wilson is residing there, and what lady he is residing with. Learn all you can as to his position and means, and the terms on which he lives with that lady. Write to me, and wait there for further instructions. Mr. Williams will give you a cheque for £100; you can get circular notes for £50, and the rest cash. If you have anything to say, come in here at five o'clock; if not, good morning. By-the-by, say nothing in the office."
I need not say that hope made me believe my opportunity was come.
I hurried to Florence and discharged my mission; sent home a {200} careful letter, full of facts without comment or opinion, and in three weeks' time was summoned to return. I had done little or nothing that could help me, and in a disappointed state of mind I packed up and went to the railway station at St. Dominico. A little row with a peasant as to his demand for carrying my baggage caused me to lose the last train that night, and so the steamer at Leghorn. The station-master, seeing my vexation, endeavored to console me:
"There will be a special through train to Leghorn at nine o'clock, ordered for Count Spezzato: he is good-natured, and will possibly let you go in that."
It was worth the chance, and I hung about the station till I was tired, and then walked back toward the village. Passing a small wine-shop, I entered, and asked for wine in English. I don't know what whim possessed me when I did it, for they were unable to understand me without dumb motions. I at length got wine by these means, and sat down to while away the time over a railway volume.
I had been seated about half an hour, when a courier entered, accompanied by a railway guard. Two more different examples of the human race it would be difficult to describe.
The guard was a dark, savage-looking Italian, with 'rascal' and 'bully' written all over him; big, black, burly, with bloodshot eyes, and thick, heavy, sensual lips, the man was utterly repulsive.
The courier was a little, neatly-dressed man, of no age in particular; pale, blue-eyed, straight-lipped, his face was a compound of fox and rabbit that only a fool or a patriot would have trusted out of arm's length.
This ill-matched pair called for brandy, and the hostess set it before them. I then heard them ask who and what I was. She replied, I must be an Englishman, and did not understand the Italian for wine. She then left.
They evidently wanted to be alone, and my presence was decidedly disagreeable to them; and muttering that I was an Englishman, they proceeded to try my powers as a linguist. The courier commenced in Italian, with a remark on the weather. I immediately handed him the Newspaper. I didn't speak Italian, that was clear to them.
The guard now struck in with a remark in French as to the fineness of the neighboring country. I shrugged my shoulders, and produced my cigar case. French was not very familiar to me, evidently.
"Those beasts of English think their own tongue so fine they are too proud to learn another," said the guard.
I sat quietly, sipping my wine, and reading.
"Well, my dear Michael Pultuski," began the guard.
"For the love of God, call me by that name. My name is Alexis Alexis Dzentzol, now."
"Oh! oh!" laughed the guard; "you've changed your name, you fox; it's like you. Now I am the same that you knew fifteen years ago, Conrad Ferrate—to-day, yesterday, and for life, Conrad Ferrate. Come, lad, tell us your story. How did you get out of that little affair at Warsaw? How they could have trusted you, with your face, with their secrets, I can't for the life of me tell; you look so like a sly knave, don't you, lad?"
The courier, so far from resenting this familiarity, smiled, as if he had been praised.
"My story is soon said. I found, after my betrayal to the police of the secrets of that little conspiracy which you and I joined, that Poland was too hot for me, and my name too well known. I went to France, who values her police, and for a few years was useful to them. But it was dull work; very dull; native talent was more esteemed. I was to be sent on a secret service to Warsaw; I declined for obvious reasons."
"Good! Michael—Alexis; good, {201} Alexis. This fox is not to be trapped." And he slapped the courier on the shoulder heartily.
"And," resumed the other, "I resigned. Since then I have travelled as courier with noble families, and I trust I give satisfaction."
"Good! Alexis; good Mich—good Alexis! To yourself you give satisfaction. You are a fine rascal!—the prince of rascals! So decent; so quiet; so like the curé of a convent. Who would believe that you had sold the lives of thirty men for a few hundred roubles?"
"And who," interrupted the courier, "would believe that you, bluff, honest Conrad Ferrate, had run away with all the money those thirty men had collected during ten years of labor, for rescuing their country from the Russian?"
"That was good, Alexis, was it not? I never was so rich in my life as then; I loved—I gamed—I drank on the patriots' money."
"For how long? Three years?"
"More—and now have none left. Ah! Times change, Alexis; behold me." And the guard touched his buttons and belt, the badges of his office. "Never mind—here's my good friend, the bottle—let us embrace—the only friend that is always true—if he does not gladden, he makes us to forget."
"Tell me, my good Alexis, whom do you rob now? Who pays for the best, and gets the second best? Whose money do you invest, eh! my little fox? Why are you here? Come, tell me, while I drink to your success."
"I have the honor to serve his Excellency the Count Spezzato."
"Ten thousand devils! My accursed cousin!" broke in the guard. "He who has robbed me from his birth; whose birth itself was a vile robbery of me—me, his cousin, child of his father's brother. May he be accursed for ever!"
I took most particular pains to appear only amused at this genuine outburst of passion, for I saw the watchful eye of the courier was on me all the time they were talking.
The guard drank off a tumbler of brandy.
"That master of yours is the man of whom I spoke to you years ago, as the one who had ruined me; and you serve him! May he be strangled on his wedding night, and cursed for ever."
"Be calm, my dearest Conrad, calm yourself; that beast of an Englishman will think you are drunk, like one of his own swinish people, if you talk so loud as this."
"How can I help it? I must talk. What he is, that I ought to be: I was brought up to it till I was eighteen; was the heir to all his vast estate; there was but one life between me and power—my uncle's—and he, at fifty, married a girl, and had this son, this son of perdition, my cousin. And after that, I, who had been the pride of my family, became of no account; it was 'Julian' sweet Julian!'"
"I heard," said the courier, "that some one attempted to strangle the sweet child, that was——?"
"Me—you fox—me. I wish I had done it; but for that wretched dog that worried me, I should have been Count Spezzato now. I killed that dog, killed him, no not suddenly; may his master die like him!"
"And you left after that little affair?"
"Oh yes! I left and became what you know me."
"A clever man, my dear Conrad. I know no man who is more clever with the ace than yourself, and, as to bullying to cover a mistake, you are an emperor at that. Is it not so, Conrad? Come, drink good health to my master, your cousin."
"You miserable viper, I'll crush you if you ask me to do that again. I'll drink—here, give me the glass—Here's to Count Spezzato: May he die like a dog! May his carcase bring the birds and the wolves together! May his name be cursed and hated while the sun lasts! And may purgatory keep him till I pray for his release!"
{202}The man's passion was something frightful to see, and I was more than half inclined to leave the place; but something, perhaps a distant murmur of the rising tide, compelled me to stay. I pretended sleep, allowing my head to sink, down upon the table.
He sat still for a few moments, and then commenced walking about the room, and abruptly asked:
"What brought you here, Alexis?"
"My master's horse, Signor Conrad."
"Good, my little fox; but why did you come on your master's horse?"
"Because my master wishes to reach Leghorn to-night, to meet his bride, Conrad."
"Then his is the special train ordered at nine, that I am to go with?" exclaimed the guard eagerly.
"That is so, gentle Conrad; and now, having told you all, let me pay our hostess and go."
"Pay! No one pays for me, little fox; no, no, go; I will pay."
The courier took his departure, and the guard kept walking up and down the room, muttering to himself:
"To-night, it might be to-night. If he goes to Leghorn, he meets his future wife; another life, and perhaps a dozen. No, it must be to-night or never. Does his mother go? Fool that I am not to ask! Yes; it shall be to-night;" and he left the room.
What should be "to-night?" Some foul play of which the count would be the victim, no doubt. But how? when? That must be solved. To follow him, or to wait—which? To wait. It is always best to wait; I had learned this lesson already.
I waited. It was now rather more than half-past eight, and I had risen to go to the door when I saw the guard returning to the wine-shop with a man whose dress indicated the stoker.
"Come in, Guido; come in," said the guard; "and drink with me."
The man came in, and I was again absorbed in my book.
They seated themselves at the same table as before, and drank silently for a while; presently the guard began a conversation in some patois I could not understand; but I could see the stoker grow more and more interested as the name of Beatrix occurred more frequently.
As the talk went on, the stoker seemed pressing the guard on some part of the story with a most vindictive eagerness, repeatedly asking, "His name? The accursed! His name?"
At last the guard answered, "The Count Spezzato."
"The Count Spezzato!" said the stoker, now leaving the table, and speaking in Italian.
"Yes, good Guido; the man who will travel in the train we take to-night to Leghorn."
"He shall die! The accursed! He shall die to-night!" said the stoker. "If I lose my life, the betrayer of my sister shall die!"
The guard, returning to the unknown tongue, seemed to be endeavoring to calm him; and I could only catch a repetition of the word "Empoli" at intervals. Presently the stoker took from the seats beside him two tin bottles, such as you may see in the hands of mechanics who dine out; and I could see that one of them had rudely scratched on it the name "William Atkinson." I fancied the guard produced from his pocket a phial, and poured the contents into that bottle; but the action was so rapid, and the corner so dark, that I could not be positive; then rising, they stopped at the counter, had both bottles filled with brandy, and went out.
It was now time to get to the station; and, having paid my modest score, I went out.
A little in front of me, by the light from a small window, I saw these two cross themselves, grip each other's hands across right to right, left to left, and part.
The stoker had set down the bottles, and now taking them up followed the guard at a slower pace.
{203}Arrived at the station, I found the count, his mother, a female servant, and the courier.
The count came up to me, and said, in broken English, "You are the English to go to Leghorn with me? Very well, there is room. I like the English. You shall pay nothing, because I do not sell tickets; you shall go free. Is that so?"
I thanked him in the best Italian I could muster.
"Do not speak your Italian to me; I speak the English as a native; I can know all you shall say to me in your own tongue. See, here is the train special, as you call it. Enter, as it shall please you."
The train drew up to the platform; and I saw that the stoker was at his post, and that the engine-driver was an Englishman.
I endeavored in vain to draw his attention to warn him, and was compelled to take my seat, which I did in the compartment next the guard's break—the train consisting of only that carriage and another, in which were the count, his mother, and the servant.
The guard passed along the train, locked the doors, and entered his box.
"The Florence goods is behind you, and the Sienna goods is due at Empoli Junction four minutes before you; mind you don't run into it," said the station-master, with a laugh.
"No fear; we shall not run into it," said the guard, with a marked emphasis on the "we" and "it" that I recalled afterward.
The whistle sounded, and we were off. It was a drizzling dark night; and I lay down full length on the seat to sleep.
As I lay down a gleam of light shot across the carriage from a small chink in the wood-work of the partition between the compartment I was in and the guard's box.
I was terribly anxious for the manner of the guard; and this seemed to be a means of hearing something more. I lay down and listened attentively.
"How much will you give for your life, my little fox?" said the guard.
"To-day, very little; when I am sixty, all I have, Conrad."
"But you might give something for it, to-night, sweet Alexis, if you knew it was in danger?"
"I have no fear; Conrad Ferrate has too often conducted a train for me to fear to-night."
"True, my good Alexis; but this is the last train he will ride with as guard, for to-morrow he will be the Count Spezzato."
"How? To-morrow? You joke, Conrad. The brandy was strong; but you who have drunk so much could hardly feel that."
"I neither joke, nor am I drunk; yet I shall be Count Spezzato to-morrow, good Alexis. Look you, my gentle fox, my sweet fox; if you do not buy your life of me, you shall die tonight. That is simple, sweet fox."
"Ay; but, Conrad, I am not in danger."
"Nay, Alexis; see, here is the door" (I heard him turn the handle). "If you lean against the door, you will fall out and be killed. Is it not simple?"
"But, good Conrad, I shall not lean against the door."
"Oh, my sweet fox, my cunning fox, my timid fox, but not my strong fox; you will lean against the door. I know you will, unless I prevent you; and I will not prevent you, unless you give me all you have in that bag."
The mocking tone of the guard seemed well understood, for I heard the click of gold.
"Good, my Alexis; it is good; but it is very little for a life. Come, what is your life worth, that you buy it with only your master's money? it has cost you nothing. I see you will lean against that door, which is so foolish."
"What, in the name of all the devils in hell, will you have?" said the trembling voice of the courier. "Only a little more; just that belt {204} that is under your shirt, under everything, next to your skin, and dearer to you; only a little soft leather belt with pouches in. Is not life worth a leather belt?"
"Wretch! All the earnings of my life are in that belt, and you know it."
"Is it possible, sweet fox, that I have found your nest? I shall give Marie a necklace of diamonds, then. Why do you wait? Why should you fall from a train, and make a piece of news for the papers? Why?"
"Take it; and be accursed in your life and death!" and I heard the belt flung on the floor of the carriage.
"Now, good Alexis, I am in funds; there are three pieces of gold for you; you will need them at Leghorn. Will you drink? No? Then I will tell you why, without drink. Do you know where we are?"
"Yes; between St. Dominico and Signa."
"And do you know where we are going?"
"Yes; to Leghorn."
"No, sweet Alexis, we are not; we are going to Empoli: the train will go no further. Look you, little fox; we shall arrive at the junction one minute before the Sienna goods train, and there the engine will break down just where the rails cross; for two blows of a hammer will convert an engine into a log; I shall get out to examine it; that will take a little time; I shall explain to the count the nature of the injury; that will take a little time; and then the goods train will have arrived; and as it does not stop there, this train will go no further than Empoli, and I shall be Count Spezzato to-morrow. How do you like my scheme, little fox? Is it not worthy of your pupil? Oh, it will be a beautiful accident; it will fill the papers. That beast of an English who begged his place in the train will be fortunate; he will cease, for goods trains are heavy. Eh! but it's a grand scheme— the son, the mother, the servant, the stranger, the engine-driver, all shall tell no tales."
"And the stoker?" said the courier.
"Oh, you and he and I shall escape. We shall be pointed at in the street as the fortunate. It is good, is it not, Alexis, my fox? I have told him that the count is the man who betrayed his sister. He believes it, and is my creature. But, little fox, it was not my cousin, it was myself, that took his Beatrix from her home. Is it not good, Alexis? Is it not genius? And Atkinson—he, the driver—is now stupid: he has drunk from his can the poppy juice that will make him sleep for ever. I will be a politician. I am worthy of office. I will become the Minister of a Bourbon when I am count, my dear fox, and you shall be my comrade again, as of old."
I was, for a time, lost to every sensation save that of hearing. The fiendish garrulity of the man had all the fascination of the serpent's rattle. I felt helplessly resigned to a certain fate.
I was aroused by something white slowly passing the closed window of the carriage. I waited a little, then gently opened it and looked out. The stoker was crawling along the foot-board of the next carriage, holding on by its handles, so as not to be seen by the occupants, and holding the signal lantern that I had noticed at the back of the last carriage in his hand. The meaning of it struck me in a moment: if by any chance we missed the goods train from Sienna, we should be run into from behind by the train from Florence.
The cold air that blew in at the open window refreshed me, and I could think what was to be done. The train was increasing its pace rapidly. Evidently the stoker, in sole charge, was striving to reach Empoli before the other train, which we should follow, was due: he had to make five minutes in a journey of forty-five, and, at the rate we were going, we should do it. We stopped nowhere, and the journey was more than half over. We were now between Segua and {205} Montelupo; another twenty minutes and I should be a bruised corpse. Something must be done.
I decided soon. Unfastening my bag, I took out my revolver, without which I never travel, and looking carefully to the loading and capping, fastened it to my waist with a handkerchief. I then cut with my knife the bar across the middle of the window, and carefully looked out. I could see nothing; the rain was falling fast, and the night as dark as ever. I cautiously put out first one leg and then the other, keeping my knees and toes close to the door, and lowered myself till I felt the step. I walked carefully along the foot-board by side steps, holding on to the handles of the doors, till I came to the end of the carriages, and was next the tender. Here was a gulf that seemed impassable. The stoker must have passed over it; why not I? Mounting from the foot-board on to the buffer, and holding on to the iron hook on which the lamps are hung, I stretched my legs to reach the flat part of the buffer on the tender. My legs swung about with the vibration, and touched nothing. I must spring. I had to hold with both hands behind my back, and stood on the case of the buffer-spring, and, suddenly leaving go, leaped forward, struck violently against the edge of the tender, and grasped some of the loose lumps of coal on the top. Another struggle brought me on my knees, bruised and bleeding, on the top. I stood up, and at that moment the stoker opened the door of the furnace, and turned toward me, shovel in hand, to put in the coals. The bright red light from the fire enabled him to see me, while it blinded me. He rushed at me, and then began a struggle that I shall remember to my dying day.
He grasped me round the throat with one arm, dragging me close to his breast, and with the other kept shortening the shovel for an effective blow. My hands, numbed and bruised, were almost useless to me, and for some seconds we reeled to and fro on the foot-plate in the blinding glare. At last he got me against the front of the engine, and, with horrible ingenuity, pressed me against it till the lower part of my clothes were burnt to a cinder. The heat, however, restored my hands, and at last I managed to push him far enough from my body to loosen my pistol. I did not want to kill him, but I could not be very careful, and I fired at his shoulder from the back. He dropped the shovel, the arm that had nearly throttled me relaxed, and he fell. I pushed him into a corner of the tender, and sat down to recover myself.
My object was to get to Empoli before the Sienna goods train, for I knew nothing of what might be behind me. It was too late to stop, but I might, by shortening the journey seven minutes instead of five, get to Empoli three minutes before the goods train was due.
I had never been on an engine before in my life, but I knew that there must be a valve somewhere that let the steam from the boiler into the cylinders, and that, being important, it would be in a conspicuous position. I therefore turned the large handle in front of me, and had the satisfaction of finding the speed rapidly increased, and at the same time felt the guard putting on the break to retard the train. Spite of this, in ten minutes I could see some dim lights; I could not tell where, and I still pressed on faster and faster.
In vain, between the intervals of putting on coals, did I try to arouse the sleeping driver. There I was, with two apparently dead bodies, on the foot-plate of an engine, going at the rate of forty miles an hour, or more, amidst a thundering noise and vibration that nearly maddened me.
At last we reached the lights, and I saw, as I dashed by, that we had passed the dread point.
As I turned back, I could see the rapidly-dropping cinders from the train which, had the guard's break been sufficiently powerful to have made me {206} thirty seconds later, would have utterly destroyed me.
I was still in a difficult position. There was the train half a minute behind us, which, had we kept our time, would have been four minutes in front of us. It came on to the same rails, and I could hear its dull rumble rushing on toward us fast. If I stopped there was no light to warn them. I must go on, for the Sienna train did not stop at Empoli.
I put on more fuel, and after some slight scalding, from turning on the wrong taps, had the pleasure of seeing the water-gauge filling up. Still I could not go on long; the risk was awful. I tried in vain to write on a leaf of my note-book, and after searching in the tool-box, wrote on the iron lid of the tank with a piece of chalk, "Stop everything behind me. The train will not be stopped till three red lights are ranged in a line on the ground. Telegraph forward." And then, as we flew through the Empoli station, I threw it on the platform. On we went; the same dull thunder behind warning me that I dare not stop.
We passed through another station at full speed, and at length I saw the white lights of another station in the distance. The sound behind had almost ceased, and in a few moments more I saw the line of three red lamps low down on the ground. I pulled back the handle, and after an ineffectual effort to pull up at the station, brought up the train about a hundred yards beyond Pontedera.
The porters and police of the station came up and put the train back, and then came the explanation.
The guard had been found dead on the rails, just beyond Empoli, and the telegraph set to work to stop the train. He must have found out the failure of his scheme, and in trying to reach the engine, have fallen on the rails.
The driver was only stupefied, and the stoker fortunately only dangerously, not fatally, wounded.
Another driver was found, and the train was to go on.
The count had listened most attentively to my statements, and then, taking my grimed hand in his, led me to his mother.
"Madam, my mother, you have from this day one other son: this, my mother, is my brother."
The countess literally fell on my neck, and kissed me in the sight of them all; and speaking in Italian said—
"Julian, he is my son; he has saved my life; and more, he has saved your life. My son, I will not say much; what is your name?"
"Guy Westwood."
"Guy, my child, my son, I am your mother; you shall love me."
"Yes, my mother; he is my brother, I am his. He is English too; I like English. He has done well. Blanche shall be his sister."
During the whole of this time both mother and son were embracing me and kissing my cheeks, after the impulsive manner of their passionate natures, the indulgence of which appears so strange to our cold blood.
The train was delayed, for my wounds and bruises to be dressed, and I then entered their carriage and went to Leghorn with them.
Arrived there, I was about to say "Farewell."
"What is farewell, now? No; you must see Blanche, your sister. You will sleep to my hotel: I shall not let you go. Who is she that in your great book says, 'Where you go, I will go?' That is my spirit. You must not leave me till—till you are as happy as I am."
He kept me, introduced me to Blanche, and persuaded me to write for leave to stay another two months, when he would return to England with me. Little by little he made me talk about Alice, till he knew all my story.
"Ah! that is it; you shall be unhappy because you want £500 every year, and I have so much as that. I am a patriot to get rid of my money. So it is that you will not take money. You have saved my life, and you will {207} not take money; but I shall make you take money, my friend, English Guy; you shall have as thus." And he handed me my appointment as secretary to one of the largest railways in Italy. "Now you shall take money; now you will not go to your fogland to work like a slave; you shall take the money. That is not all. I am one of the practice patriots—no, the practical patriots—of Italy. They come to me with their conspiracies to join, their secret societies to adhere to, but I do not. I am director of ever so many railways; I make fresh directions every day. I say to those who talk to me of politics, 'How many shares will you take in this or in that?' I am printer of books; I am builder of museums; I have great share in docks, and I say to these, 'It is this that I am doing that is wanted.' This is not conspiracy; it is not plot; it is not society with ribbons; but it is what Italy, my country, wants. I grow poor; Italy grows rich. I am not wise in these things; they cheat me, because I am an enthusiast. Now, Guy, my brother, you are wise; you are deep; long in the head; in short, you are English! You shall be my guardian in these things—you shall save me from the cheat, and you shall work hard as you like for all the money you shall take of me. Come, my Guy, is it so?"
Need I say that it was so? The count and his Blanche made their honeymoon tour in England. They spent Christmas day with Alice and myself at Mr. Morton's, and when they left, Alice and I left with them, for our new home in Florence.
O wild raving west winds.… Oh! where do ye rise from, and where do ye die?
The question which is put in these lines is one which has posed the ingenuity of all who have ever thought on it; and though theories have repeatedly been propounded to answer it, yet one and all fail, and we again recur to the words of him who knew all things and said, "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth."
However, though we cannot assign exactly the source whence the winds rise or the goal to which they tend, the labors of meteorologists have been so far successful as to enable us to understand the causes of the great currents of air, and even to map out the winds which prevail at different seasons in the various quarters of the globe. The problem which has thus been solved is one vastly more simple than that of saying why the wind changes on any particular day, or at what spot on the earth's surface a particular current begins or ends. Were these questions solved, there would be an end to all uncertainty about weather. There need be no fear that the farmer would lose his crops owing to the change of weather, if the advent of every shower had been foretold by an unerring guide, and the precise day of the break in the weather predicted weeks and months before. This is the point on which weather-prophets—'astro-meteorologists' they call themselves now-a-days—still venture their predictions, undismayed by their reported and glaring failures. {208} It has been well remarked that not one of these prophets foretold the dry weather which lasted for so many weeks during the last summer; yet, even at the present day, there are people who look to the almanacs to see what weather is to be expected at a given date; and even the prophecies of "Old Moore" find, or used to find within a very few years, an ample credence. In fact, if we are to believe the opinions propounded by the positive philosophers of the present day, we must admit that it is absurd to place any limits on the possibility of predicting natural phenomena, inasmuch as all operations of nature obey fixed and unalterable laws, which are all discoverable by the unaided mind of man.
True science, we may venture to say, is more modest than these gentlemen would have us to think it; and though in the particular branch of knowledge of which we are now treating daily prophecies (or 'forecasts,' as Admiral Fitzroy is careful to call them) of weather appear in the newspapers, yet these are not announced dogmatically, and no attempt is made in them to foretell weather for more than forty-eight hours in advance. We are not going to discuss the question of storms and storm-signals at present, so we shall proceed to the subject in hand—the ordinary wind-currents of the earth; and in speaking of these shall confine ourselves as far as possible to well-known and recorded facts, bringing in each case the best evidence which we can adduce to support the theories which may be broached.
What, then, our readers will ask, is the cause of the winds? The simple answer is—the sun. Let us see, now, how this indefatigable agent, who appears to do almost everything on the surface of the earth, from painting pictures to driving steam-engines, as George Stephenson used to maintain that he did, is able to raise the wind.
If you light a fire in a room, and afterward stop up every chink by which air can gain access to the fire, except the chimney, the fire will go out in a short time. Again, if a lamp is burning on the table, and you stop up the chimney at the top, the lamp will go out at once. The reason of this is that the flame, in each case, attracts the air, and if either the supply of air is cut off below, or its escape above is checked, the flame cannot go on burning. This explanation, however, does not bear to be pushed too far. The reason that the fire goes out if the supply of air is cut off is, that the flame, so to speak, feeds on air; while the sun cannot be said, in any sense, to be dependent on the earth's atmosphere for the fuel for his fire. We have chosen the illustration of the flame, because the facts are so well known. If, instead of a lamp in the middle of a room, we were to hang up a large mass of iron, heated, we should find that currents of air set in from all sides, rose up above it, and spread out when they reached the ceiling, descending again along the walls. The existence of these currents may be easily proved by sprinkling a handful of fine chaff about in the room. What is the reason of the circulation thus produced? The iron, unless it be extremely hot, as it is when melted by Mr. Bessemer's process, does not require the air in order to keep up its heat; and, in fact, the constant supply of fresh air cools it, as the metal gives away its own heat to the air as fast as the particles of the latter come in contact with it. Why, then, do the currents arise? Because the air, when heated, expands or gets lighter, and rises, leaving an empty space, or vacuum, where it was before. Then the surrounding cold air, being elastic, forces itself into the open space, and gets heated in its turn.
From this we can see that there will be a constant tendency in the air to flow toward that point on the earth's surface where the temperature is highest—or, all other things being equal, to that point where the sun may be at that moment in the zenith. Accordingly, if the earth's surface were either {209} entirely dry land, or entirely water, and the sun were continually in the plane of the equator, we should expect to find the direction of the great wind-currents permanent and unchanged throughout the year. The true state of the case is, however, that these conditions are very far from being fulfilled. Every one knows that the sun is not always immediately over the equator, but that he is at the tropic of Cancer in June, and at the tropic of Capricorn in December, passing the equator twice every year at the equinoxes. Here, then, we have one cause which disturbs the regular flow of the wind-currents. The effect of this is materially increased by the extremely arbitrary way in which the dry land has been distributed over the globe. The northern hemisphere contains the whole of Europe, Asia, and North America, the greater part of Africa, and a portion of South America; while in the southern hemisphere we only find the remaining portions of the two last-named continents, with Australia and some of the large islands in its vicinity. Accordingly, during our summer there is a much greater area of dry land exposed to the nearly vertical rays of the sun than is the case during our winter.
Let us see for a moment how this cause acts in modifying the direction of the wind-currents. We shall find it easier to make this intelligible if we take an illustration from observed facts. It takes about five times as much heat to raise a ton weight of water through a certain range of temperature, as it does to produce the same effect in the case of a ton of rock. Again, the tendency of a surface of dry land to give out heat, and consequently to warm the air above it, and cause it to rise, is very much greater than that of a surface of water of equal area. Hence we can at once see the cause of the local winds which are felt every day in calm weather in islands situated in hot climates. During the day the island becomes very hot, and thus what the French call a courant ascendant is set in operation. The air above the land gets hot and rises, while the colder air which is on the sea all round it flows in to fill its place, and is felt as a cool sea-breeze. During the night these conditions are exactly reversed: the land can no longer get any heat from the sun, as he has set, while it is still nearly as liberal in parting with its acquired heat as it was before. Accordingly, it soon becomes cooler than the sea in its neighborhood; and the air, instead of rising up over it, sinks down upon it, and flows out to sea, producing a land-wind.
These conditions are, apparently, nearly exactly fulfilled in the region of the monsoons, with the exception that the change of wind takes place at intervals of six months, and not every twelve hours. In this district—which extends over the southern portion of Asia and the Indian ocean—the wind for half the year blows from one point, and for the other half from that which is directly opposite. The winds are north-east and south-west in Hindostan; and in Java, at the other side of the equator, they are south-east and north-west. The cause of the winds—monsoons they are called, from an Arabic word, mausim, meaning season—is not quite so easily explained as that of the ordinary land and sea breezes to which we have just referred. Their origin is to be sought for in the temperate zone, and not between the tropics. The reason of this is that the districts toward which the air is sucked in are not those which are absolutely hottest, but those where the rarefaction of the air is greatest. When the air becomes lighter, it is said to be rarefied, and this rarefaction ought apparently to be greatest where the temperature is highest. This would be the case if the air were the only constituent of our atmosphere. There is, however, a very important disturbing agent to be taken into consideration, viz., aqueous vapor. There is always, when it is not actually raining, a quantity of water rising from the surface of {210} the sea and from every exposed water-surface, and mingling with the air. This water is perfectly invisible: as it is in the form of vapor, it is true steam, and its presence only becomes visible when it is condensed so as to form a cloud. The hotter the air is, the more of this aqueous vapor is it able to hold in the invisible condition.
We shall naturally expect to find a greater amount of this steam in the air at places situated near the coast, than at those in the interior of continents, and this is actually the case. The amount of rarefaction which the dry air on the sea-coast of Hindostan undergoes in summer, is partially compensated for by the increased tension of the aqueous vapor, whose presence in the air is due to the action of the sun's heat on the surface of the Indian ocean. In the interior of Asia there is no great body of water to be found, and the winds from the south lose most of the moisture which they contain in passing over the Himalayas. Accordingly the air is extremely dry, and a compensation, similar to that which is observed in Hindostan, cannot take place. It is toward this district that the wind is sucked in, and the attraction is sufficient to draw a portion of the south-east trade-wind across the line into the northern hemisphere. In our winter the region where the rarefaction is greatest is the continent of Australia; and accordingly, in its turn, it sucks the north-east trade-wind of the northern hemisphere across the equator. Thus we see that in the region which extends from the coast of Australia to the centre of Asia we have monsoons, or winds which change regularly every six months. As to the directions of the different monsoons, we shall discuss them when we have disposed of the trade-winds—which ought by rights, as Professor Dove observes, rather to be considered as an imperfectly developed monsoon, than the latter to be held as a modification of the former.
The origin of the trade-winds is to be sought for, as before, in the heating power of the sun, and their direction is a result of the figure of the earth, and of its motion on its axis. When the air at the equator rises, that in higher latitudes on either side flows in, and would be felt as a north wind or as a south wind respectively, if the earth's motion on its axis did not affect it. The figure of the earth is pretty nearly that of a sphere, and, as it revolves round its axis, it is evident that those points on its surface which are situated at the greatest distance from the axis, will have to travel over a greater distance in the same time than those which are near it. Thus, for instance, London, which is nearly under the parallel of 50, has only to travel about three-fifths of the distance which a place like Quito, situated under the equator, has to travel in the same time. A person situated in London is carried, imperceptibly to himself, by the motion of the earth, through 15,000 miles toward the eastward in the twenty-four hours; while another at Quito is carried through 25,000 miles in the same time. Accordingly, if the Londoner, preserving his own rate of motion, were suddenly transferred to Quito, he would be left 10,000 miles behind the other in the course of the twenty-four hours, or would appear to be moving in the opposite direction, from east to west, at the rate of about 400 miles an hour. The case would be just as if a person were to be thrown into a railway carriage which was moving at full speed; he would appear to his fellow-passengers to be moving in the opposite direction to them, while in reality the motion of progression was in the train, not in the person who was thrown into it. The air is transferred from high to low latitudes, but this change is gradual, and the earth, accordingly, by means of the force of friction, is able to retard its relative velocity before it reaches the tropics so that its actual velocity, though still considerable, is far below 400 miles an hour.
This wind comes from high latitudes and becomes more and more easterly {211} reaching us as a nearly true north-east wind; and as it gets into lower latitudes becoming more and more nearly east, and forming a belt of north-east wind all round the earth on the northern side of the equator. In the southern hemisphere, there is a similar belt of permanent winds, which are, of course, south-easterly instead of north-easterly. These belts are not always at equal distances at each side of the equator, as their position is dependent on the situation of the zone of maximum temperature for the time being. When we reach the actual district where the air rises, we find the easterly direction of the wind no longer so remarkable, as has been noticed by Basil Hall and others. The reason is, that by the time that the air reaches the district where it rises, it has obtained by means of its friction with the earth's surface a rate of motion round the earth's axis nearly equal to that of the earth's surface itself.
The trade-wind zones, called, by the Spaniards, the "Ladies' Sea"—El Golfo de las Damas—because navigation on a sea where the wind never changed was so easy, shift their position according to the apparent motion of the sun in the ecliptic. In the Atlantic the north-east trade begins in summer in the latitude of the Azores; in winter it commences to the south of the Canaries.
In the actual trade-wind zones rain very seldom falls, any more than it does in these countries when the east wind has well set in. The reason of this is, that the air on its passage from high to low latitudes is continually becoming warmer and warmer. According as its temperature rises, its power of dissolving (so to speak) water increases also, and so it is constantly increasing its burden of water until it reaches the end of its journey, where it rises into the higher regions of the atmosphere, and there is suddenly cooled. The chilling process condenses, to a great extent, the aqueous vapor contained in the trade-wind air, and causes it to fall in constant discharges of heavy rain. Throughout the tropics the rainy season coincides with that period at which the sun is in the zenith, and in this region the heaviest rain-fall on the globe is observed. The wettest place in the world, Cherrapoonjee, is situated in the Cossya hills, about 250 miles northeast of Calcutta, just outside the torrid zone. There the ram-fall is upward of 600 inches in the year, or twenty times as much as it is on the west coasts of Scotland and Ireland. However, in such extreme cases as this, there are other circumstances to be taken into consideration, such as the position of the locality as regards mountain chains, which may cause the clouds to drift over one particular spot.
To return to the wind: When the air rises at the equatorial edge of the trade-wind zone, it flows away above the lower trade-wind current. The existence of an upper current in the tropics is well known. Volcanic ashes, which have fallen in several of the West Indian islands on several occasions, have been traced to volcanoes which lay to the westward of the locality where the ashes fell, at a time when there was no west wind blowing at the sea-level. To take a recent instance: ashes fell at Kingston, Jamaica, in the year 1835, and it is satisfactorily proved that they had been ejected from the volcano of Coseguina, on the Pacific shore of Central America, and must consequently have been borne to the eastward by an upward current counter to the direction of the easterly winds which were blowing at the time at the sea-level.
Captain Maury supposes that when the air rises, at either side of the equator, it crosses over into the opposite hemisphere, so that there is a constant interchange of air going on between the northern and southern hemispheres. This he has hardly sufficiently proved, and his views are not generally accepted. One of the arguments on which he lays great stress in support of his theory is that on certain occasions dust has fallen in {212} various parts of western Europe, and that in it there have been discovered microscopical animals similar to those which are found in South America. This appears to be scarcely an incontrovertible proof; as Admiral Fitzroy observes: "Certainly, such insects may be found in Brazil; but does it follow that they are not also in Africa, under nearly the same parallel?"
This counter-current, or "anti-trade," as Sir J. Herschel has called it, is at a high level in the atmosphere between the tropics, far above the top of the highest mountains; but at the exterior edge of the trade-wind zone, it descends to the surface of the ground. The Canary islands are situated close to this edge, and accordingly we find that there is always a westerly wind at the summit of the Peak of Teneriffe, while the wind at the sea-level, in the same island, is easterly throughout the summer months. Professor Piazzi Smyth, who lived for some time on the top of that mountain, making astronomical observations, has recorded some very interesting details of the conflicts between the two currents, which he was able to observe accurately from his elevated position. In winter the trade-wind zone is situated to the south of its summer position in latitude, and at this season the southwest wind is felt at the sea-level in the Canary islands. Similar facts to these have been observed in other localities where there are high mountains situated on the edge of the trade-wind zone, as, for instance, Mouna Loa, in the Sandwich islands. There can, therefore, be no doubt that the warm, moist west wind, which is felt so generally in the temperate zones, is really the air returning to the poles from the equator, which has now assumed a south-west direction on its return journey, owing to conditions the reverse of those which imparted to it a north-east motion on its way toward the equator. This, then, is our south-west wind, which is so prevalent in the North Atlantic ocean that the voyage from Europe to America is not unfrequently called the up-hill trip, in contradistinction to the down-hill passage home. These are the "brave west winds" of Maury, whose refreshing action on the soil he never tires of recapitulating.
The south-west monsoons of Hindostan, which blow from May to October, and the north-west monsoons of the Java seas, which are felt between November and April, owe their westerly motion to a cause similar to that of the anti-trades which we have just described. To take the case of the monsoons of Hindostan: we have seen above how the rarefaction of the air in Central Asia attracts the southeast trade-wind of the southern hemisphere across the equator. This air, when it moves from the equator into higher latitudes, brings with it the rate of motion, to the eastward, of the equatorial regions which it has lately left, and is felt as a south-west wind. Accordingly, the directions of the monsoons are thus accounted for. In the winter months the true north-east trade-wind is felt in Hindostan; while in the summer months its place is taken by the south-east trade of the southern hemisphere, making its appearance as the south-west monsoon. In Java, conditions exactly converse to these are in operation, and the winds are south-east from April to November, and north-west during the rest of the year.
The change of one monsoon to the other is always accompanied by rough weather, called in some places the "breaking out" of the monsoon; just as with us the equinox, or change of the season from summer to winter, and vice versa, is marked by "windy weather," or "equinoctial gales."
The question may, however, well be asked, why there are no monsoons in the Atlantic Ocean?
In the first place, the amount of rarefaction which the air in Africa and in Brazil undergoes, in the respective hot seasons of those regions, is far less considerable than that which is {213} observed in Asia and Australia at the corresponding seasons.
Secondly, in the case of the Atlantic ocean, the two districts toward which the air is attracted are situated within the torrid zone, while in the Indian ocean they are quite outside the tropics, and in the temperate zones. Accordingly, even if the suction of the air across the equator did take place to the same extent in the former case as in the latter, the extreme contrast in direction between the two monsoons would not be perceptible to the same extent, owing to the fact that the same amount of westing could not be imparted to the wind, because it had not to travel into such high latitudes on either side of the equator. A tendency to the production of the phenomena of the monsoons is observable along the coast of Guinea, where winds from the south and south-west are very generally felt. These winds are not really the south-east trade-wind, which has been attracted across the line to the northern hemisphere, They ought rather to be considered as of the same nature as the land and sea breezes before referred to, since we find it to be very generally the case, that in warm climates the ordinary wind-currents undergo a deflection to a greater or less extent along a coast-line such as that of Guinea, Brazil, or north of Australia.
Our readers may perhaps ask why it is, that when we allege that the whole of the winds of the globe owe their origin to a regular circulation of the air from the Polar regions to the equator, and back again, we do not find more definite traces of such a circulation in the winds of our own latitudes? The answer to this is, that the traces of this circulation are easily discoverable if we only know how to look for them, In the Mediterranean sea, situated near the northern edge of the trade-wind zone, the contrast between the equatorial and polar currents of air is very decidedly marked. The two conflicting winds are known under various names in different parts of the district. The polar current, on its way to join the trade-wind, is termed the "tramontane," in other parts the "bora," the "maestral," etc.; while the return trade-wind, bringing rain, is well known under the name of the "sirocco." In Switzerland the same wind is called the "Fohn," and is a warm wind, which causes the ice and snow to melt rapidly, and constantly brings with it heavy rain.
In these latitudes the contrast is not so very striking, but even here every one knows that the only winds which last for more than a day or two at a time are the north-east and the south-west winds, the former of which is dry and cold, the latter moist and warm. The difference between these winds is much more noticeable in winter than in summer, inasmuch as in the latter season Russia and the northern part of Asia enjoy, relatively to the British Islands, a much higher temperature than is the case in winter; so that the air which moves from those regions during the summer months does not come to us from a climate which is colder than our own, but from one which is warmer.
So far, then, we have attempted to trace the ordinary wind-currents, but as yet there are very many questions connected therewith which are not quite sufficiently explained. To mention one of these, we hear from many observers on the late Arctic expeditions, that the most marked characteristic of the winds in the neighborhood of Baffin's Bay, is the great predominance of north-westerly winds. It is not as yet, nor can it ever be satisfactorily, decided how far to the northward and westward this phenomenon is noticeable. The question then is, Whence does this north-west wind come?
As to the causes of the sudden changes of wind, and of storms, they are as yet shrouded in mystery, and we cannot have much expectation that in our lifetime, at least, much will be done to unravel the web. Meteorology is a very young science—if it deserves {214} the title of science at all—and until observations for a long series of years shall have been made at many stations, we shall not be in the possession of trustworthy facts on which to ground our reasoning. It is merely shoving the difficulty a step further off to assign these irregular variations to atmospheric waves. It will be time enough to reason accurately about the weather and its changes when we ascertain what these atmospheric waves are, and what causes them. Until the "astro-meteorologists" will tell us the principles on which their calculations are based, we must decline to receive their predictions as worthy of any credence whatever.
The life of Eugénie de Guérin forms a great contrast with those which are generally brought before the notice of the world. Not only did she not seek for fame, but the circumstances of her life were the very ones which generally tend to keep a woman in obscurity. Her life was passed in the deepest retirement of a country home. The society even of a provincial town was not within her reach. Poverty placed a bar between her and the means for study in congenial society. The routine of her life shut her out from great deeds or unusual achievements. In fact, her life, so far from being a deviation from the ordinary track which women have to tread, was a very type of the existence which seems to be marked out for the majority of women, and at which they are so often wont to murmur. The want of an aim in life, the necessity of some fixed, engrossing occupation, and the ennui which follows on the deprivation of these, forms the staple trial of thousands of women, especially in England, where there is much intellectual vigor with so little power for its exercise. That the reaction from this deprivation is shown by "fastness," or an excessive love of dress and amusement, is acknowledged by the most keen observers of human nature. But to the large class of women who, disdaining such means of distraction, bear their burden patiently, Eugénie de Guérin's Journal et Lettres possess an intense interest. Her life was so uneventful that it absolutely affords no materials for a biography, but her character is so full of interest that her name is now a familiar one in England and France.
Far away in the heart of sunny Languedoc stands the chateau of Le Cayla, the home of the de Guérins. They were of noble blood. The old chateau was full of reminiscences of the deeds of their ancestors. De Guérin, Bishop of Senlis and Chancellor of France, had gone forth, with a valor scarcely befitting his episcopal character, to animate the troops at the battle of Bouvines; and from the walls of Le Cayla looked down from his portrait de Guérin, Grand Master of the Knights of Malta in 1206. A cardinal, a troubadour, and countless gallant and noble soldiers filled up the family rolls—the best blood in France had mingled with theirs; but now the family were obscure, forgotten, and poor. But these circumstances were no hindrances to the happiness of Eugénie's early life.
"My childhood passed away like one long summer-day," said she {215} afterward. Thirteen happy years fled by. There was the father, cherished with tender, self-forgetting love; the brother Eranbert; the sister Marie, the youngest pet of the household; the beautiful and precocious Maurice; and the mother, the centre of all, loving and beloved. But a shadow suddenly fell on the sunny landscape, and Madame de Guérin lay on her death-bed, when, calling to her Eugénie, her eldest child, she gave to her especial charge Maurice, then aged seven, and his mother's darling. The dying lips bade Eugénie fill a mother's place to him, and the sensitive and enthusiastic girl received the words into her heart, and never forgot them.
From that day her childhood, almost her youth, ended; and it is without exaggeration we may say that the depth of maternal love passed into her heart. Henceforth Maurice was the one object and the absorbing thought of her heart, second only to one other, and that no love of earth. Sometimes, indeed, that passionate devotion to Maurice disputed the sway of the true Master, as we shall hereafter see, but it was never ultimately victorious. It was not likely that their lives should for long run side by side. The extraordinary brilliancy of Maurice's gifts made his father determine upon cultivating his mind. As soon as possible, he was sent first to the petit séminaire at Toulouse, and then to the college Stanislaus at Paris.
Maurice de Guérin was a singularly endowed being. He possessed that kind of personal beauty so very rare among men, and which is so hard to describe—a spiritual beauty, which insensibly draws the hearts of others to its possessor. Added to this, he had that sweetness of tone and manner, that instinctive power of sympathy, that sparkling brilliance which made him idolized by those who knew him, which rendered him literally the darling of his friends. "Il était leur vie," said those who spoke of him after he was gone from earth.
The early and ardent aspirations of this gifted being were turned heavenward. His youthful head was devoutly bowed in prayer. The country people called him "le jeune saint;" and his conduct at the petit séminaire gave such satisfaction that the Archbishop of Toulouse, and also the Archbishop of Rouen, offered to take the whole charge of his future education on themselves; but his father refused both. The temptations of a college life had left him scathless, and the longing of his soul was for the consecration of the priesthood. What he might have been, had he fallen into other hands, cannot now be known. Whether there was an inherent weakness and effeminacy in the character which would have unfitted him for the awful responsibilities of the priestly office, we know not. At all events, he was attracted, as many minds of undoubted superiority were at that time, by the extraordinary brilliancy and commanding genius of de Lamennais; and Maurice de Guérin found himself in the solitude of La Chesnaie, a fellow-student with Hippolyte Lacordaire, Montalembert, Saint-Beuve, and a group of others. Here some years of his life were spent, divided between prayer, study, and brilliant conversation, led and sustained by M. de Lamennais. Maurice, of a shy and diffident disposition, does not seem to have attached himself to Lamennais, although he admired and looked up to him, and although the insidious portion of his teaching was making havoc with his faith.
And now, it may be asked, what of Eugénie? Dwelling in an obscure province, with no other living guide than a simple parish curé, with a natural enthusiastic reverence for genius, and a predilection for all Maurice's friends, was she not dazzled from afar off by this great teacher of men's minds, this earnest reformer of abuses? The instinct of the single in heart was hers. Long ere others had discerned the canker eating away the fruit so fair to look on, Eugénie, with prophetic voice, was warning Maurice. {216} Lacordaire's noble soul was yet ensnared. Madam Swetchine's remonstrances had not yet prevailed; while this young girl in the country, whose name no one knew, was watching and praying for the issue of the deliberations at La Chesnaie.
At length the break-up came—the memorable journey to Rome was over. Submission had been required, and Lacordaire had given it. "Silence is the second power in the world," he had said to Lamennais; and he had withdrawn with him to La Chesnaie for a time of retreat, where he was soon undeceived as to Lamennais' intentions. And these two great men parted—one to reap the fruits of patient obedience in the success of one of the greatest works wrought in his century, to gain a mastery over the men of his age, and to die at last worn out by labors before his time, the beloved child of the Church, whose borders he had enlarged, whose honor he had defended; the other, to follow the course of self-will, and to quench his light in utter darkness.
The students of La Chesnaie went away, and Maurice was thrown on the world with no definite employment. An unsuccessful attachment deepened the natural melancholy of his sensitive nature. He went to Paris, and was soon in the midst of the literary world. He wrote, and obtained fame; he was admired and sought after; but the beautiful faith of his youth faded away like a flower, and the innocent pleasures of his childhood, and the passionate love of his sister, had no attractions for him compared to the brilliant circles of Parisian society.
And thus was Eugénie's fate marked out. From afar off her heart followed him; and, partly for his amusement, partly to relieve the outpourings of her intensely-loving heart, she kept a journal, intended for Maurice's eye only. A few letters to Maurice and one or two intimate friends make up the rest of the volume, which was, after her death, most fortunately given to the world. In these pages her character stands revealed, and no long description of her mode of life could have made us more thoroughly acquainted with her than these words, written sometimes in joy, sometimes in sorrow, in weariness and depression, in all weathers, and at all times; for, believing that she pleased her brother, nothing would prevent her from keeping her promise of a daily record of her life and thoughts. Its chief beauty lies in that she made so much out of so little. "I have just come away very happy from the kitchen, where I stood a long time this evening, to persuade Paul, one of our servants, to go to confession at Christmas. He has promised me, and he is a good boy and will keep his word. Thank God, my evening is not lost! What a happiness it would be if I could thus every day gain a soul for God! Walter Scott has been neglected this evening; but what book could have been worth to me what Paul's promise is? … The 20th.— I am so fond of the snow! Its perfect whiteness has something celestial about it. To-day I see nothing but road-tracks, and the marks of the feet of little birds. Lightly as they rest, they leave their little traces in a thousand forms upon the snow. It is so pretty to see their little red feet, as if they were all drawn with pencils of coral. Winter has its beauties and its enjoyments, and we find them every-where when we know how to see them. God spreads grace and beauty everywhere. … I must have another dish to-day for S.R., who is come to see us. He does not often taste good things—that is why I wish to treat him well; for it is to the desolate that, it seems to me, we should pay attentions. No reading to-day. I have made a cap for a little child, which has taken up all my time. But, provided one works, be it with the head or the fingers, it is all the same in the eyes of God, who takes account of every work done in his name. I hope, then, that my cap has been a charity—I have given my time, a little material, and a thousand interesting lines that I could {217} have read. Papa brought me yesterday Ivanhoe, and the Siècle de Louis XIV. Here are provisions for some of our long winter evenings."
Then she had a keen sense of enjoyment, and a wonderful faculty of making the best of things. Thus a simple pleasure to her was a source of delight. Here is her description of Christmas night in Languedoc:
"Dec. 31. I have written nothing for a fortnight. Do not ask me why. There are times when we cannot speak, things of which we can say nothing. Christmas is come—that beautiful fête which I love the most, which brings me as much joy as the shepherds of Bethlehem. Truly our whole soul sings at the coming of the Lord, which is announced to us on all sides by hymns and by the pretty nadalet. [Footnote 49] Nothing in Paris can give an idea of what Christmas is. You have not even midnight mass. [Footnote 50] We all went to it, papa at our head, on a most charming night. There is no sky more beautiful than that of midnight: it was such that papa kept putting his head out of his cloak to look at it. The earth was white with frost, but we were not cold, and, beside, the air around us was warmed by the lighted fagots that our servants carried to light us. It was charming, I assure you, and I wish I could have seen you sliding along with us toward the church on the road, bordered with little white shrubs, as if they were flowering. The frost makes such pretty flowers! We saw one wreath so pretty that we wanted to make it a bouquet for the Blessed Sacrament, but it melted in our hands; all flowers last so short a time. I very much regretted my bouquet; it was so sad to see it melt drop by drop. I slept at the presbytery. The curé's good sister kept me, and gave me an excellent réveillon of hot milk." Then, again, the grave part of her nature prevails, and she continues:
[Footnote 49: A particular way of ringing the bells during the
fifteen days which precede the feast of Christmas, called in patois
nodal.]
[Footnote 50: Since the period at which Mdlle. de Guérin wrote,
midnight mass has been resumed in Paris.]
"These are, then, my last thoughts; for I shall write nothing more this year; in a few hours it will be over, and we shall have begun a new year. Oh, how quickly time passes! Alas, alas, can I say that I regret it? No, my God, I do not regret time, or anything that it brings; it is not worth while to throw our affections into its stream. But empty, useless days, lost for heaven, this causes me regret as I look back on life. Dearest, where shall I be at this day, at this hour, at this minute, next year? Will it be here, elsewhere; here below, or above? God only knows; I am before the door of the future, resigned to all that can come forth from it. To-morrow I will pray for your happiness, for papa, Mimi, Eran [her other brother and sister], and all those whom I love. It is the day for presents; I will take mine from heaven. I draw all from thence, for truly there are few things which please me on earth. The longer I live, the less it pleases me, and I see the years pass by without sorrow, because they are but steps to the other world. Do not think it is any sorrow or trouble which makes me think this. I assure you it is not, but a home-sickness comes over my soul when I think of heaven. The clock strikes; it is the last I shall hear when writing to you."
The following is an account of what she called "a happy day:" "God be blessed for a day without sorrow. They are rare in this life, and my soul, more than others, is soon troubled. A word, a memory, the sound of a voice, a sad face, nothing, I know not what, often troubles the serenity of my soul—a little sky, darkened by the smallest cloud. This day I received a letter from Gabrielle, the cousin whom I love so for her sweetness and beautiful mind. I was uneasy about her health, which is so delicate, having heard nothing of her for more than a month. I was so pleased to see a letter from her, that I read it before my prayers. I was so eager to read it. To see a letter, and not to open it, is {218} an impossible thing. Another letter was given to me at Cahuzac. It was from Lili, another sweet friend, but quite withdrawn from the world; a pure soul—a soul like snow, from its purity so white that I am confounded when I look at it—a soul made for the eyes of God. I was coming from Cahuzac, very pleased with my letter, when I saw a little boy, weeping as if his heart were broken. He had broken his jug, and thought his father would beat him. I saw that with half a franc I could make him happy, so I took him to a shop, where we got another jug. Charles X. could not be happier if he regained his crown. Has it not been a beautiful day?"
Here is another instance of the way she had of beautifying the most simple incidents: "I must notice, in passing, an excellent supper that we have had—papa, Mimi, and I—at the corner of the kitchen-fire, with the servants: soup, some boiled potatoes, and a cake that I made yesterday with the dough from the bread. Our only servants were the dogs Lion, Wolf, and Tritly, who licked up the fragments. All our people were in church for the instruction which is given for confirmation;" and, she adds, "it was a charming meal."
The daily devotions of the month of Mary were very recently established when Eugénie wrote; she speaks thus of them: on one first of May when absent from home, she writes: "On this day, at this moment, my holy Mimi (a pet name for her sister) is on her knees before the little altar for the month of Mary in my room. Dear sister, I join myself to her, and find a chapel here also. They have given me for this purpose a room filled with flowers; in it I have made a church, and Marie, with her little girls, servants, shepherds, and all the household, assemble together every evening before the Blessed Virgin. They came at first only to look on, for they had never kept the month of Mary before. Some good will result to them of this new devotion, if it is only one idea, a single idea, of their Christian duties, which these people know so little of, and which we can teach them while amusing them. These popular devotions please me so, because they are so attractive in their form, and thereby offer such an easy method of instruction. By their means, salutary truths appear most pleasing, and all hearts are gained in the name of our Lady and of her sweet virtues. I love the month of Mary, and the other little devotions which the Church permits; which she blesses; which are born at the feet of the Faith like flowers at the mountain-foot."
Speaking of St. Teresa, to whom she had a great devotion, she says: "I am pleased to remember that, when I lost my mother, I went, like St. Teresa, to throw myself at the feet of the Blessed Virgin, and begged her to take me for her daughter." At another time she says: "To-day, very early, I went to Vieux, to visit the relics of the saints, and, in particular, those of St. Eugénie, my patron. I love pilgrimages, remnants of the ancient faith; but these are not the days for them; in the greater number of people the spirit for them is dead. However, if M. le Curé does not have this procession to Vieux, there will be discontent. Credulity abounds where faith disappears. We have, however, many good souls, worthy to please the saints, like Rose Drouille, who knows how to meditate, who has learnt so much from the rosary; then Françon de Gaillard and her daughter Jacquette, so recollected in church. This holy escort did not accompany me; I was alone with my good angel and Mimi. Mass heard, my prayers finished, I left with one hope more. I had come to ask something from St. Eugène? The saints are our brothers. If you were all-powerful, would you not give me all that I desired? This is what I was thinking of while invoking St. Eugène, who is also my patron. We have so little in this world, at least let us hope in the other."
Those who are not of the same faith as Eugénie de Guérin have not failed {219} to be attracted by the depth and ardor of her faith and piety. A writer in the Cornhill Magazine observes, "The relation to the priest, the practice of confession assume, when she speaks of them, an aspect which is not that under which Exeter Hall knows them."
"In my leisure time I read a work of Leitniz, which delighted me by its catholicity and the pious things which I found in it—like this on confession:
"'I regard a pious, grave, and prudent confessor as a great instrument of God for the salvation of souls; for his counsels serve to direct our affections, to enlighten us about our faults, to make us avoid the occasions of sin, to dissipate our doubts, to raise up our broken spirit; finally, to cure or to mitigate all the maladies of the soul; and, if we can never find on earth anything more excellent than a faithful friend, what happiness is it not to find one who is obliged, by the inviolable law of a divine sacrament, to keep faith with us and to succor souls?'
"This celestial friend I have in M. Bories, and therefore the news of his departure has deeply affected me. I am sad with a sadness which makes the soul weep. I should not say this to any one else; they would not, perhaps, understand me, and would take it ill. In the world they know not what a confessor is—a man who is a friend of our soul, our most intimate confidant, our physician, our light, our teacher—a friend who binds us to him, and is bound to us; who gives us peace, who opens heaven to us, who speaks to us while we, kneeling, call him, like God, our father; and faith truly makes him God and father. When I am at his feet, I see nothing else in him than Jesus listening to Magdalen, and pardoning much because she has loved much. Confession is but an expansion of repentance in love."
Again she writes: "I have learnt that M. Bories is about to leave us— this good and excellent father of my soul. Oh, how I regret him! What a loss it will be to me to lose this good guide of my conscience, of my heart, my mind, of my whole self, which God had confided to him, and which I had trusted to him with such perfect freedom! I am sad with the sadness which makes the soul weep. My God, in my desert to whom shall I have recourse? Who will sustain me in my spiritual weakness? who will lead me on to great sacrifices? It is in this last, above all, that I regret M. Bories. He knew what God had put into my heart. I needed his strength to follow it. The new curé cannot replace him; he is so young; then he appears so inexperienced, so undecided. It is necessary to be firm to draw a soul from the midst of the world, and to sustain it against the assaults of flesh and blood.
"It is Saturday—the day of pilgrimage to Cahuzac. I will go there; perhaps I shall come back more tranquil. God has always given me some blessing in that chapel, where I have left so many miseries.… I was not mistaken in thinking that I should come back more tranquil. M. Bories is not going! How happy I am, and how thankful to God for this favor. It is such a great blessing to me to keep this good father, this good guide, this choice of God for my soul, as St. Francis de Sales expresses it.
"Confession is such a blessed thing, such a happiness for the Christian soul; a great good, and always greater in measure when we feel it to be so; and when the heart of the priest, into which we pour our sorrow, resembles that Divine Heart which has loved us so much. This is what attaches me to M. Bories; you will understand it."
Nevertheless, when the trial of parting with this beloved friend did come, at length, it was borne with gentle submission.
"Our pastor is come to see us. I have not said much to you about him. He is a simple and good man, knowing his duties well, and speaking better of God than of the world, which he knows little of. Therefore, he does not shine in conversation. {220} His conversation is ordinary, and those who do not know what the true spirit of a priest is would think little of him. He does good in the parish, for his gentleness wins souls. He is our father now. I find him young after M. Bories. I miss that strong and powerful teaching which strengthened me; but it is God who has taken it from me. Let us submit and walk like children, without looking at the hand which leads us."
Eugénie's life revolved round that of Maurice. No length of separation could weaken her affection, nor make her interest in his pursuits less engrossing. His letters, so few and so scanty, were treasured up and dwelt upon in many a lonely hour. She suffered with him, wept over his disappointments, and prayed for his return to the faith of his youth with all the earnestness of her soul. With exquisite tact she avoided preaching to him. It was rather by showing him what religion was to her that she strove to lead him back to its practice.
"Holy Thursday.—I have come back all fragrant from the chapel of moss, in the church where the Blessed Sacrament is reposing. It is a beautiful day when God wills to rest among the flowers and perfumes of the springtime. Mimi, Rose, and I made this reposoir, aided by M. le Curé. I thought, as we were doing it, of the supper-room, of that chamber well furnished, where Jesus willed to keep the pasch with his disciples, giving himself for the Lamb. Oh, what a gift! What can one say of the Eucharist? I know nothing to say. We adore; we possess; we live; we love. The soul is without words, and loses itself in an abyss of happiness. I thought of you among these ecstasies, and ardently desired to have you at my side, at the holy table, as I had three years ago."
Mademoiselle de Guérin occasionally composed; her brother was very anxious she should publish her productions, but she shrank from the responsibility. "St. Jean de Damas," she remarks, "was forbidden to write to any one, and for having composed some verses for a friend he was expelled from the convent. That seemed to me very severe; but one sees the wisdom of it, when, after supplication and much humility, the saint had been forgiven, he was ordered to write and to employ his talents in conquering the enemies of Jesus Christ. He was found strong enough to enter the lists when he had been stripped of pride. He wrote against the iconoclasts. Oh, if many illustrious writers had begun by a lesson of humility, they would not have made so many errors nor so many books. Pride has blinded them, and thus see the fruits which they produce, into how many errors they lead the erring. But this chapter on the science of evil is too wide for me. I should prefer saying that I have sewn a sheet. A sheet leads me to reflect, it will cover so many people, so many different slumbers—perhaps that of the tomb. Who knows if it will not be my shroud, and if these stitches which I make will not be unpicked by the worms? While I was sewing, papa told me that he had sent, without my knowledge, some of my verses to Bayssac, and I have seen the letter where M. de Bagne speaks of them and says they are very good. A little vanity came to me and fell into my sewing. Now I tell myself the thought of death is good to keep us from sin. It moderates joy, tempers sadness, makes us see that all which passes by us is transitory."
Again she writes: "Dear one, I would that I could see you pray like a good child of God. What would it cost you? Your soul is naturally loving, and prayer is nothing else but love; a love which spreads itself out into the soul as the water flows from the fountain."
******"Ash-Wednesday.—Here I am, with ashes on my forehead and serious thoughts in my mind. This 'Remember thou art dust!' is terrible to me. I hear it all day long. I cannot banish {221} the thought of death, particularly in your room, where I no longer find you, where I saw you so ill, where I have sad memories both of your presence and your absence. One thing only is bright—the little medal of Our Lady, suspended over the head of your bed. It is still untarnished and in the same place where I put it to be your safeguard. I wish you knew, dearest, the pleasure I have in seeing it—the remembrances, the hopes, the secret thoughts that are connected with that holy image. I shall guard it as a relic; and, if ever you return to sleep in that little bed, you shall sleep again near the medal of the Blessed Virgin. Take from, me this confidence and love, not to a bit of metal, but to the image of the Mother of God. I should like to know, if in your new room I should see St. Teresa, who used to hang in your other room near the bénitier:
'Où toi, nécessiteux
Défaillant, tu prenais l'aumône dans ce creux.'
You will no longer, I fear, seek alms there. Where will you seek them? Who can tell? Is the world in which you live rich enough for all your necessities? Maurice, if I could but make you understand one of these thoughts, breathe into you what I believe, and what I learn in pious books—those beautiful reflections of the Gospel—if I could see you a Christian, I would give life and all for that."
******Maurice's absence was the great trial of Eugénie's life; but there were minor trials also, concerning the little things that make up the sum of our happiness. She suffered intensely and constantly from ennui. Her active, enterprising mind had not sufficient food to sustain it, and bravely did she fight against this constant depression and weariness.
A duller life than hers could hardly be found; she had literally "nothing to do." She had no society, for she lived at a distance from her friends. Sometimes the curé called, sometimes a priest from a neighboring parish, and then the monotonous days went on without a single incident. There was no outward sign of the struggle going on. Speaking of her father, she says: "A grave look makes him think there is some trouble, so I conceal the passing clouds from him; it is but right that he should only see and know my calm and serene side. A daughter should be gentle to her father. We ought to be to them something like the angels are to God."
Nor would she distract her thoughts by any means which might injure her soul. "I have scarcely read the author whose work you sent, though I admired him as I do M. Hugo; but these geniuses have blemishes which wound a woman's eye. I detest to meet with what I do not wish to see; and this makes me close so many books. I have had Notre Dame de Paris under my hands a hundred times to-day; and the style, Esméralda, and so many pretty things in it, tempt me, and say to me, 'Read—look.' I looked; I turned it over; but the stains here and there stopped me. I read no more, and contented myself with looking at the pictures." At another time, when she is staying at a "deserted house," rather duller than her own, she writes: "The devil tempted me just now in a little room, where I found a number of romances. 'Read a word,' he said to me; 'let us see that; look at this;' but the titles of the books displeased me. I am no longer tempted now, and will go only to change the books in this room, or rather to throw them into the fire."
There was one sovereign remedy for her ills, and she sought for it with fidelity, and reaped her reward.
"This morning I was suffering. Well, at present, I am calm; and this I owe to faith, simply to faith, to an act of faith. I can think of death and eternity without trouble, without alarm. Over a deep of sorrow there floats a divine calm, a serenity, which is the work of God only. In vain have I tried other things at a time like this; {222} nothing human comforts the soul, nothing human upholds it.
'A l'enfant il faut sa mère, A mon âme il faut mon Dieu.'"
At another time of suffering she writes: "God only can console us when the heart is sorrowful: human helps are not enough; they sink beneath it, it is so weighed down by sorrow. The reed must have more than other reeds to lean on."
******"To distract my thoughts, I have been turning over Lamartine, the dear poet. I love his hymn to the nightingale, and many other of his 'Harmonies' but they are far from having the effect on me that his 'Meditations' used to have. I was ravished and in ecstacy with them. I was but sixteen, and time changes many things. The great poet no longer makes my heart vibrate; to-day he has not even power to distract my thoughts. I must try something else, for I must not cherish ennui, which injures the soul. What can I do? It is not good for me to write, to communicate trouble to others. I will leave pen and ink. I know something better, for I have tried it a hundred times; it is prayer—prayer which calms me when I say to my soul before God, 'Why art thou sad, and wherefore art thou troubled?' I know not what he does in answering me, but it quiets me just like a weeping child when it sees its mother. The Divine compassion and tenderness is truly maternal toward us."
******And, further on: "Now I have something better to do than write: I will go and pray. Oh, how I love prayer! I would that all the world knew how to pray. I would that children, and the old, and the poor, the afflicted, the sick in soul and body—all who live and suffer—could know the balm that prayer is. But I know not how to speak of these things. We cannot tell what is ineffable."
She had said once, as we have seen, that she would give life and all to see Maurice once more serving God. She had written to him thus, not carelessly indeed, but as we are too wont to write—not counting the cost, because we know not what the cost is. She wrote thus, and God took her at her word, and he asked from her not life, as she then meant it, but her life's life. First came the trial of a temporary estrangement. Her journal suddenly stops; she believed it wearied him, and, without a word of reproach, she silenced her eager pen. Maurice, however, declared she was mistaken, and she joyfully resumed her task with words which would evidence, if nothing else were left, us, the intense depth of her love for her brother. "I was in the wrong. So much the better; for I had feared it had been your fault." Then Maurice's health, which had always been delicate, began to fail, and her heart was tortured at the thought of him suffering, away from her loving care, unable to send her news of him.
"I have, been reading the epistle about the child raised to life by Elias. Oh, if I knew some prophet, some one who would give back life and health, I would go, like the Shunamite, and throw myself at his feet."
And again, most touchingly, she says: "A letter from Felicité, which tells me nothing better about you. When will those who know more write? If they knew how a woman's heart beats, they would have more pity."
Maurice recovered from these attacks, and in the autumn of 1836 married a young and pretty Creole lady. He had not the violent attachment as to the "Louise" of his early youth; but the union seemed a suitable one on both sides. One of Eugénie's brief visits to Paris was made for the purpose of being present at her brother's marriage. It was a romantic scene. It took place in the chapel of the old and quaint Abbaye aux Bois. The church was filled with brilliant and admiring friends. The bride and bridegroom, both so beautiful, knelt before the altar; the Père Bugnet, who had {223} known Maurice as a boy, blessed the union. The gay procession passed from the church, and met a funeral cortège! It fell like an omen on Eugénie's heart. Six short months went by, and Eugénie was again summoned to Paris, to Maurice's sick-bed—his dying-bed it indeed was, but his sister's passionate love would not relinquish hope. The physicians, catching at a straw, prescribed native air, and the invalid caught at the proposal with feverish impatience. That eager longing sustained him through the long and terrible journey of twenty days; for, the moment he revived, he would be laid in the salon, and see the home-faces gathered round him. Then he was carried to his room, and soon the end came. At last Eugénie knew that he must go, and all the powers of her soul were gathered into that one prayer, that he might die at peace with God. Calmly she bent over him, and kissed the forehead, damp with the dews of death.
"Dearest, M. le Curé is coming, and you will confess. You have no difficulty in speaking to M. le Curé?" "Not at all," he answered. "You will prepare for confession, then?" He asked for his prayer-book, and had the prayers read to him.
When the priest came, he asked for more time to prepare. At last the curé was summoned.
"Never have I heard a confession better made," said the priest afterward. As he was leaving the room, Maurice called him back, and made a solemn retraction of the doctrines of M. de Lamennais. Then came the Viaticum and the last anointing. Life ebbed away; he pressed the hand of the curé, who was by him to the last, he kissed his crucifix, and died. Eugénie's prayer was heard. He died, but at home; a wanderer come back; an erring child, once more forgiven, resting on his Father's breast.
And he was gone!—"king of my heart! my other self!" as she had called him—and Eugénie was left behind. She had loved him too well for her eternal peace, and it was necessary that she should be purified in the crucible of suffering. Very gradually she parted from him; the gates of the tomb closed not on her love; slowly she uprooted the fibres of her nature which had been entwined in his. Her journal did not end, and she wrote still to him—to Maurice in heaven: "Oh, my beloved Maurice! Maurice, art thou far from me? hearest thou me? Sometimes I shed torrents of tears; then the soul is dried up. All my life will be a mourning one; my heart is desolate." Then, reproaching herself, she turns to her only consolation: "Do I not love thee, my God? only true and Eternal Love! It seems to me that I love thee as the fearful Peter, but not like John, who rested on thy heart—divine repose which I so need. What do I seek in creatures? To make a pillow of a human breast? Alas! I have seen how death can take that from us. Better to lean, Jesus, on thy crown of thorns.
******"This day year, we went together to St. Sulpice, to the one o'clock mass. To-day I have been to Lentin in the rain, with bitter memories, in solitude. But, my soul, calm thyself with thy God, whom thou hast received to-day, in that little church. He is thy brother, thy friend, the well-beloved above all; whom thou canst never see die; who can never fail thee, in this world or the next. Let us console ourselves with this thought, that in God we shall find again all we have lost."
One great desire was, however, left to her; that of publishing the letters and writings of Maurice, and of winning for her beloved one the fame which she so despised for herself. A tribute to his memory appeared the year after his death, in the Revue des deux Mondes, from the brilliant pen of Madame Sand; but it was the source of more pain than pleasure to Eugénie. With the want of candor which is so often a characteristic of the class of writers to whom Madame Sand {224} belongs, she represented Maurice as a man totally without faith. Eugénie believed that he had never actually lost it, although it had been darkened and obscured; and she was certainly far more in his confidence than any of his friends.
For some time before his death he had gradually been returning to religious exercises; and, as we have seen, on his death-bed, he had most fully retracted and repented of whatever errors there had been in his life. But Madame Sand was not very likely to trouble herself about the dying moments of her friend, while it was another triumph to infidelity to let the world think this brilliant young man lived and died in its ranks.
"Madame Sand makes Maurice a skeptic, a great poet, like Byron, and it afflicts me to see the name of my brother—a name which was free from these lamentable errors—thus falsely represented to the world." And again: "Oh, Madame Sand is right when she says that his words are like the diamonds linked together, which make a diadem; or, rather, my Maurice was all one diamond. Blessed be those who estimated his price; blessed be the voice which praises him, which places him so high, with so much respect and enthusiasm! But on one point this voice is mistaken—when she says he had no faith. No; faith was not wanting in him. I proclaim it, and attest it by what I have seen and heard; by his prayers, his pious reading; by the sacraments he received; by all his Christian actions; by the death which opened life unto him—a death with his crucifix."
This article of Madame Sand only increased Eugénie's desire to vindicate her brother, by letting the world judge from his own writings and letters what Maurice really was. Many projects were set on foot for publishing this work. Rather than leave it undone, Eugénie would have undertaken it herself, though her broken spirit shrank more than ever from any sort of notoriety, or communication with the busy world outside her quiet home. But she would greatly have preferred the task should be accomplished by one of his friends; and much of her correspondence was devoted to the purpose. Time passed, and plan after plan fell to the ground. This last satisfaction was not to be hers. She was to see, as she thought, the name of her beloved one gradually fading away, and forgotten as years went on. To the very last drop she was to drain the cup of disappointment and loss. Her journal ceased, and its last sentence was, "Truly did the saint speak who said, 'Let us throw our hearts into eternity.'"
There are a few fragments and letters, which carry us on some years later; and in one of the last of these letters, dated 15th of June, 1845, we find these consoling words: "I have suffered; but God teaches us thus, and leads us to willingly place our hearts above. You are again in mourning, and I have felt your loss deeply. I mean the death of your poor brother. Alas! what is life but a continual separation? But you will meet in heaven, and there will be no more mourning nor tears; and there the society of saints will reward us for what we have suffered in the society of men. And, while waiting, there is nothing else to do than to humble one's self, as the Apostle says, 'under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in the time of visitation; casting all your care upon him, for he hath care of you.'"
These are almost her closing words; and thus we see God comforted her.
Three years more passed, of which we have no record; and we cannot but
deeply regret the determination of M. Trebutien not to give any
account of her beyond her own words. As long as they lasted, they are
indeed sufficient; but we would have fain followed her into the
silence of those last years, and have seen the soul gradually passing
to its rest. We would have liked to know if the friends she loved
soothed her dying hours—whether M. Bories, with his "strong {225} and
powerful words," was by her side in her last earthly struggle. But a
veil falls over it all. We feel assured, as we close the volume, that
whatever human means were wanting, the God she had faithfully served
consoled his child to the last, and sustained her mortal weakness till
she reposed in him. After her death, her heart's wish was fulfilled,
and abundant honor has been rendered to Maurice de Guérin. Nay, more;
for homage is ever given to the majesty of unselfish love; and from
henceforth, if Maurice the poet shall be forgotten, Maurice the
brother of Eugénie will never be. She has embalmed his memory with her
deep and fond devotion; and she has left a living record of how, in
the midst of a wearisome, an objectless, a monotonous life, a woman
may find work to do, and doing it, like Eugénie, with all her might,
leave behind her a track of light by which others may follow after
her, encouraged and consoled.
F.
Rome, according to the old aphorism, was not built in a day. Neither was the old town of Mourne, although it was destroyed in a day, and made fit almost for the sowing of salt upon its foundations, by the great Lord of Thomond, Murrough of the Ferns, when he gathered around it his rakehelly kerns, as Spenser in his spleen called them, and his fierce galloglasses and roving hobbelers. But the present story has naught to do with the spoliation and burning of towns. Far different, indeed, was the founding of Mourne, to the story of the disastrous termination of its prosperity. You will look in vain to the histories for a succinct or circumstantial account of the building of this ancient town; but many a more famous city has its early annals involved in equal obscurity—Rome, for instance. What tangible fact can be laid hold of with regard to its early history, save the will-o'-the-wisp light emanating from the traditions of a more modern day? A cimmerian cloud of darkness overhangs its founding and youthful progress, through which the double-distilled microscopic eyes of the historian are unable to penetrate with any degree of certainty. Mourne, however, though it cannot boast of a long-written history, possesses an oral one of remarkable perspicuity and certainty. The men are on the spot who, with a mathematical precision worthy of Archimedes or Newton, will relate everything about it, from its foundation to its fall. The only darkness cast upon their most circumstantial history is the elysian cloud from their luxuriant dudheens, as they whiff away occasionally, and relate—
That there was long ago a certain Dhonal, a nobleman of the warlike race of Mac Caurha, who ruled over Duhallow, and the wild mountainous territories extending downward along the banks of the Blackwater. This nobleman, after a long rule of prosperity and peace, at length grew weary of inaction, and manufactured in his pugnacious brain some cause of mortal affront and complaint against a neighboring potentate, whose territory extended in a westerly direction on the opposite shore of the river. So he mustered his vassals with all imaginable speed, and prepared to set out for the domains of his foe on a foray of unusual ferocity and magnitude. Before departing from his castle, which stood some miles above Mallow, on the banks of the river, he held a long and confidential parley with his wife, in which he told her, if he were defeated or slain, and if the foe should cross the Blackwater to make reprisals, that she should hold out the fortress while one stone would stand upon another, and especially that she should guard their three young sons well, whom, he doubted not, whatever might happen, would one day gain prosperity and renown. After this, he set out on his expedition, at the head of a formidable array of turbulent kerns and marauding horsemen. But his neighbor was not a man to be caught sleeping; for, at the crossing of a ford near Kanturk, he attacked Dhonal, slew him in single combat, and put his followers to the sword, almost to a man. After this he crossed the Blackwater, laid waste the territories of the invader, and at length besieged the castle, where the widowed lady and her three sons had taken refuge. For a long time she held her own bravely against her enemy; but in the end the castle was taken by assault, and she and her three young sons narrowly escaped with their lives out into the wild recesses of the forest.
After wandering about for some time, the poor lady built a little hut of brambles on the shore of the Clydagh, near the spot where stand the ruins of the preceptory of Mourne, or Ballinamona, as it is sometimes called. Here she dwelt with her children for a long time, in want and misery. Her sons grew up without receiving any of those accomplishments befitting their birth, and gained their subsistence, like the children of the common people around, by tilling a little plot of land before their hut, and by the products of the chase in the surrounding forest. One day, as Diarmid, the eldest, with his bow and arrows ready for the chase, was crossing a narrow valley, he met a kern, one of the followers of the great lord who had slain his father. Now, neither Diarmid nor his brothers recollected who had killed their father, nor the high estate from which they had fallen, for their mother kept them carefully in ignorance of all, fearing that they might become known, and that their enemies would kill them also. So the kern and himself wended their way for some time together along the side of the valley. At length they started a deer from its bed in the green ferns. Each shot his arrow at the same moment, and each struck the deer, which ran downward for a short space, and at last fell dead beside the little stream in the bottom of the valley.
"The deer is mine!" said the strange kern, as they stood over its body.
"No!" answered Diarmid, "it is not. See! your arrow is only stickin' in the skin of his neck, an' mine is afther rattlin' into his heart, through an' through!"
"No matther," exclaimed the kern, with a menacing look. "I don't care how he kem by his death, but the deer I must have, body an' bones, whatever comes of it! Do you think sich a sprissawn as you could keep me from it, an' I wantin' its darlin' carkiss for the table o' my lord, the Mac Donogh?"
Now Diarmid recollected that his mother and brothers were at the same time almost dying in their little hut for want of food. So without further parley he drew his long skian from its sheath.
"Very well," said he, "take it, if you're a man; but before it goes, my carkiss must lie stiff an' bloody in its place!"
The kern drew his skian at the word, and there, over the body of the fallen deer, ensued a combat stern and fierce, which at last resulted in Diarmid's plunging his skian through and through the body of his foe into the gritty sand beneath them.
{227}Diarmid then took the spear and other weapons of the dead kern, put the deer upon his broad shoulders, and marching off in triumph, soon gained his mother's little hut. There, after eating a comfortable meal, and telling his adventure, Diarmid began to lay down his future plans.
"Mother," he said, "the time is come at last when this little cabin is too small for me. I'm a man now, an' able to meet a man, body to body, as I met him to-day; so I'll brighten up my weapons, an' set off on my adventures, that I may gain renown in the wars. Donogh here, too, has the four bones of a man," continued he, turning to his second brother; "so let him prepare, an' we'll thramp off together as soon as we can, an' perhaps afther all we'd have a castle of our own, where you could reign in glory, as big an' grand as Queen Cleena o' the Crag!"
"Well, then," answered his mother, "if you must go, before you leave me, you and your brothers must hunt in the forest for a month, and bring in as much food as will do me and Rory here for a year and a day."
"But," said Rory, the youngest, or Roreen Shouragh, or the Lively, as he was called, in consequence of the 'cute and merry temperament of his mind—"but, Diarmid, you know I am now beyant fifteen years of age, an' so, if you go, I'll folly you to the worldt's end!"
"You presumptious little atomy of a barebones," answered his eldest brother, "if I only see the size of a thrush's ankle of you follyin' us on the road, I'll turn back an' bate that wiry an' freckled little carkiss o' yours into frog's jelly! So stay at home in pace an' quietness, an' perhaps when I come back I might give you a good purse o' goold to begin your forthin with."
"That for your mane an' ludiacrous purse o' goold!" exclaimed Roreen Shouragh, at the same time snapping his fingers in the face of his brother. "Arrah! do you hear him, mother? But never mind. Let us be off into the forest to-morrow, an' we'll see who'll bring home the most food before night!"
"Well," said his mother, "whether he stays at home or goes away, I fear he'll come to some bad end with that sharp tongue of his, and his wild capers."
"With all jonteel respect, mother," answered Shouragh again, "I mane to do no such thing. I think myself as good a hairo this minnit—because I have the sowl an' heart o' one as King Dathi, who was killed in some furrin place that I don't recklect the jography of, or as Con o' the Hundhert Battles, or as the best man amongst them, Fion himself—an' I'll do as great actions as any o' them yet!"
This grandiloquent boast of Roreen Shouragh's set his mother and brothers into a fit of laughter, from which they only recovered when it was time to retire to rest. In the morning the three brothers betook themselves to the forest, and at the fall of night returned with a great spoil of game. From morning till night they hunted thus every day for a month, at the end of which time Diarmid said that they had as much food stored in as would last his mother and Rory for a year and a day.
On a hot summer noon the two brothers left the little hut, with their mother's blessing on their heads, and set off on their adventures. After crossing a few valleys, they came at length to the shore of the Blackwater, and sat down in the shade of a huge oak-tree on the bank to rest themselves. Beneath them, in a clear, shady pool, a huge pike, with his voracious jaws ready for a plunge, was watching a merry little speckled trout, which in its turn was regarding with most affectionate eyes a bright blue fly, that was disporting overhead on the surface of the water. Suddenly the trout darted upward into the air, catching the ill-starred fly, but, in its return to the element beneath, unfortunately plumped itself into the Charybdis-like jaws of the villanous {228} pike, and was from that in one moment quietly deposited in his stomach.
"Look at that!" said Diarmid to his brother. "That's the way with a man that works an' watches everything with a keen eye. He'll have all in the end, just as the pike has both fly and throut—an' just as I have both fly, an' throut, an' pike!" continued he, giving his spear a quick dart into the deep pool, and then landing the luckless pike, transfixed through and through, upon the green bank. "That's the way to manage, and the divvle a betther sign o' good luck we could have in the beginning of our journey, than to get a good male so aisy!"
"Hooray!" exclaimed a voice behind them. "That's the way to manage most galliantly. What a nate dinner the thurminjous monsther will make for the three of us!" and on turning round, the two brothers beheld Roreen Shouragh, accoutred like themselves, and dancing with most exuberant delight at the feat beside them on the grass.
"An' so you have follied us afther all my warnin', you outragious little vagabone!" exclaimed Diarmid, making a wrathful dart at Roreen, who, however, eluding the grasp, ran and doubled hither and thither with the swiftness of a hare, around the trunks of the huge oak-trees on the shore. In vain Diarmid tried every ruse of the chase to catch him. Roreen Shouragh could not be captured. At length the elder brother, wearied out, returned to Donogh, who, during the chase, was tumbling about on the grass in convulsions of laughter.
"'Tis no use, Donogh," he said, "we must only let him come with us. He'll never go back. Come here, you aggravatin' young robber," continued he, calling out to Roreen, who was still dancing in defiance beneath a tree, some distance off—"come here, an' you'll get your dinner, an' may folly us if you wish."
Roreen knew that he might depend on the word of his brother. "I towld ye both," said he, coming up to the spot, "that I'd folly ye to the worldt's end; so let us have pace, an' I may do ye some service yet. But may I supplicate to know where ye're preamblin' to at present; for if ye sit down that way in every umberagious coolin' spot, as the song says, the divvle a much ye'll have for yeer pains in the ind?"
"I'll tell you then," answered Donogh, now recovered from his fit of laughing. "We're goin' off to Corrig Cleena, to see the Queen o' the Fairies, an' to ask her advice what to do so as to win wealth an' renown."
"'Tis aisier said than done," said Roreen, "to see Queen Cleena. But howsomdever, when we're afther devourin' this vouracious thief of a pike here, we'll peg off to the Corrig as swift as our gambadin'-sticks will carry us!"
After the meal the three brothers swam across the river, and proceeded on their way through the forest toward Corrig Cleena. On gaining the summit of a little height, a long, straight road extended before them.
On and on the straight road they went, till, turning up a narrow path in the forest, they beheld the great grey boulders of Corrig Cleena towering before them. They searched round its base several times for an entrance, but could find none. At length, as they were turning away in despair, they saw an extremely small, withered old atomy of a woman, clad all in sky blue, and sitting beside a clump of fairy thimbles, or foxgloves, that grew on a little knoll in front of the rock. They went up and accosted her:
"Could you tell us, ould woman," asked Diarmid, "how we can enter the Corrig? We want to speak to the queen."
"Ould woman, inagh!" answered the little atomy in a towering passion. "How daar you call me an ould woman, you vagabone? Off wid you—thramp, I say, for if you sted there till your legs would root in the ground, you'd get no information from me!"
{229}"Be aisy, mother," said Donogh, in a soothing voice; "sure, if you can tell us, you may as well serve us so far, an' we'll throuble you no more."
"Ould woman an' mother, both!" screamed the little hag, starting up and shaking her crutch at the brothers; "this is worse than all. You dirty an' insultin' spalpeens, how daar ye again, I say call me sich names? What for should I be decoratin' my fingers wid the red blossoms o' the Lusmore, if I was as ould as you say? Be off out o' this, or be this an' be that, I ruinate ye both wid a whack o' this wand o' mine!"
"Young leedy," said Roreen Shouragh, stepping up cap in hand at this juncture, and making the old hag an elaborately polite bow—"young, an' innocent, an' delightful creethur, p'r'aps you'd have the kindness to exercise that lily-white hand o' yours in pointin' out the way for us into Queen Cleena's palace!"
"Yes, young man," answered the crone, greatly mollified at the handsome address of Roreen. "For your sake, I'll point out the way. You at laste know the respect that should be paid to youth an' beauty!"
"Allow me, my sweet young darlint," said Roreen at this, as he stepped up and offered her his arm—"allow me to have the shuprame pleasure of conductin' you. I'm sure I must have the honor an' glory of ladin' on my arm one of the queen's maids of honor. May those enticin' cheeks o' yours for ever keep the bloomin' an' ravishin' blush they have at the present minnit, an' may those riglar ivory teeth o' yours, that are as white as the dhriven snow, never make their conjay from your purty an' delightful mouth!"
The "delightful young creethur" allowed herself, with many a gratified smirk, to be conducted downward by the gallant Roreen toward the rock, where, striking the naked wall with her crutch, or wand as she was pleased to call it, a door appeared before them, and the three brothers were immediately conducted into the presence of the fairy queen.
It would be long, but pleasant, to tell the gallant compliments paid by Roreen to the queen, and the queen's polite and gracious acceptance of them; merry to relate the covert laughter of the lovely maids of honor, as Roreen occasionally showered down praises on the head of the "young leedy" who so readily gained him admittance to the palace, and who was no other than the vain old nurse of the queen; but, despite all such frivolities, this history must have its course. At length the queen gave them a gentle hint that their audience had lasted the proper time, and as they were departing she cast her bright but love-lorn eyes upon them with a kindly look.
"Young man," she said, "you ask my advice how to act so as to gain wealth and renown. I could give you wealth, but will not, for wealth thus acquired rarely benefits the possessor. But I will give you the advice you seek. Always keep your senses sharp and bright, and your bodies strong by manly exercise. Look sharply round you, and avail yourselves honorably of every opportunity that presents itself. Be brave, and defend your rights justly; but, above all, let your hearts be full of honor and kindness, and show that kindness ever in aiding the poor, the needy, and the defenceless. Do all this, and I doubt not but you will yet come to wealth, happiness, and renown. Farewell!"
And in a moment, they knew not how, they found themselves sitting in the front of the Rock of Cleena, upon the little knoll where Roreen had so flatteringly accosted the "young leedy." Away they went again down to the shore, swam back across the river, and wandered away over hill and dale, till they ascended Sliabh Luchra, and lost themselves in the depths of the great forest that clothed its broad back. Here they sat down in a green glade, and began to consider what they should further do with themselves. At length {230} they agreed to build a little hut, and remain there for a few days, in order to look about the country. No sooner said than done.
To work they went, finished their hut beneath a spreading tree, and were soon regaling themselves on a young fawn they had killed as they descended the mountain. Next day they went out into the forest, killed a deer, brought him back to the hut, in order to prepare part of him for their dinner. Diarmid undertook the cooking for the first day, while his two younger brothers went out along the back of the mountain to kill more game. With the aid of a small pot, which they had borrowed from a forester at the northern part of the mountain, and a ladle that accompanied it, Diarmid began to cook the dinner, stirring the pieces of venison round and round over the fire, in order to have some broth ready at the return of his brothers. As he was stirring and tasting alternately with great industry, he heard a light footstep behind him, and on looking round, beheld sitting on one of the large mossy stones they used for a seat a little crabbed-looking boy, with a red head almost the color of scarlet, a red jacket, and tight-fitting trowsers of the same hue, which, reaching a little below the knee, left the fire-bedizened and equally rubicund legs and feet exposed in free luxury to the air. His face was handsomely formed, but brown and freckled, and he had a pair of dark, keen eyes, which seemed to pierce into the very soul of Diarmid as he sat gazing at him. There was a wild, elfish look about him altogether, as, with a vivacious twinkle of his acute eye, he saluted Diarmid politely, and asked him for a ladleful of the broth. Diarmid, however, in turning round from the pot, had spilt the contents of the ladle on his hand, burning it sorely, and was in consequence not in the most amiable humor.
"Give you a ladle of broth, indeed, you little weasel o' perdition!" exclaimed he. "Peg off out o' my house this minute, or I'll catch you by one o' them murtherin' legs o' yours, an' bate your brains out against one o' the stones!"
"I'm well acquainted with the cozy an' indestructible fact, that a man's house is his castle," said the little fellow, at the same time thrusting both his hands into his pockets, inclining his head slightly to one side, and looking up coolly at Diarmid; "but some o' that broth I must have, for three raisons. First, that all the wild-game o' the forest are mine as well as yours; second, that I'm a sthranger, an' you know that hospitality is a virthue in ould Ireland; an', third an' best, because you darn't refuse me! So, sit down there an' cool me a good rich ladleful, or, be the hole o' my coat! there'll be wigs on the green bethune you an' me afore you're much ouldher!"
"Ther's for your impidence, you gabblin' little riffin!" said Diarmid, making a furious kick at the imperturbable little intruder, who, however, evaded it by a nimble jump to one side; and then leaping up suddenly, before his assailant was aware, hit him right and left two stunning blows with his hard and diminutive fists in the eyes. Round and round hopped redhead, at each hop striking the luckless Diarmid right in the face, till at length, with one finishing blow, he brought him to the ground, stunned and senseless.
"There," he said, as he took a ladleful o' broth and began to cool it deliberately, "that's the most scientific facer I ever planted on a man's forehead in my life. I think he'll not refuse me the next time I ask him."
With that he drank off the broth at a draught, laid the ladle carefully in the pot, stuck his hands in his pockets, and jovially whistling up, "The cricket's rambles through the hob," he left the hut, and strutted with a light and cheerful heart into the forest.
When Diarmid's brothers returned, they found him just recovering from his swoon, with two delightful black eyes, and a nose of unusual dimensions. {231} He told them the cause of his mishap, at which they only laughed heartily, saying that he deserved it for allowing himself to be beaten by such an insignificant youngster. Next day, Diarmid and Roreen went out to hunt, leaving Donogh within to cook the dinner. When they returned, they found the ill-starred Donogh lying almost dead on the floor, with two black eyes far surpassing in beauty and magnitude those received on the preceding evening by his brother.
"Let me stay within to-morrow," said Roreen, "for 'tis my turn; an' if he has the perliteness o' payin' me a visit, I'll reward him for his condescension."
"Arrah!" said both his brothers, "is it a little traneen like you to be able for him, when he bate the two of us?"
"No matther," answered Roreen; "tis my turn, an' stay I will, if my eyes were to be oblitherated in my purricranium!"
And so, when the morrow came, Diarmid and Donogh went out to hunt, and Roreen Shouragh stayed within to cook the dinner. As the pot commenced boiling, Roreen kept a sharp eye around him for the expected visitor, whom he at length descried coming up the glade toward the door of the hut, whistling cheerfully as he came.
"Good-morrow, youngster!" said the chap as he entered, and made a most hilarious bow; "you seem to have the odor o' charity from your handsome face here, at laste it comes most aromatically from the pot, anyhow."
"Ah, then! good-morrow kindly, my blushin' little moss-rose!" said Roreen, answering the salutation with an equally ornamental inclination of his head—"welcome to the hall o' my fathers. P'r'aps you'd do me the thurminjous honor o' satin' that blazin' little carkiss o' yours on the stone fornent me there."
"With all the pleasure in the univarse," answered the other, seating himself; "but as the clay is most obsthreporously hot an' disthressin' to the dissolute traveller, p'r'aps you'd have the exthrame kindness o' givin' me a ladleful o' broth to refresh myself."
"Well," said Roreen, "I was always counted a livin' respectacle o' the hospitality of ould Ireland. Yet, although the first law is not to ask the name of a guest, in regard to the unmerciful way you thrated my brothers, I must make bowld, before I grant your request, to have the honor an' glory of hearin' your cognomen."
"With shuprame pleasure," answered the visitor. "My name, accordin' to the orthography o' Ogham characters, is Shaneen cus na Thinné, which, larnedly expounded, manes John with his Feet to the Fire. But the ferlosophers an' rantiquarians of ould Ireland, thracin' effect from cause, call me Fieryfoot, an' by that name I shall be proud to be addhressed by you at present."
"Well," rejoined Roreen, "it only shows their perfound knowlidge an' love for truth, to be able to make out such a knotty ploberm in derivations; an' so, out o' compliment to their oceans o' larnin', you'll get the broth; but," continued he, as he took up a ladleful and held it to cool, "as there are a few questions now and then thrublin' my ruminashins, p'r'aps you may be so perlite as to throw a flash o' lightnin' on them, while we're watin'. One is in nathral history. I've heerd that of late the hares sleep with one eye shut an' th' other open. What on earth is the raison of it?"
"That," answered Fieryfoot, "is aisily solvoluted. Tis on account o' the increase o' weasels, and their love for suckin' the blood o' hares in their sleep. So the hares, in ordher to be on their guard an' prevent it, sleep with only one eye at a time, an' when that's rested an' has slept enough, they open it an' shut the other!"
"The other," said Roreen, "is in asthronomy, an' thrubbles me most of all, sleepin' an' noddin', aitin' an' dhrinkin'. Why is it that the man in the moon always keeps a rapin'-hook in his hand, and never uses it?"
{232}"Because," answered Fieryfoot, getting somewhat impatient, "because, you poor benighted crathure, he's not a man at all, but the image of a man painted over the door of Brian Airach's shebeen there, where those that set off on a lunarian ramble go in to refresh themselves, as I want to refresh myself with that ladle o' broth you're delayin' in your hand!"
"Oh! you'll get it fresh an' fastin'!" exclaimed Roreen, and with that he dashed the ladleful of scalding broth right into the face of Fieryfoot, who started up with a wild cry, and rushed half-blinded from the hut. Away went Roreen in hot pursuit after him, with the ladle in his hand, and calling out to him, with the most endearing names imaginable, to come back for another supply of broth—away down the glades, till at length, on the summit of a smooth, green little knoll, Fieryfoot suddenly disappeared. Roreen went to the spot, and found there a square aperture, just large enough to admit his body. He immediately went and cut a sapling with his knife, stuck it by the side of the aperture, and placed his cap on it for a mark, and then returned to the hut, and found his brothers just after coming in. He related all that happened, and they agreed to go together to the knoll after finishing their dinner. When the dinner was over, the three brothers went down to the knoll, and easily found out the aperture through which Fieryfoot had disappeared.
"An' now, what's to be done?" asked Diarmid.
"What's to be done, is it?" said Roreen; "why just to have me go down, as I'm the smallest—smallest in body I mane—for, to spake shupernathrally, my soul is larger than both of yurs put together; an', in the manetime, to have ye build another hut over the spot an' live there till I return with a power o' gold an' dimons, and oceans o' renown an' glory!"
With that he crept into the aperture, while his brothers busied themselves in drawing brambles and sticks to the spot in order to build a hut as he had directed. As Roreen descended, the passage began to grow more broad and lightsome, and at length he found himself on the verge of a delightful country, far more calm and beautiful than the one he had left. Here he took the first way that presented itself, and travelled on till he came to the crossing of three roads. He saw a large, dark-looking house, part of which he knew to be a smith's forge, from the smoke, and from the constant hammering that resounded from the inside. Roreen entered, and the first object that presented itself was Fieryfoot, as fresh and blooming as a trout, and roasting his red shins with the utmost luxuriance and happiness of heart before the blazing fire on the hob.
"Wisha, Roreen Shouragh," exclaimed Fieryfoot, starting from his seat, spitting on his hand for good luck, and then offering it with great cordiality, "you're as welcome as the flowers o' May! Allow me to offer you my congratulations, ad infinitum, for your superior cuteness in the art of circumwentin' your visitors. I prizhume you'll have no objection to be presented to the three workmen I keep in the house—the smith there, the carpenter, an' the mason. Roreen Shouragh, gentlemin, the only man in the world above that was able to circumwint your masther!"
"A céad mille fáilté, young gintleman!" said the three workmen in a breath.
Roreen bowed politely in acknowledgment.
"Any news from the worldt above?" asked the smith, as he rested his ponderous hammer on the anvil.
"Things are morthially dull," answered Roreen, giving a sly wink at Fieryfoot. "I've heard that the Danes are making a divarshin in Ireland; that a shower o' dimons fell in Dublin; that the moon is gettin' mowldy for want o' shinin'; and that there's a say in the west that is gradually becoming transmogrified into whiskey. I humbly hope that the latther intelligence {233} is unthrue, for if not, I'm afraid the whole worldt will become drunk in the twinklin' of a gooldfrinch's eye!"
"Milé, milé gloiré!" exclaimed the three workmen, "but that's grate an' wondherful intirely! P'r'aps masther," continued they, addressing Fieryfoot, and smacking their lips at the thought of whiskey, "p'r'aps you'd have the goodness o' givin' us a few days' lave of absence!"
"Not at present," answered Fieryfoot; "industry is the soul o' pleasure, as the hawk said to the sparrow before he transported him to his stomach, so ye must now set to work an' make a sword, for I want to make my frind here a present as a compliment for his superior wisdom."
To work they went. The smith hammered out, tempered, and polished the blade, the carpenter fashioned the hilt, which the mason set with a brilliant row of diamonds; and the sword was finished instantly.
"An' now," said Fieryfoot, presenting the sword to Roreen, "let me have the immorthial pleasure o' presenting you with this. Take it and set off on your thravels. Let valior and magnanimity be your guide, and you'll come to glory without a horizintal bounds. In the manetime I'll wait here till you return."
"I accept it with the hottest gratitudinity an' gladness," said Roreen, taking the sword and running his eye critically along hilt and blade. "'Tis a darlin', handy sword; 'tis sharp, shinin', an' killin', as the sighin' lover said to his sweetheart's eyes, an' altogether 'tis the one that matches my experienced taste, for 'tis tough, an' light, and lumeniferous, as Nero said to his cimitar, whin he was preparin' to daycapitate the univarsal worldt wid one blow!"
Saying this, Roreen buckled the sword to his side, bade a ceremonious farewell to the polite Fieryfoot and his workmen, left the house, and proceeded on his adventures. He took the west and broader road that led by the forge, and travelled on gaily till night. For seven days he travelled thus, meeting various small adventures by the way, and getting through them with his usual light-heartedness, till at length he saw a huge dark castle before him, standing on a rock over a solitary lake. He accosted an old man by the way-side, who told him that a huge giant of unusual size, strength, and ferocity dwelt there, and that he had kept there in thrall, for the past year and a day, a beautiful princess, expecting that in the end she'd give her consent to marry him. The old peasant told him also that the giant had two brothers, who dwelt far away in their castles, and that they were the strangest objects ever seen by mortal eyes; one being a valiant dwarf as broad as he was long, and the other longer than he was broad, for he was tall as the giant, but so slightly formed that he was designated by the inhabitants of the country round Snohad na Dhial, or the Devil's Needle. Roreen thanked the old man with great urbanity, and proceeded on his way toward the castle. When he came to the gate, he knocked as bold as brass, and demanded admittance. He was quickly answered by a tremendous voice from the inside, which demanded what he wanted.
"Let me in, ould steeple," said Roreen; "I'm a poor disthressed boy that's grown wary o' the worldt on account o' my fatness, an' I'm come to offer myself as a volunthary male for your voracious stomach!"
At this the gate flew open with a loud clang, and Roreen found himself in the great court-yard of the castle, confronting the giant. The giant was licking his lips expectantly while opening the gate, but seemed now not a little disappointed as he looked upon the spare, wiry form standing before him.
"If you're engaged, ould cannibal," said Roreen again, "in calkalatin' a gasthernomical ploberm, as I'm aweer you are, by the way you're lookin' at me, allow me perlitely to help you in hallucidatin' it. In the first place, if {234} you intend to put me in a pie, I must tell you that you'll not get much gravy from my carkiss, an' in the next, if you intend to ate me on the spot, raw, I must inform you that you'll find me as hard as a Kerry dimon, an' stickin' in your throat, before you're half acquainted with the politics of your abdominal kingdom!"
As an answer to this the giant did precisely what Roreen Shouragh expected he would do. He stooped down, caught him up with his monstrous hand, intending to chop off his head with the first bite; but Roreen, the moment he approached his broad, hairy chest, pulled suddenly out the sword presented to him by Fiery foot, and drew it across the giant's windpipe, with as scientific a cut as ever was given by any champion at the battle of Gaura, Clontarf, or of any other place on the face of the earth. The giant did not give the usual roar given by a giant in the act of being killed. How could he, when his windpipe was cut? He only fell down simply by the gate of his own castle, and died without a groan. Roreen, by way of triumph, leaped upon his carcass, and with a light heart cut a few nimble capers thereon, and then proceeded on his explorations into the castle. There he found the beautiful princess sad and forlorn, whom he soon relieved from her apprehensions of further thraldom. She told him that she was not the only lady whose wrongs were unredressed in that strange country, for that the two remaining brothers of the giant, to wit, the dwarf and the Devil's Needle, had kept, during her time of thrall, her two younger sisters in an equally cruel bondage.
"An' now, my onrivalled daisy," said Roreen, after some conversation had passed between them, "allow me, while I'm in the humor for performin' deeds o' valior, to thramp off an' set them free!"
"But," said the princess, "am I to be left behind pining in this forlorn dungeon of a castle?"
"Refulgint leedy," answered Roreen, "a pair of eyes like yours, when purferrin' a request, are arrisistible, but this Kerry-dimon' heart o' mine is at present onmovable; and in ferlosophy, when an arrisistible affeer conglomerates against an onmovable one, nothin' occurs, an' so I must have the exthrame bowldness of asking you to stay where you are till I come back, for 'tis always the maxim of an exparienced an' renowned gineral not to oncumber himself with too much baggage when settin' out on his advinthures!"
And so the young princess consented to stay, and Roreen, with many bows and compliments, took his leave. For three days he travelled, till at length he espied the castle of the dwarf towering on the summit of a great hill. He climbed the hill as fast as his nimble legs could carry him, blew the horn at the gate, and defied the dwarf to single combat. To work they went. The skin of the dwarf was as hard and tough as that of a rhinoceros, but at length Roreen's sword found a passage through it, and the dwarf fell dead by his own gate. Roreen went in, brought the good news of her sister's liberation to the lady, and after directing her to remain where she was till his return, set forward again. For three days more he travelled, till he came to the shore of a sea, where he saw the castle of Snohad na Dhial towering high above the waves. He climbed up the rock on which the castle stood, found the gate open, and whistling the romantic pastoral of "The piper in the meadow straying," he jovially entered the first door he met. On he went, through room after room, and saw no one, till at last he came before an exceedingly lofty door, with a narrow and perpendicular slit in it, extending almost from threshold to lintel. He peeped in through the open slit, and beheld inside the most beautiful young lady his eyes ever rested upon. She was weeping, and seemed sorely troubled. Roreen opened the door, presented himself before her, and told her how he had liberated her {235} sisters. In return she told him how that very day she was to be married to Snohad na Dhial, and wept, as she further related that it was out of the question to think of vanquishing him, for that he was as tall as the giant, yet so slight that the slit in the door served him always for an entrance, but then he was beyond all heroes strong, and usually killed his antagonist by knotting his long limbs around him and squeezing him to death.
"No matther," said Roreen. "I'll sing a song afther my victory, as the gamecock said to the piper. An' now, most delightful an' bloomin' darlint o' the worldt, this purriliginious heart o' mine is melted at last with the conshumin' flame o' love. Say, then, the heart-sootherin' an' merlifluous word that you'll have me, an' your thrubbles are over in the twinklin'—"
"Not over so soon!" interrupted a loud, shrill voice behind them, and Roreen, turning round, beheld Snohad na Dhial entering at the slit, with deadly rage and jealousy in his fiery eyes. Snohad, however, in his haste to get in and fall upon Roreen, got his middle in some way or other entangled in the slit, and in his struggles to free himself, his feet lilted upward, and there he hung for a few moments, inward and outward, like the swaying beam of a balance. For a few moments only; for Roreen, running over, with one blow of his faithful sword on the waist cut him in two, and down fell both halves of Snohad na Dhial as dead as a door-nail. After this Roreen got the heart-sootherin' answer he so gallantly implored. He then bethought himself of returning. After a few weeks he found himself with the three sisters, and with a cavalcade of horses laden with the most precious diamonds, pearls, and other treasures belonging to the three castles, in front of the forge where he had met Fieryfoot, and talking merrily to that worthy.
"An' now," said Fieryfoot, after he had complimented the ladies on their beauty, and Roreen on his success and bravery, "I am about to give my three workmen lave of absence. But they must work seven days for you first. Then they may go on their peregrinations about ould Ireland. Farewell. Give my ondeniable love to the ladle, and remember me to your brothers balligerently!"
With that the two friends embraced, on which Fieryfoot drew out a small whistle and blew a tune, which set Roreen Shouragh and the three princesses into a pleasant sleep; on awakening from which they found themselves by the side of the little hut on the knoll, with the three workmen beneath them, holding the horses and guarding their loads of treasure. Roreen's two brothers had just returned from the chase, and were standing near them in mute wonderment at the spectacle. After some brief explanations, the whole cavalcade set out on their journey home, and travelled on till they came to the hut of the lonely widow on the banks of the Clydagh. It was nightfall when they reached the place. Roreen told the three workmen that he wanted to have a castle built on the meadow beside the hut, and then went in and embraced his mother. The workmen went to the meadow, and when the next morning dawned, had a castle of unexampled strength and beauty built for Roreen and his intended bride. The two succeeding mornings saw two equally splendid castles built for the two brothers and their brides elect, for they were about to be married to the two elder princesses. By the next morning after that they had a castle finished for Roreen's mother. On the second morning afterward they had a town built, and at length, on the seventh morning, when Roreen went out, he found both castles and town' enclosed by a strong wall, with ramparts, gateways, and every other necessary appliance of defence. The three workmen then took their leave, and by the loud smacking of their lips as they departed, Roreen knew that they were going off to the west in search of the "say" of whiskey. After this the three {236} brothers were married to the three lovely princesses, mercenary soldiers flocked in from every quarter, and took service under their banners; the inhabitants of the surrounding country removed into the town, and matters went on gaily and prosperously. The name of Roreen's wife was Mourne Blanaid, or the Blooming, and on a great festival day got up for the purpose, he called the town Mourne, in honor of her. In a pitched battle they defeated and killed the slayer of their father, and drove his followers out of their patrimony, and after that they lived in glory and renown till their death.
For centuries after the town of Mourne flourished, still remaining in possession of the race of the Mac Carthys. At length the Normans came and laid their mail-clad hands upon it. In the reign of King John, Alexander de St. Helena founded a preceptory for Knights Templars near it, the ruins of which stand yet in forlorn and solitary grandeur beside the little river. Still the town flourished and throve, though many a battle was fought within it, and around its gray walls, till at length, according to Spenser, Murrogh na Ranagh, prince of Thomond, burst out like a fiery flame from his fastnesses in Clare, overran all Munster, burnt almost every town in it that had fallen into the possession of the English, and among the rest Mourne, whose woeful burning did not content him, for he destroyed it altogether, scarcely leaving one stone standing there upon another. And now only a few mounds remain to show the spot where Roreen Shouragh got his town built, and where he ruled so jovially.
And so, gentle reader, if you look with me to the history of Troy, Rome, the battle of Ventry Harbor, the Pyramids, or Tadmor in the Desert, I think you will say that there is none of them so clear, so circumstantial, and so trustworthy as the early history of the old town of Mourne.
"Hark, child—again that knocking! Go, fling wide the door, I pray;
Perchance 'tis some poor pilgrim who has wandered from his way.
Now save thee, gallant stranger! Sit thou down and share our cheer:
Our bread is white and wholesome—see! our drink is fresh and clear."
"I come not here your bread to share, nor of your drink to speak.
Your name?"—"Hans Euler."—"So! 'tis well: it is your blood I seek.
Know that through many a weary year I've sought you for a foe:
I had a goodly brother once: 'twas you who laid him low.
"And as he bit the dust, I vowed that soon or late on you
His death should be avenged; and mark! that oath I will keep true."
"I slew him; but in quarrel just. I fought him hand to hand:
Yet, since you would avenge his fall,—I'm ready; take your stand.
"But I war not in my homestead, by this hearth whereon I tread;
Not in sight of these—my dear ones—for whose safety I have bled.
My daughter, reach me down yon sword,—the same that laid him low;
And if I ne'er come back again, Tyrol has sons enow."
So forth they fared together, up the glorious Alpine way,
Where newly now the kindling east led on the golden day.
The sun that mounted with them, as he rose in all his pride,
Still saw the stranger toiling on, Hans Euler for his guide.
They climbed the mountain summit; and behold! the Alpine world
Showed clear and bright before them, 'neath the mists that upward curled.
Below them, calm and happy, lay the valley in her rest,
With the châlets in her arms, and with their dwellers on her breast.
Amidst were sparkling waters; giant chasms, scarred and riven;
Vast, crowning woods; and over all, the pure, blest air of heaven:
And, sacred in the sight of God, where peace her treasures spread,
On every hearth, on every home, the soul of freedom shed!
Both gazed in solemn silence down. The stranger stayed his hand.
Hans Euler gently pointed to his own beloved land:
"'Twas this thy brother threatened; such a wrong might move me well.
'Twas in such a cause I struggled:—'twas for such a fault he fell."
The stranger paused: then, turning, looked Hans Euler in the face;
The arm that would have raised the sword fell powerless in its place.
"You slew him. Was it, then, for this—for home and fatherland?
Forgive me! 'Twas a righteous cause. Hans Euler, there's my hand!"
ELEANORA L. HERVEY.
Water to raise corn from the seed, to clothe the meadow with its grass, and to fill the land with fruit and flowers; water to lie heaped in fantastic clouds, to make the fairy-land of sunset, and to spread the arch of mercy in the rainbow; water that kindles our imagination to a sense of beauty; water that gives us our meat, and is our drink, and cleans us of dirt and disease, and is our servant in a thousand great and little ways—it is the very juice and essence of man's civilization. And so, whether we shall drag over cold water, or let hot water drag us, is one way of putting the question between canal and steam communication for conveyance of our heavy traffic. The canal-boat uses its water cold without, the steam-engine requires it hot within. Before hot water appeared in its industrial character to hiss off the cold, canals had all the glory to themselves. They are not yet hissed off their old stages and cat-called into contempt by the whistle of the steam-engine, for canal communication still has advantages of its own, and canal shares are powers in the money market.
Little more than a century ago, not only were there neither canals nor railroads in this country, but the common high-roads were about the worst in Europe. Corn and wool were sent to market over those bad roads on horses' or bullocks' backs, and the only coal used in the inland southern counties was carried on horseback in sacks for the supply of the blacksmiths' forges. Water gave us our over-sea commerce, that came in and went out by way of our tidal rivers; and the step proposed toward the fostering of our home industries was a great one when it occurred to somebody to imitate nature, by erecting artificial rivers that should flow whereever we wished them to flow, and should be navigable along their whole course for capacious, flat-bottomed carrying-boats.
The first English canal, indeed, was constructed as long as three hundred years ago, at Exeter, by John Trew, a native of Glamorganshire, who enabled the traders of Exeter to cancel the legacy of the spite of an angry Countess of Devon, who had, nearly three hundred years before that time, stopped the ascent of sea-going vessels to Exeter by forming a weir across the Exe at Topham. Trew contrived, to avoid the obstruction, a canal from Exeter to Topham, three miles long, with a lock to it. John Trew ruined himself in the service of an ungrateful corporation.
After this time, improvements went no further than the clearing out of some channels of natural water-communication, until the time of James Brindley, the father of the English canal system.
James Brindley was born in the year 1716, the third of the reign of George the First, in a cottage in the parish of Wormhill, midway between the remote hamlets of the High Peak of Derby. There his father, more devoted to shooting, hunting, and bull-running, than to his work as a cottier, cultivated the little croft he rented, got into bad company and poverty, and left his children neglected and untaught. The idle man had an industrious wife, who taught the children, of whom James was the eldest, what little she knew; but they must all help to earn as soon as they were able, and James Brindley earned wages at any ordinary laborer's work that he could get until he was seventeen years old. {239} He was a lad clever with his knife, who made little models of mills, and set them to work in mill-streams of his own contrivance. The machinery of a neighboring grist-mill was his especial delight, and had given the first impulse to his modellings. He and his mother agreed that he should bind himself, whenever he could, to a millwright; and at the age of seventeen he did, after a few weeks' trial, become apprentice for seven years to Abraham Bennett, wheelwright and millwright, at the village of Sutton, near Macclesfield, which was the market-town of Brindley's district.
The millwrights were then the only engineers; they worked by turns at the foot-lathe, the carpenter's bench, and the anvil; and, in country places where there was little support for division of labor, they had to find skill or invention to meet any demand on mechanical skill. Bennett was not a sober man, his journeymen were a rough set, and much of the young apprentice's time was at first occupied in running for beer. He was taught little, and had to find out everything for himself, which he did but slowly; so that, during some time, he passed with his master for a stupid bungler, only fit for the farm-work from which he had been taken. But, after two years of this sort of pupilage, a fire having injured some machinery in a small silk-mill at Macclesfield, Brindley was sent to bring away the damaged pieces; and, by his suggestions on that occasion, he showed to Mr. Milner, the mill superintendent, an intelligence that caused his master to be applied to for Brindley's aid in a certain part of the repairs. He was unwillingly sent, worked under the encouragement of the friendly superintendent with remarkable ability, and was surprised that his master and the other workmen seemed to be dissatisfied with his success. When they chaffed him, at the supper celebrating the completion of the work, his friend Milner offered to wager a gallon of the best ale that, before the lad's apprenticeship was out, he would be a cleverer workman than any of them there present, master or man. This was a joke against Brindley among his fellow-workmen; but in another year they found "the young man Brindley" specially asked for when the neighboring millers needed repairs of machinery, and sometimes he was chosen in preference to the master himself. Bennett asked "the young man Briudley" where he had learnt his skill in mill-work, but he could tell no more than that it "came natural like." He even suggested and carried out improvements, especially in the application of the water-power, and worked so substantially well, that his master said to him one day, "Jem, if thou goes on i' this foolish way o' workin', there will be very little trade left to be done when thou comes oot o' thy time: thou knaws firmness o' wark's h' ruin o' trade."
But presently Jem's "firmness o' wark" was the saving of his master. Bennett got a contract to set up a paper-mill on the river Dane, upon the model of a mill near Manchester. Bennett went to examine the Manchester mill, brought back a confused and beery notion of it, and, proceeding with the job, got into the most hopeless bewilderment. An old hand, who had looked in on the work, reported, over his drink at the nearest public-house, that the job was a farce, and that Abraham Bennett was only throwing away his employer's money. Next Saturday, after his work, young Jem Brindley disappeared. He was just of age, and it was supposed he had taken it into his head to leave his master and begin life on his own account. But on Monday morning, there he was at his work, with his coat off, and the whole duty to be done clear in his head. He had taken on Saturday night a twenty-five mile walk to the pattern mill, near Manchester. On Sunday morning he had asked leave of its proprietor to go in and examine it. He had spent {240} some hours on Sunday in the study of its machinery, and then had walked the twenty-five miles back, to resume his work and save his master from a failure that would have been disastrous to his credit. The conduct of the work was left to him; he undid what was amiss, and proceeded with the rest so accurately, that the contract was completed within the appointed time, to the complete satisfaction of all persons concerned. After that piece of good service, Bennett left to James Brindley the chief care over his business. When Bennett died, Brindley carried on to completion all work then in hand, and wound up the accounts for the benefit of his old master's family. That done, he set up in business on his own account at the town of Leek, in Staffordshire; he was then twenty-six years old, having served seven years as an apprentice and two years as journeyman.
Leek was then but a small market-town, with a few grist-mills, and Brindley had no capital; but he made himself known beyond Leek as a reliable man, whose work was good and durable, who had invention at the service of his employers, and who always finished a job within the stipulated time. He did not confine himself to mill-work, but was ready to undertake all sorts of machinery connected with the draining of mines, the pumping of water, the smelting of iron and copper, for which a demand was then rising, and became honorably known to his neighbors as "the Schemer." At first he had no journeyman or apprentice, and he cut the tree for his own timber. While working as an apprentice, he had taught himself to write in a clumsy, half-illegible way—he never learnt to spell—and when he had been thirteen years in business, he would still charge an employer his day's work at two shillings for cutting a big tree, for a mill-shaft or for other use. When he was called to exercise his skill at a distance upon some machinery, he added a charge of sixpence a day for extra expenses.
When the brothers John and Thomas Wedgwood, potters in a small way at the outset of their famous career, desired to increase the supply of flint-powder, they called "the Schemer" to their aid, and the success of the flint-mill Brindley then erected brought him business in the potteries from that time forward.
About this time, also, a Manchester man was being married to a young lady of mark in the potteries, and, during the wedding festivities, conversation once turned on the cleverness of the young millwright of Leek. The Manchester man wondered whether he was clever enough to get the water out of some hopelessly drowned coal mines of his, and thought he should like to see him. Brindley was sent for, told the case and its hitherto insuperable difficulties, went into a brown study, then suddenly brightened up, and told in what way he thought that, without great expense, the difficulty might be conquered. The gist of his plan was to use the fall of the river Irwell, that formed one boundary of the estate, and pump the water from the pits by means of the greater power of the water in the river. His suggestion was thought good, and, being set to work upon this job, he drove a tunnel through six hundred yards of solid rock, and by the tunnel brought the river down upon the breast of an immense water-wheel, fixed in a chamber thirty feet below the surface of the ground; the water, when it had turned the wheel, was carried on into the lower level of the Irwell. That wheel, with its pumps, working night and day, soon cleared the drowned outworkings of the mine; and for the invention and direction of this valuable engineering work, he seems only to have charged his workman's wages of two shillings a day.
An engineer from London had been brought down to superintend the building of a new silk-mill at {241} Congleton, and Brindley was employed under him to make the water-wheel and do the common work of his trade. The engineer from London got his work into a mess, and at last was obliged to confess his inability to carry out his plan. "The Schemer" Brindley was applied to by the perplexed proprietor. Could he put the confusion straight? James Brindley asked to see the plans; but the great engineer refused to show them to a common millwright. "Well, then," said Brindley to the proprietor of the mill, "tell me exactly what you want the machinery to do, and I will try to contrive what will do it. But you must leave me free to work in my own way." He was told the results desired, and not only achieved them, but achieved much more, adding new contrivances, which afterward proved of the greatest value.
After this achievement, Brindley was employed by the now prospering potters to build flint-mills of more power upon a new plan of his own. One of the largest was that built for Mr. Baddely, of which work there is record in such trade entries of his as "March 15, 1757. With Mr. Baddely to Matherso about a now" (new) "flint-mill upon a windey day 1 day 3s. 6d. March 19 draing a plann 1 day 2s. 6d. March 23 draing a plann and to sat out the wheelrace 1 day 4s."
At this time Brindley is also exercising his wit on an attempt at an improved steam-engine; but though his ideas are good, it is hard to bring them into continuously good working order, and after the close of entries about it in his memorandum-book, when it seems to have broken down for a second time, he underlines the item "to Run about a Drinking Is. 6d." But he confined his despair to the loss of a day and the expenditure of eighteen pence. Not long afterward he had developed a patent of his own, and erected, in 1763, for the Walker Colliery at Newcastle, a steam-engine wholly of iron, which was pronounced the most "complete and noble piece of iron-work" that had up to that time been produced. But the perfecting of the steam-engine was then safe in the hands of Watt, and Brindley had already turned into his own path as the author of our English canal system.
The young Duke of Bridgewater, vexed in love by the frailty of fair woman, had abjured interest in their sex, had gone down to his estate of Worsley, on the borders of Chat Moss, and, to give himself something more wholesome to think about than the sisters Gunning and their fortunes, conferred with John Gilbert, his land steward, as to the possibility of cutting a canal by which the coals found upon his Worsley estate might be readily taken to market at Manchester. Manchester then was a rising town, of which the manufacturers were yet unaided by the steam-engine, and there was no coal smoke but that which arose from household fires. The roads out of Manchester were so bad as to be actually closed in winter, and in summer the coal, sold at the pit mouth by the horse-load, was conveyed on horses' backs at an addition to its cost of nine or ten shillings a ton.
When the duke discussed with Gilbert old abandoned and new possible schemes of water conveyance for his Worsley coal, Gilbert advised the calling in of the ingenious James Brindley of Leek, "the Schemer." When the duke came into contact with Brindley, he at once put trust in him, and gave him the direction of the proposed work; whereupon he was requested to base his advice upon what he enters in his memorandum-book of jobs done, as an "ochilor," (ocular) "servey or a ricconitering."
Brindley examined the ground, and formed his own plan. He was against carrying the canal down into Irwell by a flight of locks, and so up again on the other side to the proposed level, but counselled carrying the canal by solid embankments and a stone aqueduct right over the river upon one {242} level throughout. The duke accepted his opinion, and had plans prepared for a new application to parliament, Brindley often staying with him at work and in consultation for weeks together, while still travelling to and fro in full employment upon mills, water-wheels, cranes, fire-engines, and other mechanical work. Small as his pay was, he lived frugally. He had by this time even saved a little money, and gained credit enough to be able, by borrowing from a friend at Leek, to pay between five and six hundred pounds for a fourth share of an estate at Turnhurst, in Staffordshire, supposed by him to be full of minerals.
The Duke of Bridgewater obtained his act in the year 1760, but the bold and original part of Brindley's scheme, which many ridiculed as madness, caused the duke much anxiety. In England there had never been so great an aqueduct, but the scheme was not only for the carrying of water in a water-tight trunk of earth over an embankment, but also for the carrying of ships on a bridge of water over water. Brindley had no misgivings. To allay the duke's fears, he suggested calling in and questioning another engineer, who surprised the man of genius by ending an adverse report thus: "I have often heard of castles an the air; but never before saw where any of them were to be erected."
The duke, however, with all his hesitation, had most faith in the head of James Brindley, bade him go on in his own way, and resolved to run the risk of failure. And so, on a bridge of three arches, the canal was carried over the Irwell by the Barton aqueduct, thirty-nine feet above the river. The water was confined within a puddled channel, to prevent leakage, and the work is at this day as sound as it was when first constructed. For the safe carrying of water along the top of an earthen embankment, Brindley had relied upon the retaining powers of clay puddle. It was by help also of clay puddle that he carried the weight of the embankment safe over the ooze of Trafford Moss.
With great ingenuity, also, Brindley provided for the crossing of his canal by streams intercepting its course, without breach of his rule that it is unsafe to let such waters freely mix with the canal stream. Thus, to provide for the free passage of the Medlock without causing a rush into the canal, an ingenious form of weir was contrived, over which its waters flowed into a lower level, and thence down a well several yards deep, leading to a subterranean passage by which the stream was passed into the Irwell, near at hand. Arthur Young, who saw Brindley's canal soon after it was opened, said that "the whole plan of these works shows a capacity and extent of mind which foresees difficulties, and invents remedies in anticipation of possible evils. The connection and dependence of the parts upon each other are happily imagined; and all are exerted in concert, to command by every means the wished-for success." At the Worsley end Brindley constructed a basin, into which coal was brought from different workings of the mine by a subterranean water channel. Brindley also invented cranes for the more ready loading of the boats, laid down within the mines a system of underground railways leading from the face of the coal where the miners worked, to the wells that he had made at different points in the tunnels for shooting the coal down into the boats waiting below. He drained and ventilated with a water-bellows the lower parts of the mine. He improved the barges, invented water-weights, raising dams, riddles to wash the coal for the forges. At the Manchester end Brindley made equally ingenious arrangements for the easy delivery of the coal at the top of Castle Hill. At every turn in the work his inventive genius was felt. When the want of lime for the masonry was a serious impediment, Brindley discovered how to make, of a useless, unadhesive lime-marl, by tempering it and casting it in {243} moulds before burning, an excellent lime, a contrivance that alone saved the duke several thousands of pounds cost. When the water was let in, and the works everywhere stood firm, people of fashion flocked to see Brindley's canal, as "perhaps the greatest artificial curiosity in the world:" and writers spoke in glowing terms of the surprise with which they saw several barges of great burden drawn by a single mule or horse along a "river hung in the air," over another river flowing beneath.
As for Manchester, with the price of coal reduced one half, it was ready to make the best use of the steam-engine when it was established as the motive-power in our factories.
Within two months of the day, seventeenth of July, 1761, when the first boat-load of coals travelled over the Barton viaduct, Brindley's notes testify that he was at Liverpool "recconitoring" and by the end of September he was levelling for a proposed extension of his canal from Manchester to Liverpool, by joining it with the Mersey, eight miles below Warrington Bridge, whence there is a natural tideway to Liverpool, about fifteen miles distant. At that time there was not even a coach communication over the bad roads between Manchester and Liverpool, the first stage-coach having been started six years later, when it required six, and sometimes eight horses to pull it the thirty miles along the ruts and through the sloughs. The coach started from Liverpool early in the morning, breakfasted at Prescot, dined at Warrington, and reached Manchester by supper-time. From Manchester to Liverpool it made the return journey next day. The Duke of Bridgewater's proposed canal was strongly opposed as an antagonist interest by the Mersey and Irwell Navigation Company. The canal promised to take freights at half the price charged by the Navigation Company. A son of the Earl of Derby took the part of the "Old Navigators," and as the Duke of Bridgewater was a Whig, Brindley had to enter in his note-book that "the Toores" (Tories) had "mad had" (made head) "agane ye Duk." But at last his entry was: "ad a grate Division of 127 fort Duk 98 nos for t e Duke 29 Me Jorete," and the Duke's cause prospered during the rest of the contest.
Brindley bought a new suit of clothes to grace his part as principal engineering witness for the canal, and having upset his mind for some days by going to see Garrick play Richard the Third, (wherefore he declared against all further indulgence in that sort of excitement), he went to the committee-room duly provided with a bit of chalk in his pocket, and made good the saying that originated from his clear way of showing what he meant, upon the floor of the committee-room, that "Brindley and chalk would go through the world." When asked to produce a drawing of a proposed bridge, he said he had none, but could immediately get a model. Whereupon he went out and bought a large cheese, which he brought into the committee-room and cut into two equal parts, saying, "Here is my model." The two halves of the cheese represented the two arches of his bridge, the rest of the work connected with them he built with paper, with books, or with whatever he found ready to hand. Once when he had repeatedly talked about "puddling," some of the members wished to know what puddling was. Brindley sent out for a lump of clay, hollowed it into a trough, poured water in, and showed that it leaked out. Then he worked up the clay with water, going through the process of puddling in miniature, again made a trough of the puddled clay, filled it with water, and showed that it was water-tight. "Thus it is," he said, "that I form a water-tight trunk to carry water over rivers and valleys, wherever they cross the path of the canal."
And so the battle was fought, and the canal works completed at a total {244} cost of two hundred and twenty thousand pounds, of which Brindley was content to take as his share a rate of pay below that of an ordinary mechanic at the present day. The canal yielded an income which eventually reached eighty thousand pounds a year; but three and sixpence a day, and for a greater part of the time half a crown a day, was the salary of the man of genius by whom it was planned and executed. Yet Brindley was then able to get a guinea a day for services to others, though from the Duke of Bridgewater he never took more than a guinea a week, and had not always that. The duke was investing all the money he could raise, and sometimes at his wit's end for means to go on with the work. Brindley gave his soul to the work for its own sake, and if he had a few pence to buy himself his dinner with—one day he enters only "ating and drinking 6d."—he could live, content with having added not a straw's weight of impediment to the great enterprise he was bent with all the force of his great genius upon achieving. It gave him the advantage, also, of being able, as was most convenient, to treat with the duke on equal terms. He was invited as a canal maker to Hesse by offers of any payment he chose to demand, but stuck to the duke, who is said even to have been in debt to him for travelling and other expenses, which he had left unpaid with the answer, "I am much more distressed for money than you; however, as soon as I can recover myself, your services shall not go unrewarded." After Brindley's sudden death his widow applied in vain for sums which she said were due to her late husband.
The Staffordshire Grand Trunk Canal, Brindley's other great work, started from the duke's canal, near Runcorn, passed through the salt-making districts of Cheshire and the Pottery district, to unite the Severn with the Mersey by one hundred and forty miles of water-way. This canal went through five tunnels, one of them, that at Harecastle, being nearly three thousand yards long, a feature in the scheme accounted by many to be as preposterous as they had called his former "castle in the air." The work was done; bringing with it traffic, population, and prosperity into many half-savage midland districts. It gave comfort and ample employment in the Pottery district, while trebling the numbers of those whom it converted, from a half-employed and ill-paid set of savages, into a thriving community.
Once, when Brindley was demonstrating to a committee of the House of Commons the superior reliableness and convenience of equable canals as compared with rivers, liable to every mischance of flood and drought, he was asked by a member, "What, then, he took to be the use of navigable rivers?" and replied, "To make canal navigations, to be sure!" From the Grand Trunk, other canals branched, and yet others were laid out by Brindley before he died. He found time when at the age of fifty to marry a girl of nineteen, and the house then falling vacant on the estate of Turnhurst, of which he had, for the sake of its minerals, bought a fourth share, and by that time had a colliery at work, he took his wife home as the mistress of that old, roomy dwelling. He was receiving better pay then as the engineer of the Grand Trunk Canal, and his new home was conveniently near to the workings of its great Harecastle Tunnel, into which he and his partners sent a short branch canal—of a mile and a half long—from their coal mine, which was only a few fields distant from his house.
Water, that made his greatness, was at last the death of Brindley. He got drenched one day while surveying a canal, went about in his wet clothes, and when he went to bed at the inn was put between damp sheets. This produced the illness of which he died, at the age of fifty-six. It was not the first time that he had taken to his bed. Scarcely able to read, and if he could have read, engaged on work so new that no book precedents could have {245} helped him, whenever Brindley had some difficulty to overcome that seemed for a time insuperable, he went to bed upon it, and is known to have stopped in bed two or three days, till he had quietly thought it all over, and worked his way to the solution. It is said that when he lay on his death-bed some eager canal undertakers urged to see him and seek from him the solution of a problem. They had met with a serious difficulty in the course of their canal, and must see Mr. Brindley and get his advice. They were admitted, and told him how at a certain place they had labored in vain to prevent their canal from leaking. "Then puddle it," murmured Brindley. "Sir, but we have puddled it." "Then"—and they were almost his last words in life—"puddle it again—and again." As he had wisely invested his savings in Grand Trunk shares, they and his share in the colliery enabled him to leave ample provision for his widow and two daughters.
As for the canal system that he established, it has not been made obsolete by its strong younger brother, the railway system. The duke's canal is as busy as ever. Not less than twenty million tons of traffic are at this date carried yearly upon the canals of England alone, and this quantity is steadily increasing.
We have taken the facts in this account of Brindley, from a delightful popular edition of that part of Mr. Smiles's Lives of the Engineers which tells of him and of the earlier water engineers. Of Mr. Smiles's Lives of George and Robert Stephenson there is a popular edition as a companion volume, and therein all may read, worthily told, the tale of the foundation and of the chief triumphs of that new form of engineering which dealt with water, not by the riverful, but by the bucketful, and made a few buckets of water strong as a river to sweep men and their goods and their cattle in a mighty torrent from one corner of the country to another.
A thistle grew in a sluggard's croft, Rough and rank with a thorny growth, With its spotted leaves, and its purple flowers (Blossoms of Sin, and bloom of Sloth); Slowly it ripened its baneful seeds, And away they went in swift gray showers. But every seed was cobweb winged, And they spread o'er a hundred miles of land. 'Tis centuries now since they first took flight, In that careless, gay, and mischievous band, Yet still they are blooming and ripening fast, And spreading their evil by day and night.
The History of our Lord as exemplified in Works of Art; with that of the Types, St. John the Baptist and other persons of the Old and New Testament. Commenced by the late Mrs. JAMESON; continued and completed by Lady EASTLAKE. 2 vols. London: Longman. 1864.
The series of works on Christian Art brought out by the late Mrs. Jameson, and which earned for her so high a reputation as an art critic, was conceived upon a plan of progressive interest and importance. From "Sacred and Legendary Art," published in 1848, she passed to the special legends connected with Monastic Orders, and in 1852 gave to the public her most charming volume, entitled "Legends of the Madonna." The series was to have closed with the subject of the volume now before us, and some progress had been made by Mrs. Jameson in collecting notes on various pictures, when, in the spring of 1860, death cut her labors short. The work, however, has passed into hands well able to complete it worthily. We may miss some of the freshness and genuine simplicity with which Mrs. Jameson was wont to transfer to paper rare impression made on her mind and heart; but Lady Eastlake, while bringing to her task the essential qualification of earnestness and exhibiting considerable grace and force of style, is possessed of a far wider and more critical acquaintance with the history of art than her amiable predecessor either had or pretended to have. It is pleasant to find in these pages, as in those which preceded them, the evidence of a desire to avoid controversial matter; and that, without compromise of personal conviction, care has been generally taken not to wound the feelings of those who differ from the writer in religious belief. The primary object of the work is aesthetic and artistic, not religious; and it is seldom that the laws of good taste are transgressed in its pages by gratuitous attacks upon the tenets of the great body of artists who are the immediate subject of criticism. Indeed, considering that these volumes are the production of a Protestant, we think that less of Protestant animus could hardly be shown, at all consistently with honesty of purpose and frankness of speech. That no traces of the Protestant spirit should appear, would be next to an impossibility; and the affectation of Catholic feeling, where it did not exist, would be offensive from its very unreality. So much self-control in traversing a vast extent of delicate and dangerous ground deserves all the more hearty acknowledgment, as it must have been peculiarly difficult to a person of Lady Eastlake's ardent temperament and evident strength of conviction. If, therefore, in the course of our remarks, we feel bound to point out the evil influence which Lady Eastlake's religious views seem to us to have exercised on her critical appreciations, it will be understood that theories, not persons, are the object of our animadversions. It is at all times an ungrateful task to expose the weak points of an author; it would be especially ungenerous to be hard upon the shortcomings of one who has done such good service to the cause of truth, in proving, however unconsciously, by the mere exercise of persistent candor, the identity of Christian and Catholic art. Catholics, indeed, do not ordinarily stand in need of such proof. If they know anything of art, the fact of this identity must be with them an early discovery; but it is gratifying, especially in a time and country in which scant justice on such matters is too often dealt out to us, to be able to adduce a {247} testimony the more valuable because given in despite of an adverse bias. It is quite possible, indeed, that the writer has not perceived the full import of her work; but no one, we think, can study her examples or weigh the force of her criticism with out coming to the true conclusion upon this subject.
But, before establishing the correctness of this assertion, we must draw attention to one point upon which we are at issue with Lady Eastlake: a point, moreover, of no small importance, as it vitally affects the value of a large part of her criticisms. A question arises at the outset, what standard or test of Christian art is to be set up; and Lady Eastlake makes an excellent start in the investigation. There is, perhaps, no principle so steadily kept in view throughout the work, or so often and earnestly insisted on, as this: that genuine Christian art and true Christian doctrine are intimately and essentially connected. Art is bound to depict only the truth in fact or doctrine (vol. ii., p. 266, note). Departure from sound theology involves heresy in art. Now, no principle can be more true than this, or of greater importance toward forming a correct judgment upon works professing to belong to Christian art. Beauty and truth are objectively identical, for beauty is only truth lighted up and harmonized by the reason; and to supernatural beauty, which Christian art essentially aims at expressing, supernatural truth must necessarily correspond. For here we have nothing to do with mere material beauty, "the glories of color, the feats of anatomical skill, the charms of chiaroscuro, the revels of free handling." Admirable as these are in themselves, and by no means, theoretically at least, injurious to Christian art, they belong properly to art as art, and are more or less separable from art as Christian. Christian art is never perfect as art, unless material beauty enters into the composition; but as Christianity is above art, and the soul superior to the body, so material beauty must never forget its place, never strive to obtain the mastery, or constitute itself the chief aim of the artist, upon pain of total destruction of the Christian element. The soul of Christian art is in the idea—the shadowing out by symbol or representation, under material forms and conditions, of immaterial, supernatural, even uncreated beauty, the beauty of heavenly virtue, or heavenly mystery or divinity itself. But how are these objects, in all their harmony, proportion, and splendor, to be realized—how is supernatural beauty to be conceived—except by a soul gifted with supernatural perceptions? Faith, at least, is indispensably requisite to the truthfulness of any artistic work intended to represent the supernatural. Without faith, distortion and caricature are inevitable. With faith—the foundation of all knowledge of the supernatural in this life—much, very much, may be accomplished. But it is when faith, enlivened and perfected by supernatural love, exercises itself in contemplation, that the spiritual sight becomes keen, and the soul, from having simply a just appreciation, passes to a vision of exquisite beauty, sublimity, and tenderness, which a higher perception of divine mysteries has laid open to its gaze. The hand may falter, and be faithless to the mental conception, so as to produce imperfect execution and inadequate artistic result. Faith and love do not make a man an artist. But, amidst deformity or poverty of art in the material element, if there is any, however slight, artistic power employed, the outward defects will be qualified, and almost transformed, to the eye of an appreciating spectator, through the inner power which speaks from the painter's soul to his own: just as we learn to overlook, or even to admire, plain features, and anything short of positive ugliness of outline, in those whose mental greatness and moral beauty we have learned to venerate and to love. On the other hand, any amount of material perfection in contour and color is insipid as a doll, {248} a mere mask of nothingness, incapable of arresting attention or captivating the heart, unless within there be a soul of beauty—that inward excellence which subordinates to itself, while it gives life and meaning to, the outward form. On the side of the object, truth; on the part of the spectator, faith and love—these are the palmary conditions of Christian art and its appreciation. For it must ever be remembered that supernatural truth lies beyond the ken of any but souls elevated by faith; and, what is of equal importance, that faith can have no other object than the truth. Its object is infallible truth, or it is not faith. No wonder, then, that, when we see a prodigality of manual skill and grace of form, and even moral beauty of the natural order, devoid of the inspiration of supernatural faith and love, we are forced to exclaim with St. Gregory, as he gazed on the fair Saxon youths, Heit proh dolor! quod tam lucidi vultus homines tenebrarum auctor possideret, tantaque gratia frontis conspicui mentem ab aeterna gratia vacuam gestarent. [Footnote 51] Alas! that so much physical beauty should embody nothing but a pagan idea! It were as unreasonable to look for Christian art as the product of an heretical imagination, as to demand Christian eloquence or Christian poetry from an heretical preacher or a free-thinking poet. The vision is wanting, the appreciation is not there—how, then, is the expression possible?
[Footnote 51: "Alas! what pain it is to think that men of such bright countenance should be the possession of the Prince of Darkness; and that though conspicuous for surprising grace of feature, they should bear a soul within untenanted by everlasting grace."]
Nor is this a mere abstract theory, erected on a priori principles. It would be easy to verify our position by a large induction from the history of art. Is there a picture whose mute eloquence fills the soul with reverential awe, or holy joy, or supernatural calm, or deep, deep sympathy with the sufferings of our Lord, or the sorrows of his Immaculate Mother, we may be sure the painter was some humble soul, ascetical and pious, who, like Juan de Joanes, or Zurbaran, spent his days in lifelong seclusion, given up to the grave and holy thoughts which their pictures utter to us; or that other Spaniard, Luis de Vargas, famed alike for his austerity and amiable Christian gaiety; or a Sassoferrato, or a Van Eyck, seeking in, holy communion the peace of soul which can alone reflect the calmness of sanctity, or the bliss of celestial scenes; or the holy friar, John of Fiesoli, known to all as the Angelic whose heroic humility and Christian simplicity, learned in a life of prayer and contemplation, invest his pictures with an unearthly charm. These, and many another pious painter, known or unknown by name to men, looked on their vocation as a holy trust, and sought to keep themselves unspotted from the world. Theirs was the practical maxim so dear to the blessed Angelico, that "those who work for Christ must dwell in Christ." On the other hand, does a picture, albeit Christian in subject and in name, offend us by false sentiment, or cold conventionalism, or sensuality, or affectation, or strain after theatrical effect, or any of the hundred forms which degraded art exhibits when it has wandered from the Christian type—we know that we are looking on the handiwork of some schismatic Greek, or modern Protestant; or that, if the painter be a Catholic, he lived in the days or wrought under the influence of the Renaissance, when paganism made its deadly inroads upon art, substituting the spirit of voluptuousness for the sweet and austere graces that spring of divine charity; or under the blighting influence of Jansenism, which killed alike that queenly virtue and her sister humility by false asceticism and pharisaic rigor. We might even trust the decision as to the truthfulness of our view to an inspection of the examples with which Lady Eastlake has so abundantly illustrated her volumes. Indeed, hitherto her principle and ours are one.
{249}But unfortunately, though the major premise of the art-syllogism is granted on both sides, Lady Eastlake adopts a minor, from which we utterly dissent. It is implied in one and all of the following statements, and is more or less interwoven with the whole staple of her work. She tells us that "the materials for this history in art are only properly derivable from Scripture, and therefore referable back to the same source for verification" (vol. i., p. 3). And again: "It may be at once laid down as a principle, that the interests of art and the integrity of Scripture [by integrity is meant literal adherence to the text of Scripture] are indissolubly united. Where superstition mingles, the quality of Christian art suffers; where doubt enters, Christian art has nothing to do. It may even be averred that, if a person could be imagined, deeply imbued with aesthetic instincts and knowledge, and utterly ignorant of Scripture, he would yet intuitively prefer, as art, all those conceptions of our Lord's history which adhere to the simple text. … All preference for the simple narrative of Scripture he would arrive at through art—all condemnation of the embroideries of legend through the same channel" (vol. i., p. 6). And again: "The simplicity of art and of the Gospel stand or fall together. The literal narrative of the agony in the garden lost sight of, all became confusion and error" (vol. ii., p. 30).
Now, whatever obscurity and confusion these passages contain—and they do contain a great deal—one thing is unmistakably clear, that the orthodoxy of the ultra-Protestant maxim, "The Bible and the Bible only," is a fixed principle with Lady Eastlake. And the consequence is, that, whenever she looks at a religious picture, she refers to the Gospel narrative for its verification. If it does not stand this test, it is nowhere in her esteem. What is not in Scripture is legendary and unartistic, because necessarily at variance with scriptural truth. Thus whole provinces of art in connection with our Lord are banished from her pages. Surely such a canon of taste is not only narrow, but arbitrary: narrow, as excluding whatever comes down to us hallowed by tradition, considered apart from or beyond the limits of scriptural statement; arbitrary, because it leaves art at the mercy of the sects, with their manifold dissensions as to the extent of Scripture, or its true interpretation. Thus, Lady Eastlake, being herself no believer in the doctrine of the real presence, does not recognize its enunciation in the sacred pages, and loses, apparently, all interest in the great pictures which symbolize or relate to the most holy sacrament of the altar. So, too, most of the special devotions to the person of our Lord, which have sprung out of the living faith of the church, and have furnished subjects for pictures incontestably of a high order, are totally omitted from her classification of devotional compositions. We can hardly imagine it possible for her to adhere consistently to her rule in other departments of Christian art. The Immaculate Conception, for instance, the Assumption, the Coronation of our Lady, the marriage of St. Catherine, the stigmata of St. Francis, the vision of St. Dominic, the miracles of the saints—subjects, many of which have inspired some of the noblest productions of her favorite Fra Angelico, or of Raphael, or Murillo, or Velasquez—undoubtedly do violence to her criteria of artistic merit, though we cannot believe that she would contest their universally acknowledged claim to the highest honors in Christian art. Indeed, fidelity to this narrow Protestant maxim would have rendered these two volumes an impossibility. Strange, then, that it should not have occurred to the mind of the authoress that by far the larger part, and, on her own showing, the most glorious part, of the fraternity of Christian artists have been men full to overflowing of the spirit of a church which has never adopted her standard of orthodoxy.
{250}The Catholic Church is at once the parent, historically, of all Christian art and the upholder of that grand principle of tradition which gives to art, no less than to doctrine, a range far wider and more ample than the mere letter of the biblical records. Of course, contradiction of Scripture, or "alterations of the text, which, however slight, affect the revealed character of our Lord," must give offence to every judicious critic; but it is tradition and the voice of the living Church—together with that instinctive sense of the faithful which, so long as they live in submission to their divinely-appointed teachers, is so marvellously true and unerring—that must be the criteria of orthodoxy, and determine when the artist's conceptions or mode of treatment are contrary to, or in accordance with, the spirit of the sacred text.
Lady Eastlake does not like the notion of our Lord's falling under the cross. It is not in the Bible, and she pronounces it to be counter to the spirit and purport of the Gospel narrative. She grows positively angry with some painters for having represented an angel holding the chalice, surmounted by a cross or host, before the eyes of our blessed Redeemer in his agony. She has her own standard of feeling, abstract and arbitrary, to which she refers the decision of such points. But where is the guarantee for the correctness of that standard, or the security for its general acceptance? The Bible does not tell us what its own spirit and purport are, and outside the Bible Lady Eastlake, at least, cannot point to any infallible authority. She is, therefore, imposing her own judgment, unsupported by any assigned reason, upon the world, as a rule to be followed. So, too, St. Veronica to her is always de trop, morally and pictorially, in the Way of the Cross; and scholastic interpretations, seemingly because they are scholastic, of the types of the Old Testament, are invariably pronounced by her to be strained, unreal, and superstitious. So effectually does Protestantism interfere with the capacity of a critic to appreciate the higher developments and fuller expression of Christian art.
Not that a Protestant or a free-thinker can have no sense at all of the supernaturally beautiful. If they are trained to a high degree of moral and intellectual cultivation in the natural order, and in proportion to the height of their attainments in that order, they will not fail to be affected by beauty of a superior order. For there is no contradiction between the truth of nature and the truth which is above nature. The Protestant, indeed, as sincerely holding large fragments of Christian truth, will necessarily have much sympathy with many exhibitions of supernatural beauty. But he lacks the clue to it as a whole; and if he can often admire, rarely, if ever, can he create. Both Protestant and unbeliever must therefore labor under much vagueness and uncertainty of judgment, inasmuch as they can have no fixity of principle. Often they will not know what they want; they will praise in one page what they condemn in the next; or, when moved, will be at a loss to account for their emotion. They will exhibit phenomena not unlike those so often presented in this country by unbelievers, who, entering our churches, are one while overawed by a presence they cannot define, and which bewilders their intellect, whilst it captivates their imagination; and another while, as unaccountably, are moved to disgust and derision by what to them is an insoluble riddle, a perplexity, and an annoyance. To such critics some phases of the supernatural will never be welcome. The tortures of the martyrs, the self-inflicted macerations of ascetics, the sublime self-abandonment of heroic charity—whatever, in a word, embodies and brings home the grand, sacred, but, to the natural man, repugnant idea of the cross, will always be offensive, and produce a sense of irritation, such as even Lady Eastlake, with all her {251} self-mastery and good taste, cannot wholly suppress or conceal. So true is it in the sphere of Christian art, as in that of Christian doctrine and devotion, Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. Casual excitement, transient enthusiasm, unmeaning admiration, are at best the pitiful substitutes for an intelligent and abiding appreciation of excellence, in those who are not possessed of supernatural ideas in common with the subjects and authors of the works of genuine Christian art.
It would be unfair, however, not to mention that Lady Eastlake admits many important modifications of this rigid principle of adherence to the letter of Scripture. The following secondary canons go far to soften down the asperity of her Protestantism. They shall be stated in her own words:
"On the other hand, additions to Scripture given in positive images, if neither prejudicial to art nor inconsistent with our Lord's character, are not in themselves necessarily objectionable; but will, according to their merits, be looked upon with indulgence or admiration. The pictures, for instance, representing the disrobing of our Lord—a fact not told in Scripture, yet which must have happened—will be regarded with pathetic interest. The same will be felt of Paul Delaroche's exquisite little picture, where St. John is leading the Virgin home; for such works legitimately refresh and carry on the narrative in a scriptural spirit. Nay, episodes which are more purely invention—such as the ancient tradition of the Mother of Christ wrapping the cloth round her son, previous to his crucifixion; or, again, the picture by Paul Delaroche, of the agony of her and of the disciples, represented as gathered together in a room while Christ passes with his cross—even such imaginary episodes will silence the most arrant Protestant criticism, by their overpowering appeal to the feelings; since in neither case is the great duty of art to itself or to its divine object tampered with.
"The same holds good where symbolical forms, as in Christian art of classic descent, are given, which embody the idea rather than the fact. For instance, where the Jordan is represented as a river god, with his urn under his arm, at the baptism of our Lord; or when, later, the same event is accompanied by the presence of angels, who hold the Saviour's garments. Such paraphrases and poetical imaginings in no way affect the truth of the facts they set forth, but rather, to mortal fancy, swell their pomp and dignity.
"Still less need the lover of art and adorer of Christ care about inconsistencies in minor matters. As, for example, that the entombment takes place in a renaissance monument, in the centre of a beautiful Italian landscape, and not in a cave in a rock in the arid scenery of Judea. On the contrary, it is right that art should exercise the utmost possible freedom in such circumstances, which are the signs and handwriting of different schools and times, and enrich a picture with sources of interest to the historian and the archaeologist. It is the moral expression which touches the heart and adorns the tale, not the architecture or costume; and whether our Lord be in the garb of a Roman citizen or of a German burgher (though his dress is usually conventional in color and form), it matters not, if he be but God in all."
The arbitrariness of the principles set forth in the earlier portion of this passage, and the quiet assumption that all ancient traditions are pure inventions, may well be excused by the reader for the sake of the inconsistency which saves from condemnation not a few glorious pictures, which could never otherwise have been made to square with the rule of literal adherence to the Gospel narrative.
Another principle essential to the right appreciation of art is admirably stated by Lady Eastlake:
"All will agree that the duty of the Christian artist is to give not only the {252} temporary fact, but the permanent truth. Yet this entails a discrepancy to which something must be sacrificed. For, in the scenes from our Lord's life, fact and truth are frequently at variance. That the Magdalen took our Lord for a gardener, was the fact; that he was Christ, is the truth. That the Roman soldiers believed him to be a criminal, and therefore mocked and buffeted him without scruple, is the fact; that we know him through all these scenes to be the Christ, is the truth. Nay, the very cruciform nimbus that encircles Christ's head is an assertion of this principle. As visible to us, it is true; as visible even to his disciples, it is false. There are, however, educated people so little versed in the conditions of art, as to object even to the nimbus, as a departure from fact, and, therefore, an offence to truth; preferring, they say, to see our Lord represented as he walked upon earth. But this is a fallacy in more than one sense. Our Lord, as he walked upon earth, was not known to be the Messiah. To give him as he was seen by men who knew him not, would be to give him not as the Christ. It may be urged that the cruciform nimbus is a mere arbitrary sign, nothing in itself more than a combination of lines. This is true; but there must be something arbitrary in all human imaginings (we should prefer to say symbolizings) of the supernatural. Art, for ages, assumed this sign as that of the Godhead of Christ, and the world for ages granted it. It served various purposes; it hedged the rudest representations of Christ round with a divinity, which kept them distinct from all others. It pointed him out to the most ignorant spectator, and it identified the sacred head, even at a distance."
This principle may, indeed, be legitimately extended much further. The purpose of Christian art is instruction, either in morals or in dogma, or in both. It is not, therefore, a sin in art to sacrifice upon occasion some portion of historical truth, in subservience to this end. Nor in fact, in Catholic ages, was there danger of the people being led into error on the fundamental facts of religion. The Gospel narrative was too familiar to them for that. They seem, as is well remarked by Father Cahier, to have had hearts more elevated than ours, and more attuned by meditation and habitual catholicity of spirit to mystery, and its sublimer lessons; and therefore, whenever we find in early paintings what seems to us anomalous in an historic point of view, we may conclude with safety that there was a dogmatic intention.
There are, however, limits to liberties of this kind, which may not be transgressed without incurring censure. Overbold speculation has ere now betrayed even orthodox theologians into accidental error. And a Catholic artist may depict, as a Catholic schoolman may enunciate, views which deserve to be stigmatized as rash, offensive, erroneous, scandalous, or even, in themselves, heretical. There have been occasions in which the Church has felt herself bound to interfere with wanderings of the artistic imagination, as injurious, morally or doctrinally, to the faithful committed to her charge. Nor have theologians failed to protest from time to time against similar abuses. Bellarmine frowned upon the muse in Christian art. Savonarola, in his best days, made open war upon the pagan corruptions which in his time had begun to abound in Florentine paintings. Father Canisius denounces those painters as inexcusable who, in the face of Scripture, represent our Lady as swooning at the foot of the cross; and Father de Ligny reprobates, on the same grounds, the introduction of St. Joseph into pictures of the meeting between the Blessed Virgin and St. Elizabeth. For—whatever we may think as to his having accompanied our Lady on the journey—had he been present at the interview, he would have been enlightened upon the mystery, his ignorance of which afterward threw him into such perplexity.
{253}As to the order of the work, Lady Eastlake gives ample explanation in the preface:
"In the short programme left by Mrs. Jameson, the ideal and devotional subjects, such as the Good Shepherd, the Lamb, the Second Person of the Trinity, were placed first; the scriptural history of our Lord's life on earth next; and, lastly, the types from the Old Testament. There is reason, however, to believe, from the evidence of what she had already written, that she would have departed from this arrangement. After much deliberation, I have ventured to do so, and to place the subjects chronologically. The work commences, therefore, with that which heads most systems of Christian art—The Fall of Lucifer and Creation of the World—followed by the types and prophets of the Old Testament. Next comes the history of the Innocents and of John the Baptist, written by her own hand, and leading to the Life and Passion of our Lord. The abstract and devotional subjects, as growing out of these materials, then follow, and the work terminates with the Last Judgment."
Mrs. Jameson's own share in the work is confined mainly to some of the types, the histories specified above, and familiar scenes in the earlier portions of the Gospel narrative, including a few of the miracles and parables of our Lord. The notes are fragmentary, but written in her usual interesting and lively style. How refreshing, for instance, and characteristic are the following comments upon some pictures representing the dismissal of Hagar and Ishmael at the imperious request of Sarah:
"I believe the most celebrated example is the picture by Guercino, in the Brera; but I do not think it deserves its celebrity—the pathetic is there alloyed with vulgarity of character. I remember that, when I first saw this picture, I could only think of the praises lavished on it by Byron and others, as the finest expression of deep, natural pathos to be found in the whole range of art. I fancied, as many do, that I could see in it the beauties so poetically described. Some years later, when I saw it again, with a more cultivated eye and taste, my disappointment was great. In fact, Abraham is much more like an unfeeling old beggar than a majestic patriarch, resigned to the divine will, yet struck to the heart by the cruel necessity under which he was acting. Hagar cries like a housemaid turned off without wages or warning, and Ishmael is merely a blubbering boy. For expression, the picture by Govaert Hiricke (Berlin Gallery, 815) seems to me much superior; the look of appealing anguish in the face of Hagar as she turns to Abraham, and points to her weeping boy, reaches to the tragic in point of conception, but Ishmael, if very natural, with his fist in his eye, is also rather vulgar. Rembrandt's composition is quite dramatic, and, in his manner, as fine as possible. Hagar, lingering on the step of the dwelling whence she is rejected, weeps reproachfully; Ishmael, in a rich Oriental costume, steps on before, with the boyish courage of one destined to become an archer and a hunter in the wilderness, and the father of a great and even yet unconquered nation; in the background Sarah is seen looking out of the window at her departing rival, with exultation in her face."
Those who are acquainted with Italian paintings of the 15th century must have remarked the frequency with which the great masters of the Tuscan school in that era treat the subject of "The Massacre of the Innocents." Though our Lord is not an actor in the scene, it is intimately connected with his history. The Innocents were the first martyrs in his cause, and from the earliest times attracted the veneration and tender affection of Christians. Painful as the subject is, it affords scope for the exercise of the highest tragic power. The mere fact that Herod's sword swept the nurseries of Bethlehem, though necessarily entering into the picture, becomes subordinate to the {254} sorrow which then started into life in so many mothers' hearts. That is the point made most prominent in the Gospel by the citation of the pathetic words of Jeremias in the prophecy: "In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentations, and weeping, and great mourning. Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not." The mind is carried back to the time when the very sound of those tottering feet sufficed to waken the pulses of love in the mother's bosom; when those confiding hands were ever locked in hers. How dear had been the pretty prattle of those little ones, the first stammerings of the tongue, the silvery laughter, even the cries of passion or of pain! Hitherto all had bsen sunshine, or once and again the shadow of some light cloud had drifted across the face of heaven; but now agony comes on the wings of the whirlwind—a pitiless storm that leaves nothing but blank, broken hearts behind. Here we see a bereaved mother, wildly passionate, tossing her frantic arms heavenward; we almost fancy we hear her rave and moan. There we mark the wandering footsteps, no longer obedient to the helm of reason. Another, with clasped hands, kneels, gazing on the purple stains which dye the ivory limbs of her slaughtered darling. Or the eye rests with awful compassion on a standing figure, another speechless Niobe, pale and unconscious as a statue, still pressing her dead infant to her breast. Upon one or two upturned faces a light has broken; the grand thought seems just to have flashed upon their souls —that the purple stains are the dye of martyrdom, destined by a loving Providence to adorn a robe of unfading glory. And so sorrow passes almost into joy, and the imagination reaches forward to another sorrowful Mother —Mother of sorrows—who is to sit in desolation, yet mastering her deep woe, and, with a sacrificing love that transcends resignation, entering into and uniting herself with the mysterious designs of God. In spite, however, of the interest of the subject, for ages it was rarely depicted. Mrs. Jameson gives the following account of its sudden rise into general favor:"All at once, however, in the latter half of the 15th century—that is, after 1450—we find the subject of the Holy Innocents assuming an extraordinary degree of popularity and importance. Then, for the first time, we find chapels dedicated to them, and groups of martyred children in altar-pieces round the throne of Christ or the Virgin. From this period we have innumerable examples of the terrible scene of the massacre at Bethlehem, treated as a separate subject in pictures and prints, while the best artists vied with each other in varying and elaborating the details of circumstantial cruelty and frantic despair.
"For a long time, I could not comprehend how this came about, nor how it happened that through all Italy, especially in the Tuscan schools, a subject so ghastly and so painful should have assumed this sort of prominence. The cause, as it gradually revealed itself, rendered every picture more and more interesting; connecting them with each other, and showing how intimately the history of art is mixed up with the life of a people.
"There had existed at Florence, from the 13th century, a hospital for foundlings, the first institution of the kind in Europe. It was attached to the Benedictine monastery of San Gallo, near one of the gates of the city still bearing the name. In the 15th century, when the population and extent of the city had greatly increased, it was found that this hospital was too small, and the funds of the monastery quite inadequate to the purpose. Then Lionardo Buruni, of Arezzo, who was twice chancellor of Florence—the same Lionardo who gave to Ghiberti the subjects of his famous gates—filled with compassion for the orphans and neglected children, addressed the senate on the subject, and made such an affecting appeal in their behalf, that not the senate only, but the whole people of {255} Florence, responded with enthusiasm, frequently interrupting him with cries of 'Viva Messer Lionardo d'Arezzo!' 'And,' adds the historian, 'never was a question of importance carried with such [more] quickness and unanimity' (mai con maggior celerità e pienezza de' voti fu vinto partito di cosa grave come questa). Large sums were voted, offerings flowed in, a superb hospital was founded, and Brunelleschi was appointed architect. When finished, which was not till 1444, it was solemnly dedicated to the 'Holy Innocents.' The first child consigned to the new institution was a poor little female infant, on whose breast was pinned the name 'Agata,' in remembrance of which an altar in the chapel was dedicated to St. Agatha. We have proof that the foundation, progress, and consecration of this refuge for destitute children excited the greatest interest and sympathy, not only in Florence, but in the neighboring states, and that it was imitated in Pisa, Arezzo, and Siena. The union of the two hospitals of San Gallo and the 'Innocenti' took place in 1463. Churches and chapels were appended to the hospitals, and, as a matter of course, the painters and sculptors were called upon to decorate them. Such are the circumstances which explain, as I think, the popularity of the story of the Innocents in the 15th century, and the manner in which it occupied the minds of the great cotemporary artists of the Tuscan school, and others after them."
We cannot pretend to decide upon the truth of this supposed connection between the establishment of an institution to minister to the wants of the forsaken and the development of a special branch of Christian art. Whether true or not, this much is certain, that it is in keeping with a multitude of instances which go to prove how favorable the practice of Catholic charity is to the progress of the arts. Love ever pours itself around in streams of radiance, lighting up whole regions which lie beyond its immediate object. It copies the creative liberality of God, who, in providing us with what is necessary for subsistence, surrounds us at the same time with a thousand superfluous manifestations of beauty.
But it is time to pass on to the second volume of this history, which we owe almost entirely to the pen of Lady Eastlake. It is mainly occupied with the Passion of our Lord; and certainly the diligent attention paid by the authoress to this subject, and the judgment displayed in the arrangement of the narrative and the selection of examples, cannot be too highly commended. The style is generally clear, simple, and earnest. Always dignified, it sometimes rises to eloquence, as in the description of Rembrandt's etching of the "Ecce Homo," and in the following criticism of Leonardo da Vinci's celebrated "Last Supper." After a clever disquisition on the difficulties of the subject, and the conditions essential to its effective treatment, she thus proceeds:
"We need not say who did fulfil these conditions, nor whose Last Supper it is—all ruined and defaced as it may be—which alone arouses the heart of the spectator as effectually as that incomparable shadow in the centre has roused the feelings of the dim forms on each side of him. Leonardo da Vinci's Cena, to all who consider this grand subject through the medium of art, is the Last Supper—there is no other. Various representations exist, and by the highest names in art, but they do not touch the subtle spring. Compared with this chef d'oeuvre, their Last Suppers are mere exhibitions of well-drawn, draped, or colored figures, in studiously varied attitudes, which excite no emotion beyond the admiration due to these qualities. It is no wonder that Leonardo should have done little or nothing more after the execution, in his forty-sixth year, of that stupendous picture. It was not in man not to be fastidious, who had such an unapproachable standard of his own {256} powers perpetually standing in his path.
"Let us now consider this figure of Christ more closely.
"It is not sufficient to say that our Lord has just uttered this sentence, viz., 'Verily, verily, I say unto you, one of you shall betray me;' we must endeavor to define in what, in his own person, the visible proof of his having spoken consists. The painter has cast the eyes down—an action which generally detracts from the expression of a face. Here, however, no such loss is felt. The outward sight, it is true, is in abeyance, but the intensest sense of inward vision has taken its place. Our Lord is looking into himself—that self which knew 'all things,' and therefore needed not to lift his mortal lids to ascertain what effect his words had produced. The honest indignation of the apostles, the visible perturbation of the traitor, are each right in their place, and for the looker-on, but they are nothing to him. Thus here at once the highest power and refinement of art is shown, by the conversion of what in most hands would have been an insipidity into the means of expression best suited to the moment. The inclination of the head, and the expression of every feature, all contribute to the same intention. This is not the heaviness or even the repose of previous silence. On the contrary, the head has not yet risen, nor the muscles of the face subsided from the act of mournful speech. It is just that evanescent moment which all true painters yearn to catch, and which few but painters are wont to observe—when the tones have ceased, but the lips are not sealed—when, for an instant, the face repeats to the eye what the voice has said to the ear. No one who has studied that head can doubt that our Lord has just spoken: the sounds are not there, but they have not travelled far into space.
"Much, too, in the general speech of this head is owing to the skill with which, while conveying one particular idea, the painter has suggested no other. Beautiful as the face is, there is no other beauty but that which ministers to this end. We know not whether the head be handsome or picturesque, masculine or feminine in type—whether the eye be liquid, the cheek ruddy, the hair smooth, or the beard curling—as we know with such painful certainty in other representations. All we feel is, that the wave of one intense meaning has passed over the whole countenance, and left its impress alike on every part. Sorrow is the predominant expression—that sorrow which, as we have said in our Introduction, distinguishes the Christian's God, and which binds him, by a sympathy no fabled deity ever claimed, with the fallen and suffering race of Adam. His very words have given himself more pain than they have to his hearers, and a pain he cannot expend in protestations as they do, for this, as for every other act of his life, came he into the world.
"But we must not linger with the face alone; no hands ever did such intellectual service as those which lie spread on that table. They, too, have just fallen into that position—one so full of meaning to us, and so unconsciously assumed by him—and they will retain it no longer than the eye which is down and the head which is sunk. A special intention on the painter's part may be surmised in the opposite action of each hand: the palm of the one so graciously and bountifully open to all who are weary and heavy-laden; the other averted, yet not closed, as if deprecating its own symbolic office. Or we may consider their position as applicable to this particular scene only; the one hand saying, 'Of those that thou hast given me none is lost,' and the other, which lies near Judas, 'except the son of perdition.' Or, again, we may give a still narrower definition, and interpret this averted hand as directing the eye, in some sort, to the hand of Judas, which lies nearest it, 'Behold, the hand of him that {257} betrayeth me is with me on the table.' Not that the science of Christian iconography has been adopted here, for the welcoming and condemning functions of the respective hands have been reversed—in reference, probably, to Judas, who sits on our Lord's right. Or we may give up attributing symbolic intentions of any kind to the painter—a source of pleasure to the spectator more often justifiable than justified—and simply give him credit for having, by his own exquisite feeling alone, so placed the hands as to make them thus minister to a variety of suggestions. Either way, these grand and pathetic members stand as preeminent as the head in the pictorial history of our Lord, having seldom been equalled in beauty of form, and never in power of speech.
"Thus much has been said upon this figure of our Lord, because no other representation approaches so near the ideal of his person. Time, ignorance, and violence have done their worst upon it; but it may be doubted whether it ever suggested more overpowering feelings than in its present battered and defaced condition, scarcely now to be called a picture, but a fitter emblem of him who was 'despised and rejected of men.'"
Perhaps there is no other passage in the work so lovingly elaborated as this. Rivalling in energy, it surpasses in delicate discrimination even such brilliant criticisms as that of the eloquent Count de Montalembert on Fra Angelico's "Last Judgment"—a criticism which must have struck all readers of "Vandalism and Catholicism in Art" as worthy of the painting it describes. But the mention of the blessed friar of Fiesoli reminds us that he is a special favorite with Lady Eastlake also. The spell of his tender and reverent contemplations has told upon her with considerable power, to an extent, indeed, which makes her scarcely just toward Raphael himself. Several graphic pages are devoted to a description of Fra Angelico's "Last Judgment." His "Adoration of the Cross" also is dwelt upon with much affection, and in great detail. But our readers will be enabled, we hope, to form some idea of the feelings with which Lady Eastlake regards this most Christian of all artists, from the shorter extracts which we subjoin. After criticizing a fine fresco by Giotto of "Christ washing the Disciples' feet," she thus comments upon Fra Angelico's treatment of the same subject:
"Of all painters who expressed the condescension of the Lord by the impression it produced upon those to whom it was sent, Fra Angelico stands foremost in beauty of feeling. Not only the hands, but the feet of poor shocked Peter protest against his Master's condescension. It is a contest for humility between the two; but our Lord is more than humble, he is lovely and mighty too. He is on his knees; but his two outstretched hands, so lovingly offered, begging to be accepted, go beyond the mere incident, as art and poetry of this class always do, and link themselves typically with the whole gracious scheme of redemption. True Christian art, even if theology were silent, would, like the very stones, cry out and proclaim how every act of our Lord's course refers to one supreme idea."
And, once more, speaking of the same artist's picture of the "Descent from the Cross," she thus contrasts his conception with those of Luca Signorelli, Michael Angelo, Raphael, Razzi, Da Volterra, and other Italian versions of the 15th and 16th centuries:
"After contemplating these conceptions of the deposition in which a certain parade of idle sorrow, vehement action, and pendent impossibilities are conspicuous, it is a relief to turn to one who here, as ever, stands alone in his mild glory. Fra Angelico's Descent, painted for the Sta. Trinita at Florence, now in the Accademia there, is the perfect realization of the most pious idea. No more Christian conception of the subject, and no more probable {258} setting forth, of the scene, can perhaps be attained. All is holy sorrow, calm and still; the figures move gently, and speak in whispers. No one is too excited to help, or not to hinder. Joseph and Nicodemus, known by their glories, are highest in the scale of reverential beings who people the ladder, and make it almost look as if it lost itself, like Jacob's, in heaven. They each hold an arm close to the shoulder. Another disciple sustains the body as he sits on the ladder, a fourth receives it under the knees; and St. John, a figure of the highest beauty of expression, lifts his hands and offers his shoulder to the precious burden, where in another moment it will safely and tenderly repose. The figure itself is ineffably graceful with pathetic helplessness, but Corona gloriae, victory over the old enemy, surrounds a head of divine peace. He is restored to his own, and rests among them with a security as if he knew the loving hands so quietly and mournfully busied about him. And his peace is with them already: 'Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you.' In this picture it is as if the pious artist had sought first the kingdom of God, and all things, even in art, had been added unto him. … We have taken only the centre group (the size forbidding more), leaving out the sorrowing women on the right, with the Mother piously kneeling with folded hands, as if so alone she could worthily take back that sacred form."
Such a picture might have been supposed to be the source of Father Faber's most pathetic description of the same scene in his "Foot of the Cross," did we not know that there is sure to be a strong family likeness between the conceptions of two gentle, humble souls, deriving their inspiration from the same exercise of prayerful and compassionate contemplation.
It would be a pity to mar the impression made upon our readers by passages such as we have quoted, and of which there are many kindred examples scattered throughout Lady Eastlake's volume, by the painful contrast of a sad passage upon the Agony in the Garden (vol. ii., p. 30). Though not the sole, it is the most serious, blot upon her work. Misconceiving altogether the symbolic intention of Catholic artists in placing the chalice and host in the hand of the ministering angel, Lady Eastlake for once allows the Protestant spirit within to break through all bounds of decorum. In what sense the eucharistic chalice, introduce it where you will, can be a profane representation, it is impossible to conceive. Good taste, not to say reverence, should have proscribed the employment of such an epithet. A little patient reflection, or the still easier and surer method of inquiry at some Catholic source, would, we venture to think, have overcome her repugnance, and have saved her Catholic readers some unnecessary pain. But we are willing to let this offence pass, and to leave the logic of the accompanying strictures, bad as it is, unchallenged, in consideration of the eminent service rendered by the work, as a whole, to the cause of Christian art. Few could have brought together a larger amount of instructive and interesting matter. Few, perhaps no one, at least among Protestants, could have undertaken the task with so much to qualify, so little to disqualify, them for the office of historian and critic of the glorious series of monuments which Christian artists have bequeathed to us.
One lesson, above all, every unprejudiced reader ought to derive from these volumes—that Christian art and Catholic art are identical. Not to every Catholic artist is it given to produce true Christian art; but he, caeteris paribus, is most certain of attaining the true standard who is most deeply imbued with true Catholic principles, most highly gifted with the Catholic virtues of supernatural faith and love. Looking at the whole range of Christian art, it may be safely averred that whatever shortcomings there have been within the Church have been owing to {259} the influence of principles foreign to her spirit; and that, outside the Church (we say it in spite of Lady Eastlake's admiration of Rembrandt), there has simply never existed any Christian art at all. In our own days the rule is not reversed. Whom have Protestants to set against Overbeck, Cornelius, Deger, Molitor, and we are proud to add our own illustrious countryman, Herbert? Not surely the Pre-Raphaelite school in England, though it is the only one that has the least pretensions to the cultivation of Christian art. No, it is the Catholic Church alone that can stamp upon the painter's productions the supernatural impress of those notes by which she herself is recognizable as true.
There is a unity of intention, scope, and spirit in Catholic art of every age and clime. Like the doctrines and devotions of the Church, Catholic art, in all its various forms—symbolical, historical, devotional, ideal—ever revolves round one centre, and is referable to one exemplar. Divine beauty "manifest in the flesh"—the image of the Father clothed in human form and living in the Church—he is the inspirer of Christian art. Deum nemo vidit unquam: unigenitus Filius, qui est in sinu Patris, ipse narravit. [Footnote 52] The God-man is the primary object of artistic contemplation. As in doctrine, so in aestheticism, every truly Catholic artist may exclaim, Verbum caro factum est, et habitavit in nobis; et vidimus gloriam ejus, gloriam quasi unigeniti a Patre, plenum gratia et veritatis. [Footnote 53]
[Footnote 52: "No man hath seen God at any time: the only-begotten
Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him."—John
i. 18.]
[Footnote 53: "The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us; and we
saw his glory, the glory as it were of the only-begotten of the
father, full of grace and truth."—John i. 14.]
But this unity, how exuberant in its fertility! The unity of the Church is the source of her catholicity. The two stand or fall together. And, so, too, the oneness of Catholic art is the secret of its universality. It admits of no partial view, excludes no variety or difference. Unity of spirit binds all together in perfect harmony, just as diversity of race and multiplicity of individual gifts, in her members, are fitted together, organized, and held in balance by the unity of the Church. Unity is the basis and safeguard of catholicity; catholicity the glory and crown of unity.
Nor is the note of apostolicity wanting. For the Bible, and the Bible only, as the rule and standard of art, substitute Catholic tradition handed down from the apostles, inclusive of all that is in Scripture, but reaching beyond the limits of the written word, and ever interpreted to the artist, no less than to the rest of the faithful, by the living voice of the teaching Church, and then the principle which identifies orthodoxy with Christian art may safely be applied as a test to religious painting.
Lastly—we had almost said above all—the beauty of holiness is stamped exclusively upon all art created after the mind of the Church. For Catholic art is nothing else than the product of contemplation in souls gifted with artistic capacities; and contemplation is only another word for the gaze of supernatural faith, quickened and perfected by supernatural love, upon one or other of those mysteries which the Church sets before the minds of her children. So at least we have learned from the Angelic Doctor; who tells us [Footnote 54] that beauty is found primarily and essentially in the contemplative life. For, although St. Gregory teaches that contemplation consists in the love of God, we are to understand this rather of the motive than of the precise act. The will inflamed with love desires to behold the beauty of the beloved object, either for its own sake—the heart always being where the treasure is—or for the sake of the knowledge itself which results from the act of vision. Sometimes it is the senses which are thus compelled to act, sometimes the intellect which is prompted to this gaze, according as the object is material or spiritual. But how is the beauty of the object {260} perceived? What is the faculty whose office it is to light up and reduce to order and due proportion what is seen? Evidently, the reason. For reason is light, and where there is reason there is harmony and proportion. And so beauty, whose essence is brightness and due proportion, is, as we have said, primarily and necessarily found in the contemplative life; or, which is the same thing, in the exercise of the reason—its natural exercise, if the beauty contemplated be in the natural order; its supernatural exercise, if revealed mystery be that which attracts and occupies the soul.
[Footnote 54: 2. 2. Q. clxxx. a. 1, and a. 2. ad 3.]
Nearly seven years ago, I was walking hurriedly along the boulevards of Paris one winter's evening; it was Christmas-eve, and had been ushered in by thick fog and miserable drizzling rain, which provoked the inhabitants of the gay capital to complain loudly of the change which they fancied had taken place in the seasons of late years, whereby the detested brouillards de Londres had been introduced into their once clear, pure atmosphere. The weather was certainly most unseasonable, and took away almost entirely the small remnant of Christmas-like feeling, which an Englishman, with all his efforts, can manage to keep up in a foreign land. I had sat chatting with a friend over a cosey fire until dusk; and, on leaving his house, neither a remise nor a fiacre was to be met with empty; so I made up my mind to a wet walk, and amused myself, as I went on, by observing the various groups of passengers, some of them suddenly benighted like myself, as they sped on their way along the crowded thoroughfare. The brilliant lamps hung from the shops threw a glare over each face as it flitted past, or paused to look in at the windows; and the noise of hammers resounded incessantly from the edge of the pavement, where workmen were busy erecting small wooden booths for the annual New-Year's fair. Some were already completed, and their owners hovered about, ever and anon darting forth from behind their small counters, to pounce upon a likely customer, to whom they extolled the beauty and cheapness of their wares in tempting terms.
"Tenez, monsieur!" cries an old woman, whose entire stock-in-trade consists of a few pairs of doll's shoes of chocolate, displayed upon a tin tray, over which she carefully holds a weather-beaten umbrella. "Two sous the pair, two sous!" "Voilà, mesdames," bawls a youth of ten, who, in London, would probably execute an unlimited number of Catherine-wheels under the feet of paterfamilias, as he crosses a crowded street; here he is carefully watching a basinful of water, in which float a number of glass ducks of the most brilliant and unnatural colors. "Pour un sou!" and he holds up one tiny image between his finger and thumb, with a business-like air. "Fi done!" answers a sharp-visaged elderly woman, as she withdraws six of the ducks from their watery bed, and places them gently in a corner of her capacious basket, offering the owner at the same time four sous, {261} which he accepts with the invariable "Merci, madame," and the polite Parisian bow; and depositing the coins in some deep recess of his huge trouser-pockets, he resumes his cry of "Un sou, mesdames, pour un sou," with unblushing mendacity. Just at the corner of the boulevard, where the Rue de la Paix joins it, stood a lively, wiry-looking little man, whose bows and cries were incessant, holding something in his outstretched hands carefully wrapped in wet grass, which he entreats the bystanders to purchase. As I approach him, he uncovers it, and discloses a small tortoise, who waves his thin neck from side to side deprecatingly, and looks appealingly out of his dark eyes. "Buy him, monsieur," cries the little owner: "he is my last; he will be your best friend for many years, and afterward he will make an excellent soup!" A laugh from some of the passers-by rewarded this very naive definition of a pet; and leaving the lively bustle of the boulevard, I turned down the Rue de la Paix, and into the dark-looking Rue Neuve St. Augustin; a little way down which, I perceived a small knot of people gathered under the arched entrance to a hôtel.
There were not many—a few bloused workmen returning from their daily toil, two or three women, and the usual amount of active gamins darting about the outskirts; within, I could perceive the cocked-hat of the ever-watchful sergent de ville. Prompted by that gregarious instinct which leads most men toward crowds, I went up to it; and, by the help of a tolerably tall figure, I looked over the heads of the people into the centre, at a group, the first sight of whom I shall not soon forget. There, before me, on the cold pavement, now wet with wintry rain, lay a little, a very little girl, fainting. Her face, which was deadly pale, looked worn and pinched by want into that aged, hard look so touching to see in the very young, because it tells of a premature exposure to trial and care, if not of a struggle literally for life. Her jet-black hair, of which she had a profusion, lay unbound over her shoulders like a mantle. Her dress was an old black velvet frock, covered with spangles, with a piece of something red sewn on the skirt, and a scarlet bodice. Her neck and arms were bare; and the gay dress, where it had been opened in front, showed nothing underneath it but the poor thin body. Her legs were blue and mottled with cold; and the tiny feet were thrust into wooden sabots, one of which had dropped off, a world too wide for the little foot it was meant to protect. A kind-looking elderly woman knelt on the pavement, and supported the child's head in her arms, chafing her cold hands, and trying, by every means in her power, to restore animation; and wandering uneasily up and down beside them, was a curious-looking non-descript figure, such as one can rarely meet with out of Paris. It was a poodle—at least so its restless, bead-like, black eyes and muzzle betokened, and also a suspicious-looking tuft of hair, now visible, waving above its garments—but the animal presented a most ludicrous appearance, from being dressed up in a very exact imitation of the costume of a fine lady during the century of Louis le Grand. The brilliant eyes were surmounted by a cleverly contrived wig, frizzed, powdered, and sparkling with mock jewels; the body decked out in a cherry-colored satin bodice, with a long peaked stomacher, trimmed with lace, and a stiff hoop, bell-like in shape, but, in proportion, far within the dimensions of a modern crinoline; even the high-heeled shoes of scarlet leather were not forgotten; and the strange anomaly between the animal and its disguise was irresistibly ludicrous. The dog was perfectly aware that something was going on—something strange, pitiful, and, what was more to the purpose, nearly concerning himself; and clever as he was, he could not yet see a way through his difficulties.
His misery was extreme; he pattered piteously up and down the space {262} round the fainting child, and raised himself up anxiously on his hind-legs to peer into her little wan face, presenting thus a still more ludicrous aspect than before. With his wise doggish face peeping out curiously from the ridiculous human head-dress, he sniffed all over the various feet which encircled his precious mistress, suspiciously; and finally placing himself, still on his hind-legs, close by her side, he laid his head lovingly to her cheek, and uttered a low dismal howl, followed, after an instant's pause, by an impatient bark. The child stirred—roused apparently by the familiar sound—gasped for breath once or twice; and presently opening her eyes, she cried feebly, "Mouton, où es tu done?" He leaped up in an ecstacy, trying, in the height of his joy, to lick her face; but this was not to be: she pushed him away as roughly as the little feeble hand had strength to do.
"Ah, wicked dog, go away; you do mischief," she said, fixing a pair of eyes as round and almost as black as his own upon the unfortunate animal. He dropped instantly, and with a subdued, sorrowful air, lay down, licking diligently, in his humility, the little foot from which the sabot had fallen: he had evidently proved that submission was the only plan to pursue with his imperious mistress. The girl was stronger now, and able to sit up with the help of the good woman's knee, and she drank off a cup of milk which the compassionate wife of the concierge handed to her. "Thanks, madame," said the child, with native politeness; "I am better now. You are a good Christian," she added, turning her head so as to look in the face of the woman who supported her.
"What are you called, my child?" asked her friend. "Where do you live?"
"Antoinette Elizabeth is my baptismal name," answered the child, with odd gravity; "but I am generally called Poucette, because, you see, I am small;" and a faint tinge of color came into her pale cheeks.
No wonder the name was bestowed upon her, for we could see that she was small, very small; and, from the diminutive size of her limbs, she seemed likely to remain so till the end of her days.
"Will you go home now?" asked the woman, after a moment's pause.
"No, not just yet," said the tiny being. "I have had no supper. I shall go to Emile, but Mouton may go home. Go!" she cried, imperiously, to the dog, as she swiftly slid off the marvellous dress and wig, out of which casing Mouton came forth an ordinary looking and decidedly dirty poodle. He hesitated for an instant, when she raised her little clenched fist, and shook it fiercely at him, repeating "Go!" in louder tones. He wagged his tail deprecatingly, licked his black lips, looked imploringly at her out of his loving eyes, and seemed to beg permission to remain with her; but in vain; then, seeing her endeavor to rise, he turned, fled up the street with the swiftness of a bird, and disappeared round the corner. His mistress, in the meantime, folded up the dog's finery carefully, and deposited it inside her own poor garments; then, after an instant's pause, she rose to her feet, and looked round at us. She was well named Poucette: in stature she did not exceed a child of four years old; but she was perfectly made, and the limbs were in excellent proportion with the stature, only her face showed age. There was a keen, worldly look about the mouth, with its thin scarlet lips; and a vindictive expression shining in the bold, black eyes—altogether a hard-looking face, not at all attractive in its character; and yet I felt myself drawn to the poor child.
She was evidently half-starved, fighting her own hard battle with the world, and keeping her struggle as much to herself as she could; and when, scanning curiously over the faces surrounding her, her eyes rested on mine, I stepped forward, and offered her a five-franc piece. To my surprise, she threw the money on the pavement {263} with the bitterest scorn. "I don't want money," she shrieked, passionately—"I want my supper. Go away, canaille!" I stooped down toward her, and took her hand. "Come with me," I said to her, "and you shall have some supper. I live close by." She stood on tiptoe even then, and peered into my face with her sharp eyes. Apparently, however, a short inspection satisfied her, for she said softly, "Thank you," and tried to hold my hand. Finding it too much for her small grasp, she clung to my trousers with one hand, and with the other she waved off the wondering bystanders with a most majestic air. I offered payment for the milk, which the good woman civilly refused; and then I sent for a fiacre in which to get to my lodgings in the Rue Rivoli, shrinking, I must confess, from the idea of the ridiculous figure I should cut walking along the streets with this absurd though unfortunate creature. Presently the concierge arrived with one, and we stepped in, Poucette entering majestically first. I gave the word, and we started. Hardly had we turned out of the street, when the impulsive child beside me seized me with both hands, and in an ecstacy of gratitude thanked me with streaming eyes for what I was doing for her. "I am starving," she sobbed—"I fainted from hunger. I have been dancing on the boulevards all day with Mouton, who is hungry, too, poor fellow, for he only ate a small bit of bread which a good little gentleman gave him this morning."
"Why did you not take the money, then?" I asked. "You might have bought food for yourself and Mouton."
"I did not want money," said the girl proudly—"I don't beg."
"But you say you are hungry."
"That is nothing. I never beg; I dance; and tonight, when I have had some supper, I shall dance for you, and you shall see," drawing herself up.
At this speech I hesitated. What in the world had I to do with a dancing-girl in my quiet bachelor rooms? Did she intend taking them by storm, and quartering herself upon me, whether I liked it or not? The question was a difficult one; but yet, when I looked down at the tiny figure, with its poor, woe-begone face, so thin and weary-looking, its utter weakness and dependence, I felt that, come what might, I could not act otherwise than I was doing. "There, go up stairs, au troisième" said I to my charge, as the fiacre stopped, and we got out; when lo! from behind a large stone close by the entrance to the porte-co-chère, the black round eyes of Mouton glanced furtively out upon us. His behavior was exceedingly reserved; he durst not even wag his tail for fear of giving offence, but he glanced at me in the meekest, humblest entreaty ever dog did. "Don't send him away," I said to Poucette: "take him up stairs with you; I wish him to remain."
She made no reply, but snapped her fingers encouragingly at him, and he followed her closely, as she walked up stairs. I paused a moment with the concierge, to ask her to provide some dinner for my unexpected guests; and then mounted the stairs after them. I found Antoinette Elizabeth and her faithful follower seated at my door, gravely awaiting my arrival. Mouton recognized me as a friend, and faintly wagged his tail; evidently he was careful, in the presence of his mistress, upon whom he bestowed his favors. We entered my room, all three of us; and presently the dinner arrived, and was done ample justice to. Poucette ate heartily, but not ravenously; and after the meal was over, we drew our chairs round the fire, and sat eating walnuts. She asked then, with more timidity than she had yet shown: "When shall we have the honor of dancing for monsieur?" raising her large black eyes, which had lost their fierce look, to my face.
"Not just yet, Poucette," I replied. "Tell me something about yourself first, and eat more walnuts."
{264}She looked up sharply at this, as if to say, What business is that of yours? then away into the fire, which was evidently a novel luxury to her; and finally her glance rested on Mouton, who, having devoured every superfluous piece of meat, and gnawed the only bone at table, had now stretched himself on the hearth-rug, and slumbered peacefully at her feet. "Monsieur is very good," she said presently, with a sigh, still with her eyes fixed on Mouton. "My history is nothing very great. I am not a Parisian; my father was a Norman."
"Is he alive now?" I asked, as she paused here.
"I don't know about that," she answered haughtily. "He was a wicked man. Monsieur understands me?" she said questioningly, with a piercing look.
"Yes, poor child. And your mother, what of her?"
"She is an angel," faltered the girl. "She went up to heaven last Christmas;" and the tears filled her eyes as she said it.
"How have you lived since?'
"Oh, that was at Marseilles; and I came on here with Mouton. We dance," she continued in a firmer voice; "we go out with a man called Emile, who plays the organ very well, and he has another dog like Mouton,' only not at all clever: the stupid creature can only hold a basket in his mouth, and beg for sous; he has no talent." She shrugged her shoulders, and continued, "We live with Emile and his wife; they are not always kind to me; but I love Jean."
"Who is this Jean?" I asked.
"Ah! he is a poor boy," she replied; the whole expression of her countenance softening at his name, and her sallow cheeks crimsoning with a tender flush. "He is lame; he cannot walk, and is pulled about in a little carriage; but he does not like to beg, so Emile will not take him out with us."
"Is Emile his father?" I asked.
"No, monsieur; his father is dead but his mother is Emile's wife. I take care of Jean myself."
"Are they good to you?"
"Yes, pretty well. You see I dance for them, and people give more money because I am there; and then Mouton is so clever; one does not easily meet with a dog like that, who will stand on his hind-legs for an hour together, and dance as he does. Look at his dress too;" and she pulled out of the bosom of her frock Mouton's paraphernalia, and displayed it with evident pride. "In my opinion now, there is no such dress as that for a dog in all Paris," she said, as she held it up admiringly to the lamp. "Jean made those shoes; ar'n't they droll? And the wig; look, that is superb!"
"Who made the wig?" I asked.
"Ah! it was a little boy who is apprenticed to a wigmaker," she answered. "Monsieur, it was a bargain between us; he wanted something from me, and—and I said I would give it him if he made a wig for Mouton; and this is the wig. He is not bad himself, that little boy; but he is not at all so good as Jean."
"How old is Jean?" I asked.
"He is twelve years old, monsieur."
"And you?"
"I am ten," she replied, with a little sigh and a blush. "But I may grow still, may I not?" she asked timidly, looking up into my face so pathetically, that I had hardly sufficient gravity to answer, "Yes, of course; you will doubtless grow for a long time yet."
"Ah! that is exactly what Jean says," she exclaimed gaily; then added in a lower voice, "Jean says he likes little people best; but, you see, he may say that because he likes me."
I answered nothing to this; and presently she roused herself from a little reverie, and said, "Now we shall dance for you, because it gets late, and I must go home."
"If you like to remain here all night," I said, "the wife of the concierge will let you sleep in a little {265} room off theirs, down stairs; and when you have had some breakfast, you can then return."
"No, no," she repeated sharply; "I will not sleep here; I go home to Jean."
"Will Emile be glad to see you?"
"That depends; if he is cross, he will beat me for staying so long; but it does not matter; I wished to stay, and I liked my dinner, and this warm fire" (she looked wistfully at it). "Monsieur is very good. Come, Mouton, my friend; wake yourself up."
The dog rose, shook himself, and patiently allowed himself to be dressed once more. He took an unfair advantage of his mistress, however, when she knelt down to put on his shoes, and licked her face. "Ah, cochon, how often must I box your ears for that trick!" she said, as she gave him a tap on the side of his head, for the liberty. "Come now, walk along." The dog paced soberly toward the door on his hind-legs.—"That is the ancien régime," she explained to me.— "Now, Mouton, show us how people walk at the present day." The dog stopped, and at once imitated the short, mincing step of a Parisian belle, shaking his hoop from side to side in most ludicrous fashion; and as he reached his mistress, he dropped a little awkward courtesy.
"That is well," she said. "Now sing for us like Madame G——," naming a famous opera-singer, whose fame was then at its height, and she laid a light piece of music-paper across his paws. The dog looked closely down on the paper for an instant, licked his lips, looked round at an imaginary audience, and then throwing back his head, and fixing his black eyes on the ceiling, he uttered a howl so shrill and piercing that I stopped my ears; he then ceased for an instant, looked at his music attentively, then at his audience, and again uttered that ear-piercing howl. "That is enough," said Poucette; "bow to the company." The dog rose and sank with the grace almost of the prima donna herself.
"Now, Mouton, we are going to dance;" and taking the animal by its paw, she put the other arm round it, and the two whirled round in a waltz, keeping admirable time to a tune which Poucette whistled. "Now read a book, and rest yourself whilst I dance;" and again the piece of music was laid on Mouton's paws, and he bent his eyes on it, apparently with the most devoted attention, whilst Poucette slipped off her heavy sabots, and with naked feet thrust into a pair of old satin slippers, which she produced from some pocket in her dress, she executed a sort of fancy dance, half Cachuca, half Bolero, throwing herself into pretty, graceful attitudes, with a step as light as a fairy's; then, as she approached Mouton in the figure, she lifted the music, and taking him by one paw, she led him forward to the front of my chair on the points of her toes, the two courtesying nearly to the ground, when Mouton affectionately kissed his mistress on the cheek.
"There, it is over now," said Poucette; "that is all. He does not know the minuet perfectly yet: next week, perhaps, we shall try it for the Jour de l'An."
"Well done!" I exclaimed, and clapped my hands. "He is a famous dog; and you—you dance beautifully."
Mouton came to be patted and made much of; and his mistress now announced her intention of going home at once. Finding it useless to try and induce her to stay, I offered to go with her myself, and see her safely through the still crowded streets; but this she firmly declined.
"No, not to-night," she said. "You may come to-morrow, if you will be so kind, but not to-night. You have been very good, monsieur; I am not ungrateful. You may come to-morrow; Rue——, No.——, quite close to Notre Dame." She took my hand, raised it to her lips, courtesied, and was gone.
{266}I followed her down stairs, and watched the little figure hurrying along with a firm step, upright as a dart, the light from the gas-lamps falling now and then on the spangles of her dress, and making them twinkle for an instant; and the dark outline of Mouton following closely behind her, under the shadow of the houses. Presently they crossed the street, and disappeared in the distance; and I turned and walked up stairs to my cosey well-lighted room, to think over the strange life of a street dancing-girl.
After this, I made inquiries about Poucette in the part of the town where she lived, and visited the man Emile and his wife often. Here I found the cripple boy Jean, to whom Poucette clung with a tenacity of affection that was touching to witness. He had had a fall as an infant, so his mother said, and never had walked; but his fingers were skilful in making toys, baskets, and small rush-mats, which Poucette sold during her daily rounds. To him she devoted her affections, her life, with a steady ardor not often met with at her age. Toward others, she was always grave, distant, often haughty and bitter in her expressions of anger, but to him never. However tired she might return home after dancing or selling his wares on the boulevard, she never showed him that she was so; if he wished to go out, she drew him in a rude wooden sledge to the gardens of the Luxembourg; and the two would sit there by the hour together on Sundays, criticising the passers-by as they walked about in their gay dresses. At night, if the invalid was restless or in pain, Poucette sat beside him, sometimes till day dawned, with a sympathizing cheerful face, ready to attend upon every want. There she shone; but take away Jean out of her world, and Poucette stood forth a vixen. Madame Emile, who was herself somewhat of a shrew, vowed that if it were not that she and Jean were so bound up together, and nothing could separate them, she must have sent away Poucette long ago. "No one could endure her temper, monsieur," she would declare to me; and when she began upon this subject, madame waxed eloquent. "She is a girl such as there is not besides in Paris. For Jean, she will give up dress, company, the theatre, everything; but except for him, she would not go one step out of her way to be made an empress. It is not natural that. After she first came here, we had a great deal of trouble with her, and Emile beat her well; but then she would run away in a rage, and come back again during the night, for fear Jean should want something. Now we are more used to her, and we let her have her own way pretty much."
Jean I could get nothing out of except a "Bonjour, monsieur" at entering and on leaving his house. He sat silently plaiting his mats or carving toys with his long fingers, looking as if he neither heard nor understood what we were talking about; but he carefully repeated all the conversation afterward to his friend Poucette, for she told me so often when we were together. She used to come and see me at my rooms, when it was wet, or business was slack; and I succeeded in finding a customer for her wares in a toy-merchant, who promised to take all Jean's work at a reasonable price, and was liberal toward the two children. Poucette was thus able to give up her public dancing, and stay more at home; and the toyman's daughter taught her dainty embroidery, in which her skilful fingers soon excelled. She tamed down wonderfully that winter, and even made some efforts to learn reading, as I suggested to her what a source of pleasure it would be to Jean, whose thirst for hearing stories related was intense, if he could read them for himself. But she was very slow at this; the letters proved a heavy task to learn, and when we came to spelling, I often despaired; still she toiled on, and when I left Paris in May, she could read a very little.
{267}Six months passed, and again I turned my steps to my old winter-quarters. The summer and autumn had been spent by me partly in England, partly in Switzerland. My protege was unable to write, and I had heard nothing of her since I left Paris. I had not returned there longer than a week, when I set off into the cité, to discover again my little pupil. It was much the same sort of a day as that on which we had first met; cold, dank, misty rain kept falling, and streets were wet and sloppy. The part of the town where Poucette lived was wretchedly poor, dingy, and dirty-looking, especially in such weather as I now visited it, and the reputed haunt of thieves and evil-doers of various kinds. I picked my way along narrow ill-paved streets, with the gutters in the middle, and at last I reached her old abode. There was no one stirring about; but the door was ajar. I pushed it open, and walked in. The dwelling had once been some nobleman's hotel in bygone days, and its rooms were large and lofty, and at present each inhabited by different poor families. Emile's was on the ground floor—a long room, formerly used either as a guard-room or for playing billiards in. It had one large window, opening in the center, and crossed outside with thick iron bars, which partially excluded the light. I was confused on entering from the outer air, and at first could only perceive that the room was filled with a crowd of people, of various ages and sexes, but all of the lowest order, some sitting, some standing. A woman came forth to meet me, whom I recognized as Madame Emile, sobbing and holding her apron to her eyes. "Ah, mon Dieu, mon Dieu!" she whispered, as she looked at me and clasped her hands piteously; "the poor Poucette, how hard it is! Monsieur, you are welcome; but this is a sorrowful time; she is much hurt." She led me gently through the various groups, all sorrowfully silent, toward a low pallet, at the head of the room, where, crushed, bleeding, and now insensible from pain, lay the form of poor Poucette. "What is this?" I asked in a whisper. "How did it happen?"
"Ah, it was a vile remise," eagerly answered a dozen voices. "She was returning home yesterday from selling the mats, and the driver was drunk. She fell in crossing, and he did not see her. The wheel crushed her poor chest. Ah, she will die, the unhappy child!"
"Where is Jean?" I asked.
His mother silently pointed out what looked like a bundle of clothes huddled up in the bed beside the dying child. She was dying, my poor Poucette. One of the kind-hearted surgeons from the hôpital had been to see her early that morning, and pronounced that beside the blow on her chest, which was of itself a dangerous one, severe internal injuries had taken place, which must end her life in a few hours. Poor Poucette! I seated myself by the little couch in the dark room, which was so soon to be filled by the presence of death, and presently the surgeon came again. All eyes turned anxiously toward him as he walked to the bed, and kneeling down beside it, carefully examined the poor little sufferer, whose only sign of consciousness was a groan of anguish now and then.
"Can nothing be done for her?" I asked, as he rose to his feet and stood by the bed, looking pityingly down at the two children.
"Nothing whatever," he said, with a mournful shake of his head. "She will not last through the night."
"Does she suffer?" I asked.
"Acutely, but it will not be for long. Mortification is setting in rapidly." He paused, then added: "She will probably regain consciousness at the last;" and left the room.
Slowly the weary hours glided on; gradually the moans became weaker, and the pulse quick and fitful. Suddenly she opened her eyes, and looked at me inquiringly; then her eyes fell {268} on Jean, who lay at her side, and uttered an exclamation of joy. "I am not in pain now," she said faintly; "that is over.—Ah, my good monsieur, you said you would return. I am glad."
"I am grieved to find you thus, Poucette," I whispered. "Can I do anything for you?"
"Perhaps you would like to have Mouton," she said calmly, as if thinking aloud.
"I will keep him, if you like it," I replied. "Is there anything else you would like?" "Only Jean, dear Jean," and her soft dark eyes were fixed timidly yet imploringly on my face.
"I will take care of Jean."
"The good God reward you, my kind monsieur! That is all that I want.— Adieu, madame. Adieu, my good friends. It is over." Just then Mouton raised himself on his hind-legs by the bed, and peered anxiously into her face. She put out her little right hand, and gently patted his head; then, with a last effort, she turned round from us, and flung one tiny arm round the crippled boy at her side. "Je t'aime toujours," she whispered, as she bent over and kissed him. It was a last effort. A slight shiver passed over the little figure; one long-drawn sigh escaped the white lips. Poucette was gone to her mother; the wanderer had been taken home; the desolate one was comforted!
My tale is ended, except to say that, from that evening, Mouton has been my inseparable companion. He is by no means, however, as complaisant to me as he was to his mistress; on the contrary, Mouton, like many other nouveaux riches, is rather a spoiled dog, and the tyrant of my small household. Jean became a basket-maker, and it is not improbable that my fair readers may have in their possession some of the productions of his skilful fingers. Such was the fruit of my Christmas-eve in Paris six years ago. I have never spent one there since.
There is none of the Christian poets who has exercised so great an influence in the intellectual world as Dante Alighieri. His "Vision of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise" has been, ever since its appearance, a mine in which artists, poets, philosophers, theologians, historians, and statesmen have found treasures. In Italy, immediately after his death, professors were appointed in the universities to explain his work, and numbers of both lay and clerical savants, among them even princes, bishops, and archbishops, took delight in its study and exposition. With the spread of the Italian language, on which Dante has stamped for ever the impress of his genius, and with the progress of Italian culture, all Europe became acquainted with the Commedia, and learned to admire its beauty and its grandeur. It was translated into other tongues; learned foreigners undertook to fathom its depths; and even the spirit of religious unity in the sixteenth century did not check its influence over the Roman-Germanic nations. Protestant translators and expositors contended with the Catholic writers who made of the work of Dante a special study. The Germans especially have {269} not been backward in this respect, and to prove it we need only name Kannegieser, Strecksufs, Kofisch, Witte, Wegele, and Philalethes (the present king of Saxony).
When we wish to assign Dante his proper place in Christian art and poetry, by comparison with antiquity, we are reminded at once of Homer and the veneration in which he was held by the Greeks. But how has the Florentine poet merited such high consideration? Is it by the might of his genius and the peculiarity of his chosen theme? By the perfection and the poetic charm of his expression and language? By his deep knowledge of life and of human nature? By the philosophic and moral truths which he has woven into his poem? By his religious and political views? Or by his judgment of historical personages and facts?
No doubt all these have been helping causes to establish Dante's fame and give him the position which he holds. But the true reason of all the singular prerogatives of the poet and of the poem, the reason which gives us the key to the right understanding of the "Divine Comedy," and of the various and discrepant explanations of it, must be sought deeper. There is a principal cause of Dante's greatness, from which the secondary causes, just named, diverge, as rays of light from a common centre, and to the knowledge of which only a philosophical comprehension of history, and especially of poetry, can lead us. We shall endeavor in this essay to discover this cause, after having given a brief sketch of the contents and the scope of the great poem.
The Commedia, which, in the form of a vision, paints the condition of the soul after death, is divided into three parts, Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. Each part consists of thirty-three cantos, which, with the introductory canto, make the round number one hundred. Surrounded by trials and troubles of various kinds, Dante is guided into the regions of the invisible by his favorite poet Virgil, who comes to his assistance. Virgil here represents poetry and the idea of the poem. It was through him that Dante was first led to the serious study of truth, and to direct his mind to the philosophical consideration of the condition of mankind.
Our poet now proceeds into the realm of the damned souls, into the regions of night and hell, which he represents in the form of a funnel having nine gradually narrowing eddies, in which the souls of the damned are revolving to the throne of Satan, who sits at the top of the cone. The narrower grow the circles, the more intense become the punishments inflicted, in proportion to the increasing guilt of the culprits. The lowest place among the lost souls is occupied by the traitors, Brutus, Cassius, and Judas.
The power of the devil over men, and the inexorable character of the Christian idea of retributive justice, is grandly portrayed in this part of the work, by interweaving the most moving and striking episodes, in which well-known characters are described as receiving punishment equal to their crimes. Even paganism is made to lend its graces to increase the sublimity of the picture, and clothe the thoughts of the writer in poetic garments.
Both poets then leave the darkness and horror of hell behind them, and approach the regions of purification or purgatory, over which perpetual twilight reigns. This realm of temporary suffering is supposed by the poet to be on the opposite side of the earth, where the antipodes dwell. This abode of those souls who are being purified and doing penance for minor offences, and whose pains are lessened by the hope of future happiness, is represented in the form of a mountain, to whose summit one ascends by nine successive degrees, as the descent through the {270} funnel of hell was by nine lessening circles. At the top of the mountain is placed that earthly paradise which was lost by the sins of our first parents, and from which the way to heaven leads. Having arrived in the terrestrial paradise, Dante suddenly finds himself deserted by Virgil, who from the beginning had promised to guide him only so far. But Beatrice meets our poet here, Beatrice the beloved of his youth. She teaches him the science of God, and, aided by the light of faith and revelation, which Virgil had not, she shows him the higher knowledge given to human reason under the influence of Christianity. At her voice and teaching, Dante is moved to repentance for his transgressions, and she becomes his future guide.
Dante paints in the most lively colors, and describes with the greatest beauty, in episodes and conversations, the intimate relation of the souls in purgatory with each other, and with those they left behind them on earth, and with the blessed in heaven. This latter point is illustrated by the frequent appearance of angels, who descend from time to time into the dusky realms of purgatory.
Led by his beloved Beatrice, our poet now mounts to heaven, and traverses its various spheres, which are represented according to the system of Ptolemy. Beginning by the moon, the poet travels through Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, the glory and happiness of the beatified increasing as he advances, in proportion with their virtues and holiness, till he arrives at the so-called Empyrean, at the very throne of God. In the highest sphere Dante beholds the mystical rose, that is, the glory of the Blessed Virgin, who is surrounded by the highest saints and angels in the form of a rose; and among these glorified spirits he sees with delight his Beatrice near the Mother of God, who gives an honorable place to those who had been her fervent followers during life. The Vision of Heaven ends by a glance at the mysteries of the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation, which mortal eye, though supernaturally strengthened, is unable to dwell upon for excess of light.
Dante in this part of his work treats the most difficult questions, not only of philosophy, which he had also done in the preceding cantos, but also of theology, with the greatest clearness, depth, and poetic grace. He treats in it of the fundamental ideas of Christianity, of faith, hope, and charity. The spirits that he represents to the reader in hell, purgatory, and paradise are by no means the mere wilful creations of his fancy, but for the most part are historical characters, some of them but little removed from his own time, others contemporary; and even those which he borrows from Judaism or paganism to embellish his poem are symbolical, and have an intimate connection with some reality. On this very account we should not judge the Vision as an allegory, although in many respects it has the peculiarities of an allegorical poem. It is, rather, a mystic poem, in which the deepest religious and philosophical truths are represented under the shadow of visionary forms and ethereal similitudes; and realities are raised to an ideal sphere, where the mind's eye can penetrate through their misty covering and contemplate them to satiety. But what is the cause of the great influence which this poem has exerted on mankind? This is the question which we have undertaken to answer, and which we shall now endeavor to solve.
As in the history of nations and of mankind there are certain epochs in which the elements that had formed the groundwork of society, and of national life, in their gradual development, culminate in a certain point, where the mental powers of the people put forth all their strength in the production of facts, or works of various kinds that give expression to the spirit {271} of the age; so in the history of poetry there are poets and poems in which the ruling ideas of their time and nation appear in all their truth and power.
In the works of great poets we have, as it were, a copy of God's creative power. He seems to lend it to the poet. Of all the productions of the human mind, the poem has the greatest similarity with the works of Almighty power, and both offer to human contemplation beauties ever varying and ever new. But between the works of divine and of human skill there is an essential difference. The works of God express the thoughts of the Creator, whose glory and invisibility, according to the Psalmist, the heavens declare, and whose eternal might and divinity creatures proclaim; but with the effects of human genius it is entirely different.
Every individual is but a member of the great whole, which we call the human family; he can do nothing alone, but depends on others both for his material and spiritual support; and the degree of culture which he attains, the aim which he proposes to himself in life, and the germ of his future progress, are as much the result of the influences exercised on him from the cradle to the grave, by the family circle, by the school, and by the associations of society, as they are the effects of his own independent strength and originality. Hence the work of the poet, no matter how great he may be, is not to be considered the exclusive product of the individual, for it must bear on it the stamp of his education, and of the people among whom he dwells, and of the age in which he lives. As the waters of a lake do not merely reflect their own color, but also the green shore of the surrounding woods and hills, the passing clouds, the deep blue of the heavens above, and of the stars that glitter in it; so in the poem we see not only the soul of its creator, but every great emotion that swelled in the breast of the men of his age and nation. In a word, we see the whole circle of contemporary ideas more or less vividly expressed in it. Nor are the productions of human genius lessened by this fact; they are, on the contrary, enhanced in value. For it is no longer one person, with his subjective views of his own world and life, who speaks to us in them, but it is the spirit of a portion of mankind, expressing to us the ideas of a certain stage in the progress of civilization.
Now, if such a work of genius be at the same time the foundation of a further development in the future, and of such a character that it represents the condition not only of one nation, but of several; and if the ideas which it contains and which sway men be such as by their truth and universality overleap the limits of time and space; then such a power will maintain its hold upon the admiration and esteem of men, not only in a certain epoch and among a certain people, but for ever and among all nations where the same order of civilization reigns. Poets who are distinguished above others by the creative power and superiority of their genius in the production of such a work, are not merely the poets of one age, or of one nation, but they belong to all times and to all nations. They will not be merely read once, and then thrown aside; but they will be reperused and studied with ever increasing pleasure.
The age of Dante was an epoch of this character among the Christian nations. He has hardly his superior as a poet, either among the ancients or the moderns. Hence, if we contemplate the Commedia from this point of view, we shall be able not only to understand the general scope of the work, but even to comprehend with ease all its details and peculiarities.
But in order to show that the period at which Dante appeared (the second half of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth century) was one like that which we have described, we must briefly recall to mind the condition of the Church, of the state of science and art, and give {272} expression to the spirit of the age in a scientific formula.
If we then look at the Church, we find her displaying such fecundity and power as we shall hardly find at any other period in her history. She is not only busy in the work of converting the still pagan nations of Europe, especially in the north, and strengthening the faith among believers by missions, voyages, and diplomacy; by the foundation of new congregations and bishoprics; by councils; by stringency of external discipline, and greater solemnity in the public worship; but also by the internal reformation effected by such men as popes Alexander III., Innocent III., and Innocent IV., who continued the good work begun by Gregory VII., of freeing the Church from the oppressions of secular power. They succeeded at length in propagating and realizing among the Christian nations of the West the idea of one vast spiritual community, under the headship of one spiritual ruler, who, instead of destroying national diversity and independence, protected and favored them. This idea prevailed through the agency of the supreme pontiffs over the pagan idea so cherished by the emperors of a universal monarchy. The crusades, too, fostered and led by the Church, and which are the clearest expression of the thoroughly Christian spirit of those centuries, bring the West into closer intimacy with the East, and enrich the former with all the material and spiritual treasures of the latter. Then arise those great orders which—half religious and half secular, as the Knights Hospitallers and the Templars, or entirely religious, like the Dominicans and Franciscans—defended the Church, cared for the sick and the poor, sacrificed themselves in spreading Christian faith and morality, and gave birth to countless institutions of charity.
If we now glance at the political condition of the people, a spectacle equally grand as that just described offers itself to our view. On the imperial throne of Germany appear those powerful princes of the house of Hohenstaufen, who contended so heroically with the papacy for the success of the Ghibelline idea of a universal monarchy, but who in the end were worsted in the fight; while in France a St. Louis IX., and in England a Richard the Lion-hearted, excite the admiration of the world. In Italy, even in the midst of the struggle between the secular and the spiritual powers, and between the Guelphs and Ghibellines, mighty republics spring up under the protection of the Church; and in the other nations also we see a powerful effort for national independence and freedom appearing in the many guilds, corporations, free cities, states, and parliaments which were everywhere rising into a dignified existence. But above all, the order of chivalry in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries—an order which even yet throws such a halo of poetry and romance around the middle ages in which it nourished, walking hand in hand with religion, which had consecrated it—helped much to civilize the barbarian character of the age, and improve the moral condition of society.
As to science in the epoch of which we write, it was mostly occupied in the investigation of those subjects which lay next the Christian heart of the people; namely, in theology, philosophy, and ethics. And how great has been its success! What great results has not mediaeval science effected! I need only mention the immortal names of Anselem of Canterbury, of St. Bernard, Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, Roger Bacon, and Vincent of Beauvais; men whose works in theology, philosophy, history, and in the natural sciences, remain to the present time as monuments of genius, hardly equalled by ancient or modern productions.
At this period, too, sprang up the universities, which realize in their conception the universal idea of catholicity. They were founded in every land, and all the sciences were taught in {273} them. The Church herself, in the Council of Vienne, in 1311, decreed that, beside the chairs of theology, philosophy, medicine, and jurisprudence, there should be in the four principal universities, and wherever the papal court should be held, professors of Hebrew, Chaldaic, Arabic, and Greek. But what especially shows the intellectual bent of this age is the zeal and youthful ardor manifested in every rank for all the different branches of science. Popes, emperors, kings, and nobles emulated each other in this respect, and consecrated their energies to the furtherance of learning.
If we now turn to the state of art and poetry, on every side the old cathedrals and monuments erected in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries meet our eyes, and in their various styles of Gothic and Roman architecture excite our admiration, fill us with holy awe, and, as they lift their spires to heaven, speak more eloquently of the greatness of the spirit and aesthetic feeling of the people than any words of ours could do. In the suite of architecture the other arts followed and were elevated to its height; and even before Dante, and contemporaneously with him, lived the founders of the Italian schools of painting and sculpture, which so soon after attained to such perfection. As for poetry, we need only remember that at this time most of the modern languages began to be developed and become the mediums of literature. "It was the gay time of the troubadours and incense-singers," says Vilmar, in his History of German National Literature, "in which the melody of song rang out from hamlet to hamlet, from city to city, from castle to castle, and court to court, and a thousand harmonious echoes, near and far, from hill and valley, answered out of the people's heart." It was the first classic period of German literature, in which the national and artistic epic appear well developed in such works as the Nibelungen, Gudrun, Parceval, and others.
No doubt there are shadows on the picture of the age just described, as there are in our own. But still, whoever considers the facts we have alleged, cannot fail to admit the age as a real epoch in the history of the Christian world, unless he is blind or wilfully shuts his eyes to the light. In view of these facts, also, he must perceive that the civilization of the various western nations was most intimately connected; that it rested on the same common foundation; and that the ideas which ruled them and constituted their vital principle were eternally and universally true, and became the platform of succeeding intellectual evolution. Hence, those nations, though differing in origin and political independence, made but one grand spiritual community, bound together by a common faith and a common church. But if we would now express the spirit of this epoch in a philosophical formula, we should say that it was the period in which the Roman and Germanic races were converted to Christianity after the decease of the old world and of pagan civilization; and after these races had become a spiritual community under the hierarchy of the popes, and become bound together under the government of one worldly empire, after various combats with outward enemies and triumphs over internal elements of discord; when these races had appropriated to themselves Christianity as their vital element, and recognized it as the power which moved and governed the world, and sought to produce, realize, and use Christian ideas in every direction, in the sciences, in arts, in society, in the state, and in the Church. The Protestant, Vilmar, whom we have already cited, agrees with this assertion, when he writes: "It was the spirit of Christianity which had become the spirit of the western nations, and which inspired, in the highest degree, the higher ranks of society, the nobility, and the clergy; and which penetrated into the masses, not so much as a theory, but as a fact—not as a science, but as an element of their life; it was Christianity, not as a simple doctrine or idea, but as a practical {274} boon and benefit; it was a joy to the Christian Church and to its internal and external glory, and a blessing with its gifts, more general than it has been since, and so strong that even the struggle between the popes and the emperors, for over two centuries, could not affect the great happiness of men whose social and individual existence was actuated by the spirit of Christianity."
Taking, therefore, this comprehensive view of the state of society; considering the triumph of the Christian idea in history, the consciousness of Christianity as the principle of life in the newly-organized world, and the struggle of this element to mould and fashion everything according to its nature, we may easily answer the question as to the character of a poem which should thoroughly express the spirit of the age. It would not be hard to show that the Divine Comedy of Dante derived its matter, its form, its name, and its sentiment from the peculiar condition of the epoch. In fact, any poem that represents, the conquest of the Christian idea in all conditions of private and public life must ever exercise great influence over men. But in order to give a poetical representation of this thought, the poet should choose a framework sufficiently large to contain the vast picture in which God and man, heaven and earth, nature and grace, creation and redemption, past, present, and future, science and life, church and state, appear; and such a framework was offered to him in the Christian idea of the judgment, of God, and of the existence of the other world, in its three divisions of hell, purgatory, and paradise.
Now, only by carrying up ordinary facts to this higher, ideal sphere was it possible to overleap the limits of time and space, and give greater unity to the picture, and make it a masterpiece. But he who lives here below is ignorant of the future, and of the condition of the departed souls. Only by a supernatural revelation can we know their lot. Consequently, the form of a wonderful vision, in which the poet enters into communion with the spirits of the dead, and wanders through their regions, is the most natural manner of representing his idea in the poem; consequently, it should be called by right a "divine drama," a Divina Commedia, as the most appropriate title.
The true scope of the poem, therefore, must not be sought for either in a purely religious, or a purely political, or a purely scientific or personal point of view; but in the prosecution of a far more general, comprehensive, higher, philosophic, theological, and particularly moral or ethical object, to which all the details of the work are subordinated. Hence, he who examines these details from this or that stand-point may give them the most different explanations, as in fact many commentators of the poem do—not having fathomed its depths and perceived the general object of the sacred epic.
Dante himself leaves us no reason to doubt on this point. In his dedicatory epistle to Cardinal Grande della Scala, he speaks thus: "The meaning of this poem is not simple, but multiple. The first sense is in the words, the second in the things expressed: the one is called literal, the other moral or allegorical. Taken literally, the whole work is simple, and expresses the condition of souls after death, for this is expressed by the whole tenor of the poem. But taken in the higher sense, its object is man, either deserving rewards or chastisements through the exercise of his free will. And if we wish to name the kind of philosophy contained in the work, we must call it moral, or ethics. For the whole tends to practice and action, and is not content with simple contemplation and speculation."
Giacomo di Dante, the son of the poet, develops more clearly the scope of the work, in the preface to his {275} commentary. "The whole work," says he, "is divided into three parts; the first of which treats of hell, the second of purgatory, and the third of paradise. In order to understand the general allegorical bearing, I say that the object of the poet is to represent to us in figurative language the three several divisions of mankind. The first part considers vice in man, and is called hell, to show us that mortal sin by its depth of iniquity is directly opposed to the sublimity of virtue. The second contemplates those who detach themselves from vice and strive after virtue. His place for such persons he calls purgatory, or place of purification, to show the condition of the soul, which cleanses itself from its sins in time, for time is the medium in which all changes happen. The third considers perfect man, and is called paradise, in order to express the greatness of its bliss, and the elevation of mind connected with it; two things without which a knowledge of the supreme good cannot be attained. And thus the poet pursues his object through the three several parts of his poem by means of the figures and representations with which he surrounds himself."
But the poet, in order to realize his grand idea, should be gifted not only with the highest poetical genius in order to represent the philosophical principles of Christianity in the peculiar characters and types of Christian art, and give them a new, independent, and majestic appearance; but he should be also possessed, on the one hand, of a clear and perfect knowledge of Christian doctrine and ethics, and a deep and extensive knowledge of philosophy and theology; and, on the other, of a profound and extensive acquaintance with men and human life, as well as with the history of the human race. Both these requisites are found in Dante in the highest degree. Christian faith and morality is as well and correctly explained by him as by the best approved theologians. But this fact will not excite our surprise if we consider that, in his Vision, without however sacrificing his individuality, he adheres strictly to the great doctors of the age, Saints Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure, as King John of Saxony clearly proves in his commentary on the Divine Comedy.
Hence, at an early period Dante's work became a favorite theme of scholastic study, and under the portal of the cathedral at Florence there is seen an old statue of the poet near that of the patron saint of the city, with this inscription: Theologus Dante, nullius dogmatis expers—"Dante the theologian, to whom no dogma was unknown." In the Raphael chamber in the Vatican, he is represented crowned with laurel on the famous painting of the disputa, among the popes, bishops, and doctors assembled round the holy sacrament of the altar.
An occasional writer has suspected the faith of Dante, because in his poem he deplores several abuses in the Church, such as the corruption of some of the clergy and monks, and lashes some of the popes and the relation of the papacy to the secular power in his time. But such a suspicion is unwarranted when we consider that many Catholic reformers, even saints like Peter Damien, Saint Thomas of Canterbury, Saint Bernard, Saint Hildegard, Jacopone, and others, have spoken even more strongly than Dante against abuses; and that he never confounds the use with the abuse, excrescences of an institution with the institution itself, or persons with principles.
Dante's thorough knowledge of human life and of history is fully shown in his surprising explanations, and by the manner in which with one trait he paints the famous characters and facts in the Commedia, as well as by the examples and narrations which he takes from all times, regions, and nations of the earth. But in his judgment of persons and facts in the past and present, Dante is not always impartial or just, for, being {276} subject to human frailties and prejudices, he is often guilty of great injustice to those against whom he had motives of hatred. Consequently, in order to appreciate Dante's poem on this point, we must consider the character of his life and fortunes, as well as the history of his native city and country.
Dante Alighieri was born at Florence in the year 1265, and received in baptism the name of Durante, which was shortened to that of Dante. Early in his youth an event happened which determined his life, and to which posterity is indebted for his great work. In the year 1274, in the ninth year of his age, Dante saw, at a church festival, the daughter of Falco Portinari, Beatrice, a child eight years old, whom he says, in one of his poems, no one could see without crying out, "This is not a woman, but one of the most beautiful of the heavenly angels!" He conceived for her, on the spot, the most violent passion, but, at the same time, one so pure and holy that Beatrice, even on earth and wedded to another, became for him and his muse a perfect ideal that inspired all his first and tenderest poems, and moved him to high and holy thoughts. But after Beatrice's untimely death, she became, in the imagination of the poet, a holy spirit, whose glory he undertook to exalt after a wonderful vision which he had, and who became, in all the sorrows of his life, a star of hope and anchor of safety to him. A few years after the decease of his beloved, Dante espoused Gemma di Donati, a lady of a noble family in Florence, and through this marriage, as well as by his profound theological and philosophical studies, he was drawn into the vortex of the politics of his native city, in which, after many struggles, the Guelph party gained the ascendency, toward the end of the thirteenth century.
Sprung from a Guelph family and surrounded by Guelph influences, and prominent by his genius in the party, although keeping clear of its excesses, Dante, from 1293 to 1299, filled many posts of honor, especially many places of ambassador, and was elected, with five others, in the year 1300, to the priorate, the highest office in the republic. But soon after his prosperous career was changed to one of misfortune. In 1292 a division was made in the Guelph party, when, under the tribune Giano della Bella, the constitution of the state was changed, the nobles driven from the magistracy, and the government of the city given entirely into the hands of the plebeians; and this division led gradually to an open rupture between the parties called the Blacks and the Whites "Neri" and "Bianchi." The latter were by far the more moderate, and the Ghibellines, both nobles and plebeians, joined them. Dante belonged to the Whites, who stood at the head of affairs. But by the interference of Charles of Valois, whom the Blacks called to Florence in order to seize the government with his aid, the Whites lost their power, and Dante, who was then on an embassy to Rome, together with the other chiefs of the party, was exiled by a decree, which was repealed in the year 1302.
This trial was important in two ways to our poet. It excited his hatred against one party of the Guelphs, and then against them all; and evoked his inclination for the Ghibellines and his dislike toward the popes, who gave assistance to the Guelph party, and finally made him a strong partisan of the Ghibellines and their operations against Florence, and of the empire against the papacy. On the other hand, he became, by his misfortunes, more devoted to virtue, his studies, and his poem, from the prosecution of which he had been distracted by political cares; so that the whole history of his exile is nothing else than the history of his scientific life and the execution of the Divine Comedy. After having wandered from city to city, from country to country, to Verona, Bologna, Padua, Paris, and England, and dwelt for a time in Pisa, and in {277} Lucca at the monastery of Fonteavelluna and in Udine, and after having finished his great works—"The Banquet," "De Vulgari Eloquio," "De Monarchia"—and the three parts of his great poem, he rested at last in Ravenna, where, in the year 1321, he fell sick and died, in the 56th year of his age, after having received, as Boccacio tells us, the last sacraments with humility and piety, and become reconciled to God by true repentance for all he had done contrary to his holy will. The poet was buried in the Franciscan church, where his ashes still repose.
This sketch of his life and fortunes gives us the key to the solution of many peculiarities of the Divine Comedy. We can now understand why politics play so conspicuous a rôle in the great poem, in spite of its higher philosophico-theological and ethical scope; and why some should have considered the work as of a purely political character. This sketch of his life also shows the partial truth contained in the assertion of Wegele, a German commentator on Dante. This writer says the leading thought of the poet was to work out his own salvation by considering the state of the world at his time; and in fact Dante found consolation and strength against earthly misfortune, found the way of virtue and eternal salvation, in the execution of his poem. For similar reasons, others considered the poem as purely didactic, and this view has a foundation in the confession of the poet himself.
But above all, the life of Dante explains his ideas about the relations between the papacy and the empire, expressed not only in his book on monarchy, but also in the Divine Comedy; and his strange judgments about persons and circumstances, especially of his own age. It is true Dante never for a moment disputes the primacy and divine appointment of the popes in the Church; and even in hell he describes those pontiffs whom he condemns to it as having certain distinctions. He maintains in the clearest manner the freedom and independence of the divine power in regard to the secular, and acknowledges a certain superiority in the former, for he requires that Caesar should have that reverence for Peter which the first-born son should have to his father, so that Caesar, illuminated by the light of paternal grace, might shine more brilliantly over the earth. But as Dante was possessed with the Ghibelline idea, and as he saw in the temporal power of the popes, who were the head of the Guelph party, the greatest obstacle to the success of his principles, we must not be surprised to find him the enemy of the pope's temporal power, and, in his judgment of men and things, to see him frequently led away by party rage and revenge for injuries received.
Dante, however, was noble and Christian enough to keep his eyes open even to the faults of his own party, and he spared not even the heads of the Ghibellines, as Frederic II. and other noble and popular persons, if they seemed to him deserving of blame. Nor must we imagine that Dante really thought all those were in hell whom he places there, any more than he thought the real pains of hell were such as he described them: only the vulgar could believe this. Those persons were only such as in his eyes were guilty of mortal sins; and the punishments inflicted were such as his fancy conceived to be adequate to the guilt. But we must bear in mind that his judgments must always be received with caution when there is question of facts, persons, and circumstances connected with the opposite party; and we have the right to examine and correct the criticisms of Dante by the light of history. Dante, for instance, goes so far as to put in hell even Pope Celestine, who, after governing the Church for six months, tired of the tiara, went into solitude; because, in the opinion of the poet, Celestine renounced the pontificate through timidity and weakness, and made way {278} for the hated Boniface, VIII. The Church, on the contrary, puts Celestine among the saints on account of his extraordinary virtues.
But let us now turn from the dark side of the picture, and from the weakness of the great man, to take a view of the fortunes of the Commedia in the course of six centuries. We have already in the beginning of this essay spoken of the great number of editions, translations, and commentaries on the great work, and in this respect no other work can compare with it except the Holy Scripture and the Following of Christ. But these proofs of admiration and study of the Divine Comedy are not equally divided among the centuries, and the recent and renowned writer of Dante's life, Count Caesar Balbo, justly remarks that, at those periods in which an earnest religious and truly patriotic feeling pervaded the fatherland of the poet and Christian Europe in general, those proofs are to be found in greater number than when the knowledge and study of supreme truth had grown less, love of religion and country had died or gone astray, and the minds of men sunk in the earthly and the sensible. Thus, in the fifteenth century, after the invention of the art of printing, nineteen or twenty editions of Dante appeared; in the sixteenth century, forty; in the seventeenth, only three; in the eighteenth, thirty-four; in the nineteenth, up to 1839, over seventy, and perhaps up to the present year one hundred. This is a striking proof of the increasing love of the spiritual in our century, in spite of the great influence of materialism.
But in this age of surprises and contradictions, a new glory of which he had never dreamt has been added to Dante's name. For some time in Italy that political party which aims at the subversion of the existing order of things, and the establishment of a single republic or monarchy, and which finds in the papacy or States of the Church the principal obstacle to the carrying out of its plans, has made use of commentaries on the Divine Comedy, among other means, to spread its principles among the people. Hence, two Italian refugees, Ugo Foscolo and Rosetti, during their sojourn in England, undertook the dreary task of explaining Dante's poem in a purely political point of view, and with learning and wit they have attempted to prove that the poet was opposed to the temporal power of the pope, and the head, or at least a member, of a secret society.
In Italy, however, and in Germany, especially by the great critic, Schlegel, this theory has been refuted. It falls to the ground by the simple consideration of the fact, that if the Divine Comedy was as clear in every point as where he speaks against the popes of his time and their earthly possessions, no commentary on the poem would be necessary. Yet, no sooner was war against Rome proclaimed at Paris and Turin, than recourse was had to Dante, and an attempt made to conjure up his spirit as a partisan in the fight. Rosetti already occupies a chair in the Sardinian capital, from which he expounds Dante in the interest of Italian unity, and in Germany the secret societies applaud his course; so that, if in 1865 there be in Italy a celebration of Dante's six hundredth birthday, as in Germany there is of Schiller, we may expect to find the politicians make use of it to further their ends.
So then we have lived to see the day when Dante, the Ghibelline and fanatical adherent of the German empire; who was opposed to the temporal power of the pope only because it stood in the way of a universal secular monarchy; who invoked the wrath of heaven on the German Albert because he delayed coming to subjugate Italy; and who wrote the famous letter to the Emperor Henry VII., inviting him to come and chastise his native city; when that Dante, I say, has become the herald and standard-bearer of a party which calls itself the old national Guelph party, whose {279} watch-word is "Death to the Germans and foreign rulers," and which, like the ancient Guelphs, is aided by French soldiers in its struggle against the German emperors.
In spite of his Ghibelline proclivities, Dante was filled with lively faith, and he had so great a veneration for the power of the keys entrusted by Christ to Peter and his successors that even in hell he bowed with respect before one of those who had borne them, and even in his narration of the arrest and ill-treatment of Boniface VIII., whom he hated and placed in hell, he breaks out into the following strains:
"Lo! the flower de luce
Enters Alagna; in his Vicar Christ?
Himself a captive, and his mockery
Acted again. Lo! to his holy lip
The vinegar and gall once more applied;
And he 'twixt living robbers doomed to bleed.
Lo! the new Pilate, of whose cruelty
Such violence cannot fill the measure up,
With no decree to sanction, pushes on
Into the temple his yet eager sails.
O sovereign Master! when shall I rejoice
To see the vengeance, which thy wrath, well pleased,
In secret silence broods?"
(Purg. xx. 85-97. Carey's translation.)
So we have lived to see the day when the author of the above lines is represented as the herald of a party which has treated so shamefully the gentle successor of Boniface VIII., Pius IX., whose only fault was to have opened the prison doors to his enemies, and recalled them from exile with too great indulgence. They have made him drink the chalice of humiliation to the dregs, and, leagued with a French despot, they renew in the Vicar of Christ all the insults heaped of old on the Saviour by the Roman soldiers, when, putting on him the mantle of purple and the crown of thorns, they mocked him, saying, "Hail, King of the Jews!" Dante was no such Christ-killer.
And what folly is it not to imagine Dante, the haughty aristocrat, whose pride of birth shows itself everywhere in his poem, a partisan of a faction which, like that which governed Florence during the middle ages, is made up of the rabble and of levelers, haters of all nobility.
In another age, when it was not the principle of public life to have no principle at all, such contradictions as those of which we write would have been incomprehensible; but in our own century, in which truth wages an unequal conflict with falsehood, not so much because men do not know how to separate truth from falsehood, as because men find truth less useful for their purposes than falsehood, the conduct of the so-called national party in Italy is easily explained. But if Dante were to rise up from the grave, how strongly he would rebuke those who are making such an unwarrantable use of his name! He would quote for them, perhaps, as he does in many parts of his great work, an apt text of the Holy Scriptures; and none, probably, would come sooner to his mind than the following:
"Why have the Gentiles raged, and the people devised vain things?
"The kings of the earth stood up, and the princes met together, against the Lord and against his Christ.
"Let us break their bonds asunder: and let us cast away their yoke from us.
"He that dwelleth in heaven shall laugh at them; and the Lord shall deride them. Then shall he speak to them in his anger, and trouble them in his rage."
Important Geological Discovery.—Sir Charles Lyell, in his address to the British Association a few months ago, mentioned the discovery of a fossil animal much more ancient than any previously supposed to exist. Heretofore, as is well known, an immense series of rocks below the silurians have been termed azoic, as exhibiting no remains of animal life; but this term must now be dismissed.
It is well known that a staff of competent geologists, under the direction of Sir William E. Logan, have been engaged for some years in a geological survey of Canada. The oldest rocks in that country are granite, described as upper and lower Laurentian, their thickness being 40,000 feet, with bands of limestone intervening. In one of these bands in the lower series of rocks, which are the most ancient, there were discovered, in 1858, certain flattish rounded masses, which seemed to be of organic origin. These were examined under the microscope by Dr. Dawson of Montreal, who, from their structure, declared them to be foraminifera, similar in character, but by no means in size, to the foraminifera living at the present day in vast multitudes at the bottom of the sea; and to this newly-discovered and wonder-exciting creature he gave the significant name Eozoon Canadense, or the Dawn-animal of Canada.
The foraminifer of the present day is a microscopic creature; the eozoon was enormous in comparison, about twelve inches diameter, and from four to six inches in thickness, presenting the general form of a much flattened globe. Its growth was by the process technically known as gemmation, or the continued development of cells upon the surface; hence, these cells form successive layers of chambers, separated by exceedingly thin walls or laminae of calcareous matter. They are now all filled with solid matter, mineral silicates, serpentine, and others; but sections or slices cut from the mass, and examined, show the form of the cells still perfect, and what is more remarkable, the very minute tubes (tubuli) by which communication was maintained from one to the other throughout the entire animal. Mr. Sterry Hunt, the chemist employed on the Canadian survey, is of opinion that the silicates and solid matters were directly deposited in waters in the midst of which the eozoon was still growing, or had only recently perished, and that these solid matters penetrated, enclosed, and preserved the structure of the animals precisely as carbonate of lime might have done. Here, then, we have an example of fossilization, accomplished by reactions going on at the earth's surface, not by slow metamorphism in deeply-buried sediments.
Papers on this subject and one by Sir W. Logan himself—have been read before the Geological Society, and will shortly be published; and at a recent meeting of the Royal Society, a highly, interesting communication in further elucidation of the matter was made by Dr. Carpenter, who has devoted himself for some years to the study of foraminifera. He confirms Dr. Dawson's general conclusions, and identifies among living foraminifera the species which has most affinity with this very ancient dawn-animal. He makes out the identification in an ingenious way, resting his proof on the peculiar structure of the cell-walls, and of the minute tubuli by which, as before observed, communication between the cells was maintained. Henceforth, we shall have to regard the silurian fossils as modern.
Since this discovery was made public, it has been ascertained that there are fossil remains of the eozoon in the serpentine rocks of Great Britain. The importance of this of course depends on the age of serpentine, and that is a question which geologists have not yet settled; but some of them are of opinion that the British serpentines are of the same age as the Laurentian rocks in which the Canadian eozoon was found. Pending their decision of the question, keen explorers are on the search for other specimens.
Curious and Delicate Experiments.—Dr. Bence Jones recently communicated to the Royal Society of Great Britain the result of a series of experiments by {281} which he had attempted to ascertain the time required for certain crystallized substances to reach the textures of the body after being taken into the stomach. In other words, he proposed to solve these problems: If a dose of medicine be given, what becomes of it, and does it arrive quickly or slowly at the parts for which it is intended? It is obvious, that if these questions could be accurately determined, medical men would have a better knowledge than at present of the action and progress, so to speak, of medicine within the body. Substances, when taken into the stomach, pass into the blood, which may be supposed to distribute them to all parts of the body. If, in ordinary circumstances, no trace of a particular substance can be found in a body, but is found after doses of the substance have been administered, it is clear that the doses are the source from which that trace is derived.
Lithium is a substance sometimes given as medicine. Dr. Jones gave half a grain of chloride of lithium to a guinea-pig, on three successive days; and, by means of the spectrum analysis, he found lithium in every tissue of the animal's body, even in the cartilages, the cornea, and the crystalline lens of the eye. In another experiment, the lithium was found in the eye eight hours after the dose had been administered; and in another, four hours after. In another, the lithium was found after thirty-two minutes, in the cartilage of the hip, and in the outer part of the eye. These cases show that chemical substances do find their way very quickly into the tissues of the body; and a similar result appears from experiments on the human subject. A patient, dying of diseased heart, took fifteen grains of nitrate of lithia thirty-six hours before death, and a similar quantity six hours before death. Lithium was afterward found distinctly in the cartilage of one of the joints, and faintly in the eye and the blood. A like result was obtained with a patient who had taken ten grains of carbonate of lithia five and a half hours before death. And to this Dr. Bence Jones adds, that he expects to find lithium in the lens of the eye after operation for cataract.
Giant Trees of California.—Some time ago, much regret was expressed that the giant trees (Wellingtonia) of California had been recklessly cut down. Their fall was a loss to the world. But Sir William Hooker has received a letter in which Professor Brewer, of the California State Geological Survey, reports that "an interesting discovery has been made this year of the existence of the big trees in great abundance on the western flanks of the Sierra Nevada. They abound along a belt at 5,000-7,000 feet of altitude for a distance of more than twenty-five miles, sometimes in groves, at others scattered through the forest in great numbers. You can have no idea of the grandeur they impart to the scenery, where at times a hundred trees are in sight at once, over fifteen feet in diameter, their rich foliage contrasting so finely with their bright cinnamon-colored bark. The largest I saw was 106 feet in circumference at four feet from the ground, and 276 feet high.
"There seems no danger of the speedy extinction of the species, as it is now known in quite a number of localities; and, contrary to the popular notion, there are immense numbers of younger trees of all sizes, from the seedling up to the largest. There has been much nonsense and error published regarding them."
Photographing the Interior of the Great Pyramid.—Our readers may remember that some time last winter a distinguished English savant, Professor Piazzi Smyth, went out to Egypt for the purpose of taking photographic views of the interior chambers of the great pyramid. The impossibility of lighting these vast halls had hitherto proved an insuperable bar to the undertaking; ordinary methods of illumination seemed, if we may so speak, to make no impression upon the thick darkness. But with the discovery of the wonderful powers of the magnesium wire light, this difficulty was removed. Professor Smyth writes as follows to the London Chemical News; his letter is dated East Tomb, Great Pyramid, February 2d:
"We are settled down at last to the measuring; the chief part of the time hitherto (about three weeks) having been occupied in concert with a party of laborers, furnished by the Egyptian government, in clearing away rubbish from important parts of the interior, {282} and in cleansing and preparing it for nice observation. The magnesium wire light is something astounding in its power of illuminating difficult places. With any number of wax candles which we have yet taken into either the king's chamber or the grand gallery, the impression left on the mind is merely seeing the candles and whatever is very close to them, so that you have small idea whether you are in a palace or a cottage; but burn a triple strand of magnesium wire, and in a moment you see the whole apartment and appreciate the grandeur of its size and the beauty of its proportions. This effect, so admirably complete, too, as it is, and perfect in its way, probably results from the extraordinary intensity of the light, apart from its useful photographic property; for side by side with the magnesium light the wax candle flame looked not much brighter than the red granite of the walls of the room. …Whatever can be reached by hand is chipped, and hammered, and fractured to a frightful degree; and this maltreatment by modern men, combined with the natural wear and tear of some of the softer stones under so huge a pressure as they are exposed to, and for so long duration, has made the measuring of what is excessively tedious and difficult, and the concluding what was, in some cases, rather ambiguous."
Domestic.—The National Academy exhibition will probably be open before our readers receive these pages; and from those cognizant of the internal arrangements of the new building, and of the preparations making by our resident artists, we learn that the collection will exceed in the number, and probably in the merit of the pictures, any of its predecessors. The make-shift character and unsuitableness of the rooms in which the Academy has of late years held its annual exhibitions, have deterred many of its most prominent members from sending in contributions, which they were satisfied could not be seen to advantage; and this sin of omission was so evident in the last two or three exhibitions, that one of the leading objects of the Academy—the improvement of public taste by the display of the annual productions of our best artists—seemed in danger of being defeated. The new galleries, it is said, can exhibit to advantage more than fifteen hundred pictures, and a capacity so ample, in conjunction with the prestige attending the opening of the new building, ought to cover the walls to their fullest extent. The public will not be surprised then to learn that an unusual number of artists have been, and are still, busily applying the final touches to their works, in anticipation of "opening day" (to borrow a phrase from the milliners); and it is to be hoped that the Academy, having now "ample room and verge enough" to satisfy fastidious members, may soon become the fostering abode of art which its projectors intended to make it. A slight foretaste of what the exhibition is likely to contain was afforded at the recent reception of the Brooklyn Art Association, where an elaborate and effective work by Grignoux, entitled "Among the Alps," and several by Leutze, Gifford, Huntington, Stone, White, Hart, Beard, and others, were on view. A number of pictures destined for the Academy were also exhibited at the monthly social gatherings of the Century and Athenaeum clubs of this city in the beginning of April. We propose to give an extended notice of the new building and its art collections in our next number.
The inaugural ceremonies of the New York association for "The Advancement of Science and Art" took place at the Cooper Institute on the evening of March 31st. One of the objects of the association is the collection and preservation of works of art, and one of the fifteen sections into which it is divided is devoted to the fine arts. Amid the multiplicity of special branches, which the association proposes to investigate and promote, from jurisprudence and the prevention of pauperism down to chronology, the fine arts must necessarily receive but a limited share of attention; but even this, if guided by taste and intelligence, is better than the indifference to aesthetic matters which is too often characteristic of a commercial metropolis; and the association will find plenty of well-wishers, and, we trust, some who will add substantial aid to their sympathy.
Among the attractions of the Central Park will be a hall of statuary, now in the course of preparation in the old {283} arsenal building near the Fifth Avenue, which is not yet open to public inspection. It will contain, what ought to prove a boon to all students of form, a collection of casts from Crawford's principal works. The Park Commissioners have, in this instance, shown an enlightened enterprise which might be imitated by wealthy private individuals. A few bronze statues of American statesmen, soldiers, or authors, placed on appropriate sites in the park, would add greatly to its attractions. And if it should be thought desirable to illustrate a national era, what one more worthy than the memorable epoch through which we are now passing, the termination of which will be coeval with the completion of the park?
A new group by Rogers, entitled "The Home Guard—Midnight on the Border," attracts throngs of gazers before the windows of Williams and Stevens's art emporium in Broadway. The story is naturally and effectively told. A mother and her daughter, the only inmates, probably, of some lonely farm-house, have been aroused from their slumbers by marauding bushwhackers, and tremblingly prepare to repel the assailants, or sell their lives dearly. The elder of the two females, with her body slightly poised on one foot, stands in attitude of rapt attention, while mechanically cocking a revolver, her sole weapon of defence. The daughter, less resolute in expression and action, cowers at her side. As a work of art, it is perhaps inferior to the "Wounded Scout" or "One Shot More," which exhibit the artist's highest efforts in characteristic expression and the management of details; but it presents a vivid idea of a scene we fear only too frequently enacted along the border, and will speak to aftertimes of the horrors of civil war. The steady improvement which Mr. Rogers has shown in his groups, illustrating the episodes of our great struggle, can be readily seen by an inspection of his collected works, the earliest of which were scarcely better than clever caricatures; and it is not surprising to learn that there is a demand for them in Europe, whither the artist himself proposes going during the present season. Foreign critics may now obtain a correct notion of the outward aspects of the participators in the war, if they cannot appreciate its motives or character. Mr. Rogers is at present engaged upon a group entitled "The Bushwhacker," which he will finish before his departure. According to one of the daily newspapers it "represents a wife in the act of drawing away from her husband—an old, grizzled, and care-worn fighter—his gun, and at the same time appealing to him to leave his perilous vocation. The Bushwhacker clasps in his arms his little child, who is toying with his shaggy beard. If we may judge from the half-relenting expression of his countenance, we can safely conclude that the wife will not sue in vain, although he still resistingly grasps his musket with one hand. The pose and execution of the figures are carefully attended to, and the work is one of the most spirited and successful of Mr. Rogers' productions."
Among other American artists who intend to visit Europe the present season, are Ives, the sculptor, and Haseltine and Dix, painters of coast and marine scenery. The last named gentleman four years ago forsook his profession, in which he had begun to attain some skill, to accept a place on the military staff of his father, Major General Dix, and now, with renewed ardor, resumes his pencil. He will study principally along the Mediterranean coasts.
A very miscellaneous collection of pictures, containing a vast deal of rubbish, and a few good specimens of foreign artists, was disposed of at auction by Messrs. Leeds & Miner, in the latter part of March, at tolerably fair prices. The following will serve as examples: "Snow Scene" by Gignoux, $900 (quite as much as it was worth); "Lady with Flowers," by Plassan, $750; "A Reverie," by Chavet, $850; "Evening Prayer," by E. Frère, $1,000; "The Alchemyst," by Webb, $380. A curious essay of Col. Trumbull in the perilous regions of "high art," entitled "The Knighting of De Wilton," fetched the moderate sum of $150. As an example of the style of composition and treatment affected by the painters who illustrated Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery, it was both amusing and instructive. Fortunately for his reputation, the painter of "Bunker Hill" and the "Sortie from Gibraltar" did not often recur to Walter Scott for subjects.
Quite recently there has been on exhibition at Goupil's gallery a remarkable picture by the French artist Jean Léon Gérôme, entitled L'Almée, which {284} may be thus briefly described: Scene, a dilapidated Egyptian Khan or coffee shop; in the foreground and centre of the picture a Ghawazee, or dancing girl, performing a striking but immodest dance, which consists wholly of movements of the body from the hips, the legs remaining stationary; a group of fierce looking and fantastically bedizened Bashi-Bazouks, sitting cross-legged on a divan, spectators of the performance; and in the background some musicians and an attendant or two. It would be almost impossible to over-praise the marvellous finish of this work, the skilful blending of the colors, the subdued yet appropriate tone, or the dramatic force of the composition. If these qualities were all that are demanded in a work of art, we might stop here; but when the subject is repulsive, they prove a source of aggravation rather than of pleasure, and few, we think, will deny that the scene depicted by Gérôme, though illustrating a peculiar and perhaps important phase of Oriental life, is one of too gross a character to subserve the purposes of true art. A vast deal of sentiment has been wasted upon the "moral significance" of pictures of this type. The less said upon that score, the better. We do not instruct children to abstain from vice by putting immoral books into their hands, trusting that some innate sense of propriety may prompt them thereby to see virtue in a clearer light. If disposed to criticise the technical part of this work, we should say that the finish is too elaborate. Everything, to the smallest minutiae, is polished almost to the degree of hardness, and one instinctively longs for an occasional roughness or evidence of the brush—something of that manual movement which indicates the passing thought of the painter. Where all is of so regular and level a merit, the contrasts which should give strength and spirit to a painting are sure to be wanting. In this respect Gérôme compares unfavorably with Meissonier. Both finish with scrupulous exactness; but the latter never makes finish paramount to the proper expression of his subject. Hence the life and action, so to speak, of his most nicely elaborated figures. In the Almée, on the other hand, the group of soldiers, though wearing an admirable expression of stoical sensuality, are too rigid and immovable, too much like well painted copies of the lay figures which served as models for them. So, too, of many of the details, excepting always the draperies, which could not be improved. A little more attention to the ars celare artem would render Gérôme almost unapproachable in his peculiar style.
Before leaving Goupil's, we cannot avoid drawing attention to some studies of trees and foliage, by Richards, of Philadelphia, now exhibited there. One of them, representing the interior of a wood in early autumn, is the best delineation of that phase of nature we have recently seen. Generally, the pictures of this artist are wanting in relief; his foliage lies flat upon the canvas; the trunks of his trees have no rounded outline, nor can the eye penetrate through the recesses of the wood; there is, in fact, no atmosphere to speak of. These defects have been happily overcome in the present instance, and, with no lack of Pre-Raphaelite power in delineating the outward aspect of nature, there is a pervading tone of melancholy appropriate to the scene and the season. Less remarkable than this, but of considerable merit, is a mountain landscape, in which the season depicted is also the autumn.
Foreign.—Abroad there seems to be a perfect fever to buy and sell works of art. "Everybody," says the London Athenaeum, "who has a collection, seems determined to dispose of it, and accident has thrown a large number of works on the art-market; but as those who have taste and means seem just as eager to buy as the collectors are to sell, the activity of the art-marts is but a natural consequence of the law of supply and demand, the natural limit having been extended in several instances by the accidental re-appearance of many works twice or three times during the season." This has been the case especially with respect to the pictures of Delacroix. It is always dangerous to assume the prophetic character; but it appears very improbable that, on the average, works of art will fetch higher sums than they have during the present season.'' In Paris the Pourtalès sale continues, and is daily crowded by eager virtuosi, whose competition runs up prices to an extent bordering on the extravagant. The proceeds of the third portion of the sale, which occupied three days, and included the engraved {285} gems, antique jewelry and glass, were 45,743 francs; those of the fourth section, the coins and medals, 18,430 francs; and of the fifth, which comprised the sculpture in ivory and wood, the renaissance bronzes, arms, faiences, glass, and some miscellaneous articles, 505,640 francs. The following are some of the prices obtained for the sculptures in ivory, of which there was a magnificent collection of 70 pieces: A statuette of Hercules resting on his club, one foot on the head of the Hydra, purchased for England, $3,280.—Venus with Cupid at her side, left by Fiamingo as security in the house at Leghorn wherein he died, $1,180.—A renaissance bronze bust of Charles IX., of France, life size, artist unknown, formerly the property of the Duc de Berri, brought $9,000.—"Henry II. ware," the well-known biberon, with cover bearing the arms of France, surmounted by a coronet, and bearing the arms and initials of Diane de Poitiers, uninjured, just over ten inches in height, $5,500.—The celebrated Marie Stuart cup, presented to her when affianced to the Dauphin, was disposed of for $5,420. It is but a few inches in height, but is covered, inside and out, with designs illustrating classical mythology and allegory, and with profuse ornamentation, all in exquisite taste and of perfect workmanship. It was executed by Jean Court dit Vigier, about 1556.—A round basin, in grisaille, by Pierre Raymond (1558), representing the history of Adam and Eve, in enamel on a black ground, brought $4,040; a large oval salver, by Jean Courtois, enamelled in the richest manner, representing the passage of the Red Sea, with borders decorated with figures, medallions, etc., $6,000. These prices, it may be observed, were considered by competent judges to be rather low! The vases and goblets of rock crystal were also well contested. A magnificent head, of Apollo, in marble, formerly in the Justiniani gallery, was bought, it is said, for the British Museum, for $9,000; and the celebrated Pallas vase, the most perfect specimen of Greek work in porphyry extant, fetched $3,400.
The new chapel of the Palais de l'Elysée has just been completed, and is said to be a perfect gem of artistic decoration. The style is Byzantine, the mosaic work of the altar being executed in marbles of the rarest kinds; but the pillars and vaulted roof are in stucco, imitating porphyry, vert antique, and gold, in such perfection that it is difficult to believe that the mines of Sweden and Russia had not been ransacked to produce the rich coloring and massive effect which strikes the eye of the visitor. The twelve patron saints of France are represented—including Charlemagne and St. Louis.
The Aguado pictures were announced for sale, in Paris, on the 10th of April. They include the famous "Death of Sainte Claire," by Murillo, brought from the convent of Saint François d'Asrise in Seville, by Mathieu Fabirer, Commissary-General of Napoleon's army—a very large canvas, including no less than twenty-eight figures.
The collection of ancient and modern pictures and water-color drawings formed by Mr. Thomas Blackburn, of Liverpool, was recently disposed of at auction in London for £8,763. Some of the water-color drawings by Copley Fielding, Louis Haghe, John Gilbert, Prout, Birket Foster, and others, realized very large sums.
Theed's colossal statue of the Prince Consort, which has been cast in bronze at Nuremberg, has recently arrived in London. The model of this figure was originally executed by command of her majesty, and sent as a present to Coburg, where it at present remains, a bronze cast having been taken from it. The town of Sydney being desirous of erecting a statue of the prince, this second cast was executed by command of the Duke of Newcastle, on the ground that of all the numerous likenesses now extant this was the best. The figure is ten feet high, and represents the prince in a commanding attitude, dressed in the robes of the garter.
The alterations in progress in the Wolsey Chapel, at Windsor Castle, have brought to light three full-length portraits of knights of the garter, attired in the military costume of the order, capped with helmets, and wearing cloaks with the insignia. These were hidden by stone slabs, and as there are upwards of twenty similar slabs, it is probable that other similar paintings may be discovered.
Mr. G. T. Doo's large line-engraving from Sebastiano del Piombo's "Resurrection of Lazarus," in the National Gallery, by far the most important of its kind produced for many years past, is {286} now finished. The figure of Christ is 13 inches high, that of Lazarus is still larger, and, being naked, invoked the utmost care and knowledge of the engraver to deal with its superbly drawn forms and perfect surface. The execution, if not the whole design, of this figure has been, on good grounds, attributed to Michael Angelo. Mr. Doo has rendered these with great success, even to giving the somewhat hard and positive tone of the original; and with one or two exceptions, the drawing is described as admirable throughout. In view of the few really good line-engravings now produced, and of the prospect of the art perhaps becoming extinct within the present century, the production of such a work possesses a genuine though somewhat melancholy interest.
Kaulbach, it is said, will finish his paintings in the Berlin Museum this spring. The price he has received for them is given at $187,000, with an addition of $18,700 for the cost of materials. One of the smaller pictures for the series represents Germany absorbed in reading Humboldt's "Cosmos," and letting the imperial crown fall off her head in the abstraction caused by her studies. Underneath, the various small states that compose the confederation are poking out their heads as far as possible to escape from under a hat which is coming down upon them—an illusion to the popular phrase of uniting the whole of Germany "under one hat."
The Pontifical Academy of Roman Archaeology has decreed that the collossal statue of Hercules in gilt bronze, recently discovered among the ruins of Pompey's theatre, and sent to the Vatican, shall bear the name of "The Hercules Mastai," in honor of Pius IX.
THE BOYNE WATER: A TALE. By John Banim. Post 8vo., pp. 578, Boston: Patrick Donahoe. [For sale in New York by P. O'Shea, Bleecker street]. This story is reprinted from The Boston Pilot, of whose columns it has formed for some months past a principal attraction. It is one of the earliest of Banim's works, and the favorable judgment which it received on its first appearance has now a success of forty years to confirm it. It is a novel of the historical school which Scott made so popular in the last generation, the incidents upon which it is founded belonging to the revolution of 1688, which established William of Orange on the throne of Great Britain. It gives a graphic picture of the siege and capitulation of Limerick, and brings upon the scene James and William, Sarsfield, Tyrconnel, Ginkell, and other familiar characters of that stirring epoch. Banim delights, also, in descriptions of natural scenery. In these he is spirited, and, we believe, accurate. He spared no pains to make himself thoroughly familiar with the localities of which he wrote. While he was engaged upon his novels he used to journey, in company with his brother, through the theatre of action, and study each historical spot with the care of an antiquary. The perfect acquaintance thus obtained with the places of which he wrote had, of course, no little effect upon the vivacity of his narrative.
His pictures of Irish life are vivid and truthful, though he is happier in narrative or description than in dialogue. His heroes and heroines are too much addicted to stilted conversation and to sentimental remarks, which look very well in print, but are never heard in ordinary life. The minor characters, especially those of the peasant class, such as Rory na Choppell, the "whisperer," or horse-tamer, have the gift of speech in a much more natural and agreeable manner. The subordinate parts of the book, in fact, are its best parts. The Gaelic chieftain, reduced to poverty by the English conquerors, but retaining all his pride of spirit and {287} authority over his people, in a sequestered hut among the mountains; the blind harper; the old priest; the mad woman of the cavern; the fanatical soldier of Cromwell; and the lawless Rapparees, are depicted with great skill. The heroes of the story—for there are two—are the one a Catholic, the other a Protestant. They fight on opposite sides, and in the delineation of their characters, and the division of fine sentiments between them, Banim holds an even hand. He wrote for an English public, and fearful of offending by too warm an avowal of his religious convictions, he seems to us to have gone occasionally to the opposite extreme, and penned several passages which Catholics cannot read without displeasure. But, despite these faults, which are neither very many nor very serious, "The Boyne Water" ranks among the best of Irish novels, and Banim as a worthy companion of Carleton and Gerald Griffin.
SERMONS ON MORAL SUBJECTS. By his Eminence Cardinal Wiseman. 8vo., pp.434. New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co.
The discourses contained in this volume form an appropriate supplement to the "Sermons on our Lord and on His Blessed Mother" which we noticed last month. They were delivered under the same circumstances as the previous collection—that is, for the most part, at the English College in Rome—and ought not, therefore, to be considered as a regular course. But if they do not pretend to be a complete series of moral instructions, they will, nevertheless, be found to touch upon nearly all the fashionable sins, and to afford ample food for reflection to all classes of persons. They have the same characteristics of thought and expression which mark the cardinal's other writings—the same kind tone of remonstrance with sinners and encouragement for the penitent, the same earnest love of God and man, and the same, rich, sometimes exuberant, diction. Cardinal Wiseman ranged through a great variety of subjects, and touched nothing that he did not adorn, but his style never varied much; from one of his books you can easily judge of all. There is little difference between the style of the "Sermons on Moral Subjects" and that, for instance, of "Fabiola," or the "Lectures on Science and Revealed Religion." It is an ornate mode of writing which accommodates itself to a diversity of subjects, and never, in the cardinal's pages, seems out of place.
The sermons now before us are eminently practical; and, although a large proportion of them are addressed directly to irreligious persons, and treat of such subjects as "The Love of the World," "Scandal," "Detraction," "Unworthy Communion," "Unprepared Death," and the "Hatefulness of Sin," they display, in a very marked manner, that affectionateness to which we have elsewhere alluded as a characteristic of the cardinal's discourses. He seems to love rather to expostulate than to upbraid; rather to remind us of the happiness we have lost by sin than to threaten us with the punishment of impenitence; and even when his subject calls for stern language, the kindly spirit continually breaks out.
The last sermon in the volume is entitled "Conclusion of a Course." It contains the following passage, explanatory of the purpose of the whole collection:
"These instructions, my dear brethren, have obviously one tendency; they are all directed to expound what the law of God commands us to believe and to practice, in order to reach those rewards which he has prepared for his faithful servants. They are directed to suggest such motives as may induce us to fulfil these commands; to encourage those who are already on the path to persevere in it; to bring back those who have wandered; to impart strength to the weak and resolution to the wavering and undecided."
AT ANCHOR; A STORY OF OUR CIVIL WAR. By an American. 12mo., pp. 311. New York: D. Appleton & Company.
The writer of this novel is evidently a Catholic, but the story is political, not religious. It purports to be the autobiography of a loyal Massachusetts woman. She marries a Carolinian whom she does not love, and accompanies him to his plantation-home. At the breaking out of the war, the husband accepts a commission in the Confederate service. He is reported killed, and the wife, having learned during his absence to love him, devotes herself to the sick and wounded in Richmond. After a time she makes her way back to Massachusetts, and there, at the end of the book, the missing lord turns up; not only safe and sound, but converted from the political errors of his ways, and eager to fight under the Federal {288} flag. He enlists as a private, and has risen to be sergeant when a wound disables him for further service, and husband and wife are at last united and happy in each other. This plot, if it is a plot, is interwoven—we cannot say complicated—with several interesting incidents. The heroine has another lover, toward whom she leans a willing ear, both in maiden life and during her supposed widowhood; and he, on his part, has another mistress, who turns out to be our heroine's half-sister. Of course he marries this lady; and so both couples, after much tossing about, are peacefully "at anchor."
This is something far better than the common sort of sensational war-stories. It contains neither a guerrilla nor a spy; narrates no thrilling deed of blood or hair's-breadth escape; describes no battle; and admits that both parties embrace many noble and honorable men. The writer (it needs little penetration to see that she is a woman) expresses herself fearlessly, but without undue bitterness, on political matters, and scatters over her pages many excellent reflections.
THE MYSTICAL ROSE; OR, MARY OF NAZARETH, THE LILY OF THE HOUSE OF DAVID. By Marie Josephine. 12mo., pp. viii., 290. New York: D. Appleton & Company.
The authoress of this work is a Vermont lady of some literary experience. Her book gives ample evidence of a cultivated and well-stored mind. It is an attempt to present, in irregular verse, a legendary narrative of the life of the Blessed Virgin; and if the poetry is not all of the first order, it is at least devotional, or perhaps we should, say consistent with devotional ideas—for the writer deals more with the poetical than the religious aspect of her subject. She has drawn the rough materials for her poem from a great variety of sources, to which she gives reference in copious notes. She claims to have "appropriated every coveted relic or tradition handed down by historian, Christian or pagan, from the archives of Latin Church, Hebrew, or Greek, coming within scope of her original plan." She has certainly succeeded in bringing together a great number of beautiful legends, which she handles in the most affectionate manner.
THE CORRELATION AND CONSERVATION OF FORCES: A series of Expositions, by Prof. Grove, Prof. Helmholtz, Dr. Mayer, Dr. Faraday, Prof. Liebig, and Dr. Carpenter. With an Introduction and brief Biographical Notices of the Chief Promoters of the New Views. By Edward L. Youmans, M. D. 12mo., pp. xlii., 438. New York: D. Appleton & Company.
This excellent work reached us too late for an extended notice in the present number. We shall speak of it at greater length next month. In the meantime we warmly recommend our readers to buy it.
We have received the April number of The New Path: a Monthly Art Journal, the publication of which, after an interval of several months, is resumed under the auspices of James Miller, 522 Broadway. This little periodical represents radical and peculiar views or art, Being allied in opinions to the Pre-Raphaelite school; but its independent and out-spoken, and often valuable, criticisms must have struck the limited circle of readers to whom it formerly appealed. We hope under its new management it will exercise a healthful influence on American art. The present number contains articles on Miss Hosmer's Statue of Zenobia, "Our Furniture," notices of recent exhibitions, etc., etc.
Murphy & Co., Baltimore, send us The Mysteries of the Living Rosary, printed in sheets, and accompanied by appropriate instructions, prayers, and meditations.